Peacemaker Episode 2 Ending Explained

In one night, HBO Max has delivered a massive sonic boom blast to the internet with the first entries in the inaugural season of "Peacemaker." A whole three hours of the series are already available to all subscribers of the Home Box Office streaming platform. We're about to delve into the events of Episode 2, but we also have explainers for Episode 1 ("A Whole New Whirled") and Episode 3 ("Better Goff Dead") available.

From the aftermath of Peacemaker's first encounter with Project Butterfly to a huge reveal about Peacemaker's father and the discovery of an incognito alien spacecraft, the second hour of "Peacemaker" is genuinely jam-packed full of surprises. The second episode moves the plot along at breakneck pace, but also still finds a bit of time for Peacemaker to explore his more vulnerable side. 

Here's a quick explainer about where Episode 2 ("Best Friends For Never") leaves things.

Towards the end of the first episode of the series, a rejection from Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) leads Peacemaker (John Cena) to nurse his ego in one of the few ways he knows how... By hooking up with a random woman at a bar. To Peacemaker's surprise, however, instead of joining in his post-coitus, underwear-clad, vibrator-microphone rendition of "I Don't Love You Anymore" by The Quireboys, the woman attacks him with a knife and meta-human super powers. 

The motivations for Annie Sturphausen's (Crystal Mudry) attack on Peacemaker aren't entirely clear to the team at first. While it would seem fair to ask if Peacemaker was just simply that bad in bed, the team is forced to grapple with much bigger questions. Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) notes that the entire operation has been kept off the books and he can't understand how anyone could have known that Peacemaker was a part of it. Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) suggests that Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) might have been behind it, noting her superior's previous willingness to sacrifice entire teams for small wins. After Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) insists that it's not Waller, Harcourt even begins to question Leota's placement on the mission. 

Eventually, however, Peacemaker remembers that he caught Sturphausen reviewing the classified materials provided to him by Murn, including a dossier detailing the mission to assassinate a sitting U.S. Senator. Boy, Peacemaker really knows how to choose them. While Harcourt is proven wrong in her initial accusations against Leota, this specific encounter has clearly raised her suspicions of her newest colleague. We can't imagine that Harcourt or any of the other team members will react positively when they find out that Waller and Leota are keeping an important part of the mission plan a secret.

We can't call it entirely shocking to discover that Peacemaker's father is a character like White Dragon. Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick) isn't exactly excited to see his son return home and he's quickly revealed to be a vile homophobe and racist. When he reluctantly gifts Peacemaker with another upgraded helmet, he says that he's only doing so because he's hopeful that Peacemaker can "take out a couple commies, some blacks, papists or a k*ke or something." Now that Auggie finds himself in prison (thanks to a little help from John Economos (Steve Agee)), he is shown to command a vast number of fiercely loyal white supremacist followers. 

In some ways, this is a significant departure from the "Peacemaker" comic book series, in which, Peacemaker's father, Wolfgang Schmidt, is a former commandant of a Nazi concentration camp during World War II (via Fandom). Since the last concentration camp was liberated by the Allies in May of 1945 (via Jewish Genealogy) and "Peacemaker" is set in the present day, the math doesn't quite allow for the same origin story (Robert Patrick isn't even 70 years old). In the comics, William Heller (aka White Dragon) is unrelated to Peacemaker. Heller founds a white supremacist group called the Aryan Empire and fights against the Suicide Squad (via Fandom).

While White Dragon is clearly a different character in the TV series, both iterations share racist ideologies and extremist tendencies. 

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Peacemaker is definitely one of those characters who just seems to stumble into Earth-shattering revelations. After a long set of failures, Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) convinces Peacemaker to let loose by celebrating his release from prison with a surely unsafe mixture of controlled substances, firearms, and explosives. However, the day's festivities don't stop Peacemaker from mistakenly learning more about his upcoming mission. While smoking marijuana with Vigilante and Amber (Alison Araya), Peacemaker notices a series of lights and symbols appear on a small device that looks like Comcast's newest router. When Peacemaker touches a button on the device, it quickly expands and forms what looks like a tiny spaceship.

It's important to remember where this device came from in the first place. After killing Annie Sturphausen with a sonic blast from his helmet in Episode 1, Peacemaker returns to her apartment and robs her too, collecting a cache of CD's, LP's, and other various items from her apartment. As the police race to arrest him, Peacemaker seems happy to take his sweet time while perusing the property of the dead woman. One of the items that Peacemaker collects is the condensed version of the spaceship revealed at the end of Episode 2. As of now, it's unclear who or what such a small vessel could serve, but it certainly has to be tied to Project Butterfly somehow.

Before Peacemaker can make his escape from Annie Sturphausen's apartment complex, he is forced to briefly kidnap a couple in a neighboring apartment. Throughout the ordeal, Evan (Lenny Jacobson) and Amber seem even more unhappy with each other than they are with their new home invader. After she realizes that Peacemaker intimidates Evan, Amber openly flirts with Peacemaker and yells at her husband. Leota is later able to use an all-expenses-paid trip to Lake Tahoe to convince the unhappy couple to report to the police that they were actually kidnapped by Peacemaker's father, Auggie Smith (aka White Dragon). 

After Amber smokes marijuana with Peacemaker and Vigilante, she appears alongside Evan once more in a short, post-credits scene at the end of Episode 2. The married couple continue to argue at the police station, despite being placed in separate rooms. As she points to Auggie Smith's picture, Amber says, "It's definitely not the hot guy," referring to Peacemaker. This comment leads to a loud exchange of obscenities between rooms. When things calm down once more, Amber asks Detective Song (Annie Chang) if she can keep the picture of Peacemaker, a request the detective grants and is sure to anger Evan even more. We have to wonder if we'll see these two again and if they'll ever be happy?

New episodes of "Peacemaker" drop on HBO Max every Thursday.