John Cena and Danielle Brooks talking in Peacemaker

Peacemaker Has Mastered the Cliffhanger

HBO’s Peacemaker has somehow managed to bring us in week after week and get us talking about the team that Chris Smith has found himself with. And after episode 5, yet another cliffhanger is thrown our way that has shown fans of the series that James Gunn and the team behind the show really know how to keep us engaged with the series.

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I wasn’t exactly excited about the idea of a Peacemaker show, mainly because I wasn’t that interested in Chris Smith in The Suicide Squad, but I was pleasantly surprised by what Gunn and John Cena managed to do with Peacemaker as a character. The show as a whole and after episodes 4 and 5, they have clearly managed to change the way we view Chris and those characters around him.

But what really worked was the ending of both episode 4 and 5. With 4, we watched as Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) sat in his living room and began eating out of a bowl like one of the butterflies the team is supposedly hunting down. At the end of episode 5, Leota (Danielle Brooks) is having fun with Peacemaker’s x-ray helmet when she discovers the truth about Clemson and is chased into the street.

Those two cliffhangers really leave us with a sense of urgency about returning to the show to get answers, and while the first three episodes got us interested, it was 4 and 5 that turned Peacemaker from a fun show to maybe wait and binge into something we have to watch the minute it drops.

What’s to come?

The show has been building up a relationship for Chris Smith with the rest of those working for Amanda Waller, so having Leota in danger pulls everyone into the world of the butterflies whether they like it or not. We don’t know everything about this situation, and if Clemson is a butterfly, that means that he’s either secretly working with the team to protect his kind or Amanda Waller was well aware of this fact.

The fact that we left this episode with Leota lying in the street, with Clemson coming after her, is a bit of a clue into the fact that she isn’t going to die, otherwise that would have happened before the end of it. The fact that we still see her alive makes it clear that Clemson isn’t going to instantly kill her, so maybe we’ll know more about the butterflies in the next episode.

Peacemaker does a great job of balancing the fun aspects that we’ve come to know in the first five episodes with music, jokes, and more while raising the stakes enough to keep us coming back week after week. And now that Leota knows about Clemson, I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the team and the butterflies.

(image: HBO)

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Rachel Leishman
Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She's been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff's biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she's your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh. She has multiple podcasts, normally has opinions on any bit of pop culture, and can tell you can actors entire filmography off the top of her head. Her current obsession is Glen Powell's dog, Brisket. Her work at the Mary Sue often includes Star Wars, Marvel, DC, movie reviews, and interviews.