Peacemaker (2025) - “Another Rick Up My Sleeve” Review
The great irony of Peacemaker is that Chris Smith has clearly always been desperate for love and validation, even as he cloaks himself in violence, bravado, and a ridiculous chrome helmet. “Another Rick Up My Sleeve,” the third episode of the series, finally asks the question: what if he got everything he ever wanted? The answer is both comic and unsettling.
Having crossed into a parallel dimension where Peacemaker is already a beloved superhero, Chris revels in the adoration. Women flash him, children cry with joy at the sight of him, and even a casual ride on the Peace-cycle becomes a parade in his honor. For a man long haunted by rejection – from his father, from his teammates, from the Justice Gang that refused to admit him – this is paradise. “Best. Dimension. Ever,” he marvels. Yet the show, wise in its refusal to grant easy victories, lets us feel the cracks forming beneath this wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Much of the episode plays like a romantic comedy, and that is by design. Here, Harcourt goes by Emilia, and she is softer, kinder, and warmer than the guarded version Chris knew. The entire sequence is suspiciously idyllic, as if Gunn and his team were daring us to laugh at the sheer absurdity of Peacemaker wandering into his own Hallmark Channel spinoff.
But there is tension in the details. Emilia is not simply a dream woman; she is a woman with history, and that history complicates Chris’s sudden affections. In this world, she dated a different Peacemaker – one who cheated on her, flew into rages, and treated her carelessly. She is also the current girlfriend of Rick Flag, Jr. who here is no longer the noble soldier we saw killed in Peacemaker’s brief flashbacks but a bumbling fool who spies on her from over cubicle walls. For Chris, the irony is excruciating: the man who once called him a “joke” has been reduced to one. The moral ambiguity runs deep. Chris is both a better man than the Peacemaker she knew and a liar occupying a life that isn’t his. His pursuit of Emilia is both tender and manipulative, an act of longing and of gaslighting.
The episode sharpens as fantasy collides with violence. A militia group called the Sons of Liberty storms a government building, and Chris leaps into action. The sequence is a masterclass in tonal balance: brutal, hilarious, and cathartic all at once. Chris kills with fists, with a copy machine, and in one of the series’ most inspired bits of gallows humor, with a pair of pencils jammed into an enemy’s ears. It’s a grotesque ballet of ultraviolence, played against the satisfaction of an audience finally cheering Peacemaker as a true hero. For once, he is not a screw-up. For once, his violence is validated. Yet the symmetry is too neat, and the suspicion gnaws at us. With everything aligning this perfectly with his fantasies, can it really be trusted?
The cracks in paradise widen. Emilia remains hesitant, unwilling to fully accept Chris’s sudden transformation. The Sons of Liberty feel suspiciously convenient as villains. Even Auggie Smith, Chris’s monstrous father in the prime universe, is now a gentle, loving man – a twist so pointed it feels like mockery. The sense of artifice lingers, as though Chris has wandered into a dream.
Meanwhile, the other shoe is preparing to drop. Back in the prime universe, Rick Flag assembles a new A.R.G.U.S. task force bent on revenge. The roster includes Nhut Le as Rip Jagger, who comic book fans will recognize as Judomaster (a role the actor also played in the 2022 DCEU version of Peacemaker, no less), and Michael Rooker’s Red St. Wild, a character defined by his talent for killing eagles.
By the end of “Another Rick Up My Sleeve,” Chris is happier than we’ve ever seen him, and perhaps more deluded. The applause rings, the woman he loves seems within reach, and the blood on his hands has become a badge of honor. But paradise is fragile, and if this show has taught us anything, it’s that reality has a way of clawing its way back. For Peacemaker, the cruelest joke may be that the one world where he finally feels like he belongs is the one he cannot stay in.