A thorough recap of season 1 of Peacemaker, from writer and director James Gunn, ahead of the new season.
When James Gunn announced that Peacemaker was going to be a series on HBO Max, I gave it the side-eye. I enjoyed The Suicide Squad, but I thought that John Cena as Peacemaker was the least interesting character to spin off into a television show. But as I watched season 1 from the opening credits dance number to Wig Wam’s “Do You Wanna Taste It” to the final moments of Chris Smith sitting on the steps of his trailer watching his pet eagle, Eagly, drop a rodent in front of him as a treat, I was all in on this story. As we prepare for a new season, here is our recap of season 1 of Peacemaker.
Meeting the Team
Peacemaker season 1 begins shortly after the events of The Suicide Squad. Peacemaker is leaving the hospital, concerned that the police may come to arrest him, since he technically still has time left on his prison sentence. He has a delightfully comedic conversation with Jamil (Rizwan Manji), the janitor, trying to sort out what is going on, and ultimately decides to chance going home. The team working for Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) shows up. They explain to him that he needs to join them for Project Butterfly.
Before joining Task Force X, Peacemaker stops to visit his father, Auggie (Robert Patrick), to pick up Eagly (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker) and to get a new helmet. In this brief interaction with his abusive and racist father, we begin to understand some of what drives Chris. Gaining his father’s approval is a constant theme throughout season 1.
After a dinner with team leader Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji), Agent Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), tech director John Economos (Steve Agee), and new agent Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), Chris goes looking to blow off some steam from being in prison and then in the hospital. He meets a barfly and they go back to her place, but as he’s relaxing, she attacks him with inhuman speed and strength. After he uses his “sonic boom” helmet to explode her, he escapes Detectives Sophie Song (Annie Chang) and Larry Fitzgibbon (Lochlyn Munro) with the help of Adebayo.
Because Peacemaker is firmly in the crosshairs of the law, Economos frames Auggie for the explosion. Since he is already known as The White Dragon, a Ku Klux Klan-type super villain, no one questions this, but it creates additional animosity between Economos and Peacemaker, who already have a tenuous relationship because of Peacemaker’s abrasive personality. There is also tension between Harcourt and Peacemaker because of his sexist attitudes. And Adebayo is hiding the fact that she is Amanda Waller’s daughter.
Project Butterfly Begins
Despite the tension in the team, they are called for the first task of Project Butterfly: the assassination of the politician Royland Goff (Antonio Cupo) and potentially the rest of his family, if they are also the mysterious “butterflies.” As the team watches the entire family lower proboscises into bowls of nectar, Chris finds himself struggling to shoot them, at which point, his friend Adrian, aka Vigilante (Freddie Stroma), arrives and begins picking off family members. But before he can shoot Goff, he is tackled by Judomaster (Nhut Le), a tiny ninja, hired by Goff for protection.
Goff captures Vigilante and Peacemaker, and tortures Vigilante, trying to get Peacemaker to talk. Eventually, Peacemaker is able to free himself, and he shoots Goff in the head, revealing a strange, alien butterfly, which he captures, hoping to question it. However, he keeps this a secret from the team, further amplifying the divisions therein.
Daddy Issues
Seeing the anger that Chris has about his father’s framing, she takes him aside and explains that he is not a good man and that he needs to let Auggie go. Vigilante overhears their conversation and decides that the best thing he can do is get himself arrested, go to the jail where Auggie is being held, and kill him. Vigilante completes the first parts of his plan, but when he confronts Auggie, he lets it slip that he knows that Auggie is Peacemaker’s father, leading Auggie to request that the detectives reopen his file. When they release him, he vows that he is planning to kill Peacemaker.
Meanwhile, Chris is struggling with memories of his father. We learn that he and his brother loved one another, but were forced to fight for the entertainment of their father and his friends. In one fight, after being egged on by Auggie to punch harder, Chris accidentally causes his brother to have a seizure and die. His father blamed him for his brother’s death and then put Chris on the path of violence. The only way Chris could accept what he was forced to do was to make a vow to keep peace using whatever means necessary, pushing him to become the Peacemaker.
