Peacemaker Season 2 Episode 8 — The Moment Everything Changes: Full Spoiler Review

Peacemaker season 2 barrels into its finale with episode 8, 'Full Nelson,' and it wastes zero time. Doors to other worlds swing open, loyalties get weird, and Chris Smith finally admits what the show has been screaming all season: he actually has a family. Then everything goes sideways.

Where we pick up

Chris (John Cena), newly aware he has the people he always wanted, turns himself in to Rick Flagg (Frank Grillo), now the guy in charge of A.R.G.U.S. He takes the fall for diving into the Quantum Closet mess and tells Flagg the team only chased him to pull him back, not to cause more havoc. Judomaster backs him up, even though he has split loyalties with Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) and is clearly torn.

Chris is still a wreck from his dad dying and the fact that his brother Keith tried to kill him over Auggie’s death. After the crew escapes, Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) tries to make sure Keith can’t circle back and finish the job. Cops interrupt, a 'Vigilante 2.0' swoops in, and Harcourt gets hurled through a Quantum Closet door to scrap with what looks like the 'good' realm’s police. It’s chaos.

Structurally, the episode starts with Chris in jail, but before that we get a quick, possibly future-set flash of Chris and Emilia at a carnival. File that under: probably important later.

The deep-cut of the week: Checkmate

Checkmate, a DC Comics black-ops unit tied to Task Force X, pops back up. We last saw it in Creature Commandos, and here it’s reimagined as a new watchdog outfit created by Chris’s friends to keep tabs on A.R.G.U.S. (In the comics, Amanda Waller started it.) It’s a very nerdy lore pull, but it fits the show’s spy-thriller lane.

Flagg’s plan: open every door until someone dies

Flagg strong-arms his people into the Quantum Closet with one goal: weaponize it. He orders doors opened one after another to see what sticks. Door 22 leads to a demonic, candy-colored nightmare that looks like a kid’s show from hell. Harcourt, Langston Fleury (Tim Meadows), and a third, very doomed agent step in. The place is swarming with cutesy little alien things that go full piranha. Emilia and Fleury manage to scramble out. The third guy? Face chewed off. It’s gnarly, even by this show’s standards.

The real agenda: deportation for metahumans

Harcourt and Sasha Bordeaux (Sol Rodriguez) figure out what Flagg’s actually hunting for: an Earth-like world to dump metahumans into. Think old-school Britain shipping criminals to Australia, but with capes. Meanwhile, Flagg is busy high-fiving government suits about his big ideas while A.R.G.U.S. agents keep dying with every door they open.

Emilia and Sasha decide to stop Flagg — and yes, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) is in his orbit — but they need Chris. Tough break: Chris has gone to ground since Adebayo used Adrian Chase’s (Freddie Stroma) off-the-books drug-bust cash he stashed in his mom’s basement to throw paid security around Chris. It backfired. He disappeared.

The 11th Street Kids break into A.R.G.U.S., ping Chris via the chip in his neck, and finally corner him. He refuses to come back because he believes he’s the angel of death and the worst thing for the people he loves. Then he says the quiet part out loud — he loves them, and they were family all along. It breaks him and Adebayo in the best way.

Final move: Salvation

In DC lore, Salvation is an Earth-adjacent planet used as a storage unit for metahumans. That becomes literal. In the finale’s endgame, Flagg’s team bags Chris, throws a hood over him, and dumps him into Salvation.

'This is for Ricky.'

That’s Flagg, referencing his son Chris killed in The Suicide Squad. Brutal. And just like that, Chris is alone on a world he’s never seen, right after making peace with his past and finally looking forward to something.

Who is who (and what they’re up to)

• Chris Smith/Peacemaker (John Cena) – turns himself in, tries to protect his found family, gets exiled to Salvation.
• Rick Flagg (Frank Grillo) – new A.R.G.U.S. boss; wants to weaponize the Quantum Closet and offload metahumans.
• Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) – pushes back on Flagg; nearly kills Keith; teams with Sasha to stop him.
• Leota Adebayo 'Ads' (Danielle Brooks) – emotional anchor; her security plan accidentally sends Chris into hiding.
• Adrian Chase/Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) – his stashed drug-bust cash funds Ads’s protection plan; a 'Vigilante 2.0' also shows up in the chaos.
• Langston Fleury (Tim Meadows) – survives the Door 22 nightmare with Harcourt.
• Sasha Bordeaux (Sol Rodriguez) – partners with Harcourt to blow up Flagg’s scheme.
• Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) – aligned with Flagg’s operation.
• Keith – Chris’s brother, out for revenge over Auggie’s death.
• Checkmate – revived as an independent watchdog group monitoring A.R.G.U.S., born from Chris’s crew.

Where to watch

Peacemaker season 2 is streaming on Max. It launched August 21, with new episodes dropping weekly through October 9.