What exactly is Project Butterfly?
Is Vigilante as crazy as he acts?
And how did Peacemaker survive the events of "The Suicide Squad?"
Here's a quick explainer about where the first three episodes of Peacemaker leave our patriotic
hero.
"Hey, the reason I'm excited?
It is normal."
If you didn't catch his appearance in James Gunn's quasi-reboot "The Suicide Squad" when
it premiered last summer, "Peacemaker" helpfully brings you up to speed by showcasing exactly
what the title character's all about: "I cherish peace with all my heart."
stabs/shoots guys.
"I don't care how many men, women, and children I need to kill to get it."
What else do you need to know?
After the battle against Starro the Conqueror in Corto Maltese, Peacemaker is more or less
right as rain, despite getting shot in the throat, and getting
a building dropped on him.
"You're shot and a building falls on you and all you have to replace is a clavicle?
You're the luckiest man alive."
After getting recaptured shortly after leaving the hospital, Peacemaker's once again back
working for the government, though Amanda Waller's not his commanding officer this time.
Peacemaker's new boss is Clemson Murn, a mercenary with a dark reputation.
But it's not all new in "Peacemaker" – the first hour of the series brings a number of
familiar faces back from Task Force X, including Emilia Harcourt, John Economos, and, briefly,
a cameo from Amanda Waller herself.
We also meet a new member of the team, Leota Adebayo, Peacemaker's racist father, Auggie
Smith; and Peacemaker's best human friend-slash-biggest-fan Vigilante.
Let's take a look at where they all end up in the first three episodes of "Peacemaker."
After following Harcourt to a bar, Peacemaker makes a series of passes at his co-worker,
none of which work out.
Though Peacemaker is immediately attracted to Harcourt, he becomes even more smitten
when she violently takes down a man who attacks her.
Harcourt later gives Peacemaker a piece of her mind – not that he totally gets what
she has to say.
"I have no interest in you, other than your ability to fight for us.
Just because you're handsome, doesn't mean you're not a piece-of-sh-t murderer."
"You think I'm handsome?"
When Peacemaker begs for a no-strings-attached deal between the two of them, Harcourt appears
to grow even less interested and leaves.
While Peacemaker spends a significant amount of time in the first episode focusing on sex,
Harcourt appears laser-focused on the finer details of her new job.
She sees her placement on this specific task force as punishment for her participation
in the mutiny against Amanda Waller in "The Suicide Squad" and wants to prove herself
all over again.
As Waller herself later says, "Barbie's ambitious – watch out for her."
Somewhat surprisingly, Viola Davis has a short cameo in the first episode as Amanda Waller.
She appears in a short video call with Leota, who, in addition to working as Waller's eyes
and ears on this mission, also happens to be her daughter.
In keeping with her usual M.O., Waller is once again playing a game outside the bounds
of the stated mission.
During her FaceTime call with Leota, Waller commands her to hide a forged diary in Peacemaker's
trailer, for reasons that are initially known only to her.
The exact purpose of the diary may not be made immediately clear, but given the crying
child on the cover, it's likely to paint a less-than-flattering picture of Peacemaker's
inner psyche.
But to what end?
While Amanda Waller's exact plan in the "Peacemaker" series remains unclear in the first three
episodes, it seems certain that Waller will seek to double cross Peacemaker and the rest
of the team eventually.
Leota's not the only character in "Peacemaker" with an interesting parent who is difficult
to deal with.
"Terminator 2" star Robert Patrick plays Peacemaker's appallingly racist father, Auggie.
When Peacemaker first arrives at his dad's home, his dad is visibly displeased to see
him.
While Auggie is briefly amused at the story of Bloodsport's childhood trauma, his main
response to his son's war stories is rooted in disappointment.
At his son's insistence, Auggie gives him another Peacemaker-branded helmet.
As it turns out, Peacemaker's new helmet ends up coming his way at just the right time.
After getting rejected by Harcourt, Peacemaker goes home with Annie, a random woman at the
bar.
