Peacemaker (2025) - “A Man Is Only as Good as His Bird” Review
James Gunn has always had a gift for walking the tightrope between grotesque violence, absurd comedy, and genuine pathos, and after just two episodes, Peacemaker has already thrived on that balance, giving us a world where a foul-tempered eagle can reduce trained operatives to whimpering fools while its master wrestles with the gnawing emptiness of his own soul. “A Man Is Only as Good as His Bird,” the second episode of Peacemaker, sharpens that duality, a tonal stew thick with grief, yearning, and, yes, bird blindness.
The episode opens with a flashback that casts a long shadow. We see Rick Flag’s first day as the director of A.R.G.U.S. His first priority as director is personal: uncovering the circumstances of his son’s death at the hands of Peacemaker, and the simmering rage in actor Frank Grillo’s eyes suggests this is a vendetta that will not end cleanly. The specter of Rick Flag, Jr. (portrayed by actor Joel Kinnaman in a brief flashback) haunts every frame, a reminder that for all the show’s raucous absurdity, it is also a series about the consequences of violence and the toll of guilt.
Christopher Smith himself, meanwhile, is haunted by the corpse of his alternate-reality self, which hilariously refuses to stay tucked away. John Cena, never better than when fumbling between sincerity and slapstick, delivers one of the episode’s best sequences as he struggles to stash the cadaver, only for it to tumble back out in macabre farce. It is physical comedy at its darkest, punctuated by his desperate call to Vigilante for a bonesaw.
But Gunn is not content to leave the hour in the realm of grisly hijinks. The episode also gives us more time to get to know the rest of Peacemaker’s team, the 11th Street Kids. Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) faces the silent disappointment of her estranged wife, Keeya, in a quietly devastating domestic scene. Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), bruised and battered from last week’s bar brawl, buys concealer at a pharmacy and is confronted by a stranger offering help she cannot accept. Economos (Steve Agee) is reduced to monitor duty outside Peacemaker’s house. Each subplot is tinged with loneliness, the camera lingering just long enough to remind us that even superheroes and their allies live lives defined by yearning.
Enter Tim Meadows as A.R.G.U.S. Agent Langston Fleury, a creation so specifically ridiculous he feels inevitable in Gunn’s universe. Fleury suffers from “bird blindness,” mistaking Eagly for a parrot in the episode’s most inspired gag. Meadows plays the character as both smarmy interloper and officious bureaucrat, peppering his surveillance team with etiquette lessons even as he prepares to break into Peacemaker’s home. He is ridiculous, yes, but also insidiously dangerous, and his intrusion sets up the episode’s centerpiece: Eagly versus A.R.G.U.S.
The sequence, as thrilling as it is absurd, plays like a cathartic rebuke to real-world abuses of power. Gunn stages the confrontation as something more than slapstick catharsis – it’s satire sharpened to a blade. Time and again, we’ve seen institutions attempt to claim the authority to break into homes, trample over privacy, and inflict violence under the hollow banner of legality. And in many of those stories, it has been family pets – helpless, loyal companions – that bear the brunt of that arrogance. We already know from his countless interviews regarding his real-life inspiration for the depiction of Krypto in Superman that Gunn has an affinity for pets, and here, he flips the script in their honor. Eagly does not cower, does not fall silent, and does not die in a flurry of bullets, excuses, and paperwork. He fights back, not just against a squad of faceless agents, but against the very idea that breaking-and-entering or any form of institutional violence are ever acceptable. Watching him scatter Fleury’s men is exhilarating precisely because it imagines a world where the powerless bite back.
Yet even in triumph, Peacemaker himself is left oblivious. The home invasion, which he never notices, represents not just a blind spot but an omen: Chris is so lost in his pain that he cannot see danger even as it circles his home. His late-night text to the alternate-reality Harcourt, met only with a broken-heart emoji, is as heartbreaking as anything Gunn has written. For all his bravado, Peacemaker is still a man chasing the ghost of love across dimensions.
As entertaining as the bird blindness gag is, “A Man Is Only as Good as His Bird” genuinely seems to carry a thematic undercurrent about blind spots – literal and emotional – reminding us of the things we often fail to see until it is too late, whether that may be a spouse’s disappointment, a colleague’s weariness, or a villain’s intrusion. It also takes a moment to remind us of the importance of the connections in our lives, be they with friends, beloved pets, or even concerned strangers, supporting us where institutions so often actively fail us. This is a show unafraid to mix blood-soaked absurdity with genuine heart, and after only two episodes, that balance is quickly making it into one of the most compelling corners of the DC Universe.