This review contains spoilers for Episode 6 of Peacemaker, “Murn After Reading,” which airs Feb. 3 on HBO Max. To catch up, check out our review of last week’s episode, and our spoiler-free take on the three-episode premiere.
Peacemaker delivers some big surprises in “Murn After Reading,” in which every aspect of the team’s incompetence comes back to haunt them in the worst possible way. It’s also the best outing yet in the so far excellent show, delivering some powerful emotions as it makes clear what’s at stake if the Butterflies can’t be stopped.
The episode picks up almost immediately after the end of “Monkey Dory,” with Clemson Murn chasing after Leota Adebayo, who’s just learned his secret. But while it seemed likely in the previous episode that Murn would capture his novice colleague and the team would have to figure out what happened to her, instead we get an excellent twist where almost everyone was already aware that Murn is a Butterfly because he’s a defector trying to save humanity.
After playing the stoic straight man for so long, it’s impressive to see Chukwudi Iwuji deliver a strikingly emotional performance as Murn explains that in order to try to stop the invasion, he had to take a human host. Murn’s terrible past was exactly what got him chosen for the job, yet the Butterfly feels extremely guilty for robbing him of the chance to change.
It’s a beautiful sentiment that fits in well with the show’s overall message. Despite all the carnage, it’s fundamentally focused on the question of when killing is justified. Of course Peacemaker isn’t there to see that confession, though he later admits to Harcourt he’s also having a crisis of conscience. His murder of Rick Flag in The Suicide Squad was one of the most dramatic moments in the film, and James Gunn has effectively expanded it into the catalyst for something resembling redemption.
In film and TV, it’s pretty common to see misunderstandings or mistakes due to characters compartmentalizing information. That plot device can be frustrating when overused, but it makes a lot of sense here given the characters are spies very used to keeping secrets. Still, that lack of communication is really hurting the team now.
Case in point, it previously seemed like the worst mistake anyone had made was framing Peacemaker’s dad, Auggie Smith, for his son’s murder of a Butterfly. That award now decidedly goes to Peacemaker himself for keeping the Butterfly possessing Goff alive. A goofy scene where Vigilante and Peacemaker finally try communicating with the alien is interrupted by Detective Sophie Song leading a raid on Peacemaker’s home. They’re able to initially escape, but Song is just too good a detective for anyone’s good.
Given the fact that Song was following the path of a noir detective by pursuing the truth at all costs, it was clear her story might not end well. But seeing the horror and pain of her possession after hearing Murn’s monologue really shows how awful a fate it is to be taken as a Butterfly host. Annie Chang does an excellent job shifting her whole demeanor and will likely make a chilling villain for the rest of the series.
The scenes that follow feel like Gunn imagined what it would be like if the Aquilian, the diminutive aliens from Men in Black, took over the brains of living people instead of building robot hosts. There’s a wild tonal shift between the inherent goofiness of their tiny, drone-sized invasion force and their devastating assault on the Evergreen police station.
Body snatchers are usually portrayed as part of a relatively peaceful hive mind, but Gunn has created a far more brutal twist on the genre that also makes it clear that there is no saving the hosts. Music has been powerfully integrated throughout Peacemaker, but the use of Reckless Love’s “Monster” over the scene adds even more ominous energy to the proceedings. The march of all the newly possessed cops and prisoners learning to smile splicing back to Auggie preparing to go kill Peacemaker dramatically sets the stage for the conflicts to come.
John Cena continues to show his range in this episode as Peacemaker repeatedly lets his guard down. With all the plot momentum and action packed into “Murn After Reading,” Gunn chills things out for a very different musical number with Peacemaker quietly playing the piano. Much like the scene where he dances to Pussycat’s “House of Pain” in Episode 4, Cena is able to convey a wide range of emotions without words while demonstrating how much music is an outlet for Peacemaker, letting him break away from the toxic masculinity his father instilled in him.
Then, there’s one more devastating impact of the secrets the characters have been keeping from each other. A.R.G.U.S. leader Amanda Waller doesn’t know Murn is a Butterfly, so she has less information about the invasion than the rest of the team. Her daughter Adebayo also didn’t know about Murn when she planted a diary at Peacemaker’s home that makes it look like he’s a mass murderer suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. That evidence seems to play right into the Butterflies’ hands, since it undermines the idea of an actual alien invasion, so it’s unclear why Waller thought this was a good idea. Now the team is going to have to deal with a manhunt for Peacemaker in addition to everything else that’s gone wrong. It should make for a dramatic penultimate episode.
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