Unfortunately, as their casual encounter is on the cusp of wrapping up, that same woman
seems to go completely feral, stabbing Peacemaker and throwing him through a wall.
It isn't until Peacemaker is reunited with his helmet that he is able to gain the upper
hand by activating a new feature: the sonic boom.
Considering how effective Augie's helmet tech seems to be in this first episode, we can't
help but wonder if these other helmets will be utilized at some other point this season.
The other power-up options in the lab offer features as varied as a full body force field,
an underwater breathing apparatus, and X-ray vision tech.
In a post-credits sequence, Auggie even shows Peacemaker a helmet that literally just infects
its wearer with scabies– just because.
"Why would I want scabies?"
"To challenge yourself.
Every man should have scabies once in his life."
The motivations for Annie Sturphausen's attack on Peacemaker in the first episode aren't
entirely clear to the team at first.
Murn notes that the entire operation has been kept off the books and he can't understand
how anyone could have known that Peacemaker was a part of it.
Harcourt suggests that Amanda Waller might have been behind it.
After Leota insists that it's not Waller, Harcourt even begins to question Leota's placement
on the mission.
Eventually, however, Peacemaker remembers that he caught Annie reviewing the classified
materials provided to him by Murn, including a dossier detailing the mission to assassinate
a sitting U.S. Senator.
While Harcourt is proven wrong in her initial accusations against Leota, this specific encounter
has clearly raised her suspicions of her newest colleague.
We can't imagine that Harcourt or any of the other team members will react positively when
they find out that Waller and Leota are keeping an important part of the mission plan a secret.
We can't call it entirely shocking to discover that Peacemaker's father is a character like
White Dragon.
Auggie Smith isn't exactly excited to see his son return home and he's quickly revealed
to be a vile homophobe and racist.
Now that Auggie finds himself in prison after John Economos frames him for Peacemaker's
crimes, he is shown to command a vast number of fiercely loyal white supremacist followers.
In some ways, this is a fitting adaptation from the "Peacemaker" comic book series, in
which, Peacemaker's father, Wolfgang Schmidt, is a former commandant of a Nazi concentration
camp during World War II.
Since the last concentration camp was liberated by the Allies in May of 1945 and "Peacemaker"
is set in the present day, the math wouldn't quite allow for the same origin story without
some changes.
In the comics, William Heller (aka White Dragon) is unrelated to Peacemaker, but considering
the comic character's white supremicist motivations and appearances in the "Suicide Squad" comic
books, this new configuration turns out to be a natural fit.
Peacemaker is definitely one of those characters who just seems to stumble into Earth-shattering
revelations.
After a long set of failures, Vigilante convinces Peacemaker to let loose by celebrating his
release from prison with a mixture of controlled substances, firearms, and explosives.
However, the day's festivities don't stop Peacemaker from mistakenly learning more about
his upcoming mission.
While smoking marijuana with Vigilante and Amber, Peacemaker starts fiddling around with
the alien-looking device he stole from Annie's house.
When Peacemaker touches a button on the device, it quickly expands and forms what appears
to be a tiny spaceship.
By the time the second episode wraps up, it's unclear who or what purpose such a small vessel
could serve – but it has to be tied to Project Butterfly somehow.
Episode 3 puts the deadly capabilities of Vigilante on display for the first time.
Following Peacemaker's inability to pull the trigger at the home of Senator Royland Goff,
Vigilante takes control of the mission by executing three of the four targets.
After Peacemaker and Vigilante are captured by Goff, Vigilante is unmasked and tortured.
Unfortunately for Vigilante, Peacemaker refuses to give up any information, even going so
far as to tell Goff to basically do his worst, torture-wise.
"Does that change your mind?"
"Sorry pal – not for sale."
"What?"
"Give it all you got!"
Vigilante is visibly shocked when Peacemaker refuses to spare him any torture and appears
genuinely hurt at Peacemaker's lack of empathy for him.
