The fifth episode of James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad spin-off has dropped on HBO Max. While most of Peacemaker’s installments up to this point have felt like pieces of a larger story, “Monkey Dory” is more or less a standalone adventure. Peacemaker and his A.R.G.U.S. cohorts drive to a warehouse, take out some Butterflies, then drive home. It’s not a particularly complex story, but Gunn uses the simplicity of the external conflict to focus on the team and their developing dynamic.
John Cena continues to carry the show with his confident, dedicated portrayal of the title character. He nails the arrogant bravado and brings a hilariously deadpan quality to Peacemaker’s hypocritical worldview. Since last week dug into his traumatic childhood, Cena is also showing off unseen dramatic abilities in this role. He’s haunted by his past and facing up to the murderous mistakes in his present.
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Most of the show’s dialogue scenes have the same problem. They start with a point (like Adebayo asking Peacemaker to be less cruel to Economos), then get quickly derailed with meaningless nonsense (like two minutes of patter about penis nicknames) before finally looping back around to the point at the very end of the scene when nothing has really been developed or resolved. In these inconsequential dialogue scenes, Gunn will take an absurd statement from Peacemaker, like “I forgot women had fingers for a second,” then proceeds to beat the joke to death with a full-blown discussion about how he could have forgotten that women have fingers and what he might have thought the alternative was.
This week’s episode focuses on the ragtag unofficial black-ops squad and their struggles to bond with one another as they take a road trip in a van. In “Monkey Dory,” the ensemble is directed by Rosemary Rodriguez, who previously helmed episodes of Jessica Jones and The Walking Dead. In earlier episodes, Peacemaker and his colleagues just insulted each other over and over again, rarely showing off their distinctive personalities, but they’re finally starting to become friends under Rodriguez’s heartfelt direction.
Alongside Cena and the other actors, one of the shining stars of Peacemaker is its use of music. In keeping with Gunn’s signature style, Peacemaker has an awesome soundtrack. Like the soundtracks of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies, the Peacemaker soundtrack plays like Peacemaker’s personal playlist, featuring glam rock legends like Hanoi Rocks and Faster Pussycat.
Much like The Suicide Squad’s kaiju starfish storyline, the alien parasites taking over people’s brains in Peacemaker offer a delightful, welcome callback to Gunn’s B-movie roots. In “Monkey Dory,” Peacemaker brings a refreshing horror sensibility to its flashy action sequences. The show’s hard-R sensibility is occasionally used as a crutch – mainly in the jokes, as “F*** you!” fills in for a lot of the show’s punchlines – but the blood-soaked action in the latest episode is a lot of fun, especially in a genre full of PG-13 violence with no stakes or gore.
The most thrilling sequence in the episode sees Harcourt and Vigilante attacked by a horde of zombified warehouse employees. With moments like the mind-controlled workers smashing their way through a chain-link fence and the heroes closing a door to keep out the horde at the last second, Rodriguez seizes the opportunity to direct “Monkey Dory” as a little zombie movie.
Up until its final scene, “Monkey Dory” seemed to be ignoring last week’s shocking cliffhanger. This has become an annoying trend seen in The Walking Dead and Marvel’s Disney+ content. The ending of one episode will tease a mind-blowing twist, then the following episode (and maybe the one after that) won’t deal with it at all, making viewers wait weeks to see these cliffhangers pan out. Mercifully, Gunn follows up on the twist ending of the fourth episode – the revelation that Murn is secretly a Butterfly – by the end of the fifth episode.
The X-ray vision plant from an early scene is paid off spectacularly when Adebayo puts on Peacemaker’s helmet, activates the X-ray vision, and spots the parasite in Murn’s brain. The episode ends on an ambiguous note, with Murn chasing Adebayo out into the street and attacking her, raising the stakes significantly for next week’s episode.
The action-packed climax of “Monkey Dory” sees Peacemaker and co. fighting a gorilla. As if John Cena punching a gorilla in the face wasn’t wild enough, the fight ends with a chainsaw plowing through the gorilla’s chest. In Peacemaker, nothing is off-limits. The main goal of this show is to have fun. The gags don’t always land, and the quieter dramatic moments have yet to really hit in the feels department, but Peacemaker is undoubtedly one of the most bonkers, off-the-wall, ridiculously entertaining shows on television.
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