Secrets Kept, Secrets Revealed
The team gets a lead on the potential food source for the butterflies. They head to a processing plant where they believe the food is being manufactured, only to discover that it is overrun by butterflies. With an X-ray vision helmet, Peacemaker is able to recognize the humans who have butterflies in their brains and dispatch them. The team is making their way to the central hub when they run into a giant ape that threatens all of them.
Fortunately, Economos is watching from the van and he saves the day with a chainsaw. This marks a turn from the animosity between Peacemaker and Economos, as the two bond over this and a shared love of 80s hair metal. Adebayo takes Chris home, where the two share a beer. Chris opens up about his interest in Harcourt, and Adebayo tells him that he just needs to be nice to her. She tells him that he might actually be a nice guy, and Chris admits that he has never had a friend he could trust. Unfortunately, immediately after that, Adebayo plants a doctored diary in his home that implicates him exclusively in the deaths of the butterflies, leaving the rest of the assassins free and clear.
Adebayo returns to the headquarters and sees Chris’s X-ray vision helmet. She puts it on just as a goof, only to see that Murn is being controlled by a butterfly, something that only she and Peacemaker were unaware of.
Murn is not the only butterfly. When the diary is revealed, Detectives Song and Fitzgibbon return to Peacemaker’s home. As he and Vigilante try to escape, the jar holding Goff is broken, and he escapes, making his way into Detective Song’s brain. She summons an army of butterflies who take over the entire police force with the plan to move the “cow,” which is what produces their only source of food.
You Hurt the Ones You Love
After being released from prison, Auggie dons his White Dragon suit and goes out to hunt Peacemaker. He can track Chris through tracking chips he put in the helmets. Peacemaker tries to fool him by attaching the helmet to a raccoon, but when Vigilante and Economos pick him up by the side of the road in a car full of the remaining helmets, Auggie and his goons show up. They fight, and in the process of the battle, Chris shoots his father in the head, killing him.
The police department, now all butterflies, goes looking for Murn because they see him as a turncoat. Adebayo and Harcourt see him die and fear that the entire mission is in jeopardy without his leadership.
The team all meet up at a local veterinarian hospital where Eagly is being treated. They are all despondent and ready to give up when Adebayo sees Eagly hug Peacemaker. This minor miracle reenergizes her to try to find the cow so they can cut off the food supply for the butterflies, which will starve them all in a short period. With Harcourt now in charge, they head out to where the cow is rumored to be held.
The Truth Will Set You Free
When the team arrives at the site where the cow is, they make a plan to infiltrate the barn. Economos must get Peacemaker’s sonic boom helmet as close to the beast as possible, and then they will detonate it remotely. They have everything almost in place when the butterflies realize that Economos is not one of them and begin to attack. Harcourt, Vigilante, and Peacemaker fight the butterflies while Adebayo makes her way to the cow to destroy it.
Vigilante, Harcourt, and Economos all sustain serious injuries, so Peacemaker joins Adebayo to try to kill the cow, but right before they are able to, Goff, now in Detective Song, explains that the butterflies had come to earth not to destroy it, but to save it. They had intended not to overtake everyone, but when they saw how humans were hurting the planet on their own, they decided to take over to save humanity. Despite this noble goal, Peacemaker and Adebayo still kill the cow.
While at the hospital, waiting to see if Harcourt will survive her injuries, Peacemaker and Adebayo discuss whether or not they did the right thing. Peacemaker shares that he did it to save the team and that even though Adebayo betrayed him, he still considers her one of his best friends. She then goes and gives a press conference where she admits that she is Amanda Waller’s daughter, that the diary was fake, and that Peacemaker was working with an undercover government black ops group that uses criminals in exchange for time off their sentences.
As season 1 of Peacemaker wraps up, Harcourt and Chris have a tender moment by her hospital bed. Adebayo reunites with her wife. Economos heads to his basement office, but now with a photo of the Task Force X team on his desk. We see Vigilante and Peacemaker in the woods blowing up various junk appliances for fun. In the final shot, we see Peacemaker sitting on his porch, and beside him is Auggie, haunting him from beyond the grave.
Peacemaker Season 1 is now available to stream on Max. Season 2 will be released globally on August 21, 2025.