Given Peacemaker's prior actions, what could possibly make Vigilante surprised by Peacemaker's
unflinching response?
Maybe Vigilante really is as delusional as he's seemed to be.
Still, even if Vigilante is Peacemaker's number one fan, losing part of a pinky toe is bound
to drive a wedge into even the hardiest of friendships.
It doesn't seem like these two would-be superheroes are quite that close to begin with.
"Dude, I'm your best friend."
"No, you're not."
To quote Ned Leeds of "Spider-Man: Homecoming", most people would probably agree that John
Economos seems like an archetypical "guy in the chair."
"Can I be your guy in the chair?"
"What?"
"You know how there's a guy with a headset telling the other guy where to go?"
However, Episode 3 forces Economos to quite literally jump out of his chair and face a
threat directly.
As Harcourt, Leota, and Murn move in on the house where Peacemaker and Vigilante are held
hostage by a Butterfly, Economos realizes that Judo Master is escaping the scene in
a vehicle.
John ultimately rises to the occasion, crashing the team's van directly into Judomaster's
car and later pummeling the martial artist with a tire iron.
That might be a big win for John's ego, but the bigger question is where Judo Master was
driving to.
Before Goff starts to torture Vigilante for answers, he tells Judo Master,
"Take the tunnel to the forest.
From there, get to Glen Tyler and let them know what's occurred here."
"Yes."
Presumably these are other Butterflies, maybe even more important ones than the senator.
Once they find out about Peacemaker's mission, how are they going to react?
After Peacemaker gains the upper-hand against Senator Goff, he fires a single shotgun blast
into Goff's face.
And that's that, right?
In most cases, this would mean the end of Goff's character, but not on "Peacemaker."
As Peacemaker and Vigilante prepare to reunite with the rest of the team upstairs, the two
notice a small creature crawling out of the face of the late senator.
As the creature takes to the sky with a flapping of its wings, Peacemaker knowingly remarks,
"Oh, Project Butterfly."
That's when the episode ends with a tease that "suspected butterflies" are all over
the world.
Episode 3's reveal of the literal butterfly inside Senator Goff's head is a major clue
to the entire mission at large, a subject about which Peacemaker actually knows frighteningly
little.
Is the goal to kill all butterflies, or just the ones that Amanda Waller wants dead?
When Peacemaker gives Murn intel that proves that the seemingly happy family of four is
actually entirely composed of Butterflies, the task force captain quickly relays orders
to kill them all.
Does this mean all Butterflies are as dangerous as the woman who attacks Peacemaker in Episode
1?
Considering the fact that we've only seen them attack Peacemaker either in self-defense
or after discovering his assassination plan, they might not even be malevolent.
Regardless, given everything we've learned about the group so far, it seems fairly obvious
that literally anyone, even people we think we know, could secretly be a butterfly.
Many of the post-credits scenes in "Peacemaker" work as jokey extensions of scenes from the
episode, rather than material that's critical to the plot.
Episode 3's post-credits sequence takes us back to the moment when Vigilante reveals
himself behind the bushes outside the home of Senator Goff.
As Harcourt prepares for the possibility that Vigilante could ruin the entire mission, she
issues a menacing threat.
"If you f— up this mission, I will kill your f—in' family."
"Ok.
Good luck!
A little late for that...
You guys got beer?"
Considering this character's particular proclivity for violence, it doesn't seem like a big stretch
to guess that Vigilante might even be the one responsible for his family's deaths.
In the "Vigilante" comic series, Adrian Chase takes on the Vigilante persona after his wife
and children are murdered by the mob.
While it's possible this series is simply alluding to the original character's comic
history, we think it's more likely this character has an intensely more absurd background.
In Episode 2, Vigilante admits to Peacemaker that, in prior years, he would have killed
him for smoking marijuana, and he seems similarly extreme in his response to other crimes.
"When I found out someone murdered an innocent person or sold someone heroin or did some
grafitti and I kill that person…"
Perhaps Vigilante's family members simply chose a bad time to jaywalk?
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