Peacemaker Season 2 Finale Sets Up Superman’s Man of Tomorrow — Here’s How

Spoilers ahead for Peacemaker season 2 episode 8: Chris is on the ropes, the mission is spiraling, and one ruthless turn threatens to shatter the team for good.

Heads up: spoilers for Peacemaker season 2 episode 8 below.

Peacemaker finding peace? Not today. After last week dumped Chris Smith in a swastika-scented pocket dimension and killed off alternate versions of his brother and dad, the finale lands him in a different, arguably worse place: stuck between grief, a jail cell, and a government plan with truly dumb energy. And, yes, this hour quietly tees up season 3 and a likely handoff into Superman: Man of Tomorrow. Let’s unpack the chaos.

First, a kiss we actually needed

One month earlier, we finally get the night Chris and Emilia Harcourt stopped dancing around it and kissed. There is tequila. There is Harcourt nearly rearranging the face of a freckled dude. It’s tender without getting sappy, and it sells their chemistry as real, not cosplay affection.

Meanwhile, in the present: Chris is not okay

In prison, Chris refuses visits from the team and tells a guard he’s become the angel of death. Honestly, if anyone’s earned that title here, it’s Rick Flag Sr., who keeps sending A.R.G.U.S. agents through those weird interdimensional doors introduced earlier this season. John Economos points out the obvious: it’s reckless, and once agents cross a door, there’s no way to track them.

Most doors are locked… until Door 22 clicks open. At first, it’s candy-cane trees and merry vibes. Then tiny gremlin-imps swarm the squad, chewing through hazmat suits with needle teeth. The agents fight back, blasting and tearing the little monsters apart, which pop like glitter grenades. One poor guy — the one who was humiliated earlier for telling a story about puking on a stripper — gets his face eaten after the creatures smash his visor. So much for embarrassing stories being the worst thing that can happen at work.

Flag’s plan, such as it is

The big idea? Flag wants a breathable, uninhabited world with food and water. Why? To dump the criminals and meta-problems that Arkham and Belle Reve can’t keep a lid on. Think mass extradition to space. There’s your mission statement.

Ads, Vigilante, and the cursed piggy bank

Leota Adebayo (Ads) hits up Vigilante for his, uh, career earnings to pay Chris’s bail. Adrian would rather go murder a judge’s entire family than use the money because he’s convinced it’s cursed. Ads outmaneuvers him and gets the cash anyway. Chris makes bail against his own wishes, grabs a shabby motel room with Eagly, and wallows.

More doors, more nightmare fuel

Back at A.R.G.U.S., the team keeps testing universes like they’re flipping apartments. One has a black hole. Another has old-school zombies. A third is nothing but giant spider-legged skulls screaming into nothingness. Lex Luthor leaves a neat little note saying the black hole world looks promising. Flag, meanwhile, is cheerfully doing coke and laughing while agents keep dying, which… yeah. If you enjoyed the younger version of this guy headlining Creature Commandos, sorry. Adult Flag is the pits.

• Candy-cane forest with glitter-burst imps (fatal bitey types)
• Black hole reality (Lex-approved)
• Classic zombies world
• Field of spider-legged megaskulls howling into the abyss

Enter Salvation, exit conscience

They finally land on a viable world and Flag pitches it in a shadowy meeting: they’ll ship off the worst inmates and pretty much any alien or meta he personally dislikes. It’s Lex Luthor-level authoritarianism without Lex’s IQ. Sasha Bordeaux — Flag’s cyborg colleague and girlfriend — is not into this. With the death toll climbing, she teams up with Emilia to shut it down. They meet at Big Belly Burger, which also doubles as a reminder: this is still Peacemaker’s show, even if he’s barely in the first half of the episode. The supporting cast is strong enough to carry it.

Ads gets a standout scene, then a mission

Danielle Brooks remains the strongest weapon this series has. Ads visits her ex to close that book, and the scene is moving enough to almost forgive how the show has sidelined her wife since episode 1.

Using her clearance — plus John’s help and the worst joke in America — Sasha triangulates Chris’s motel. John also drops a grim lobster fact about shells not growing and squeezing them to death. I would maybe not cite that on a biology exam.

Motel intervention

The crew corners Chris. He bolts, Vigilante tasers him (with love), and everyone unloads what they’ve been holding in. Chris is convinced he’s cursed; too many people die around him, including his family — twice now. Ads reframes it: those deaths happened when he followed other people’s orders, not his own moral compass. And then she says the thing that cuts through all of it:

"When you are truly who you are, Chris Smith, what happens? You touch people, man. I believe in miracles because of you. I saw an eagle hug a human. I know who I am because of you and when I’m around you, I feel loved. You’re big and you’re stupid but I know you love me and I don’t know if I can say that about anyone else in the world."

Brooks crushes this. Give her all the statues. It works — Chris lets the team be his family again. Before they roll out, he asks Harcourt if their boat time mattered. She resists, then cracks: "Of course it did you fucking arsehole. It meant everything."

A tiny victory lap

Chris does a full-body cheer and a little dance to the theme, intercut with Foxy Shazam playing one week later on a literal rock boat. The team raids Adrian’s basement for cash (obligatory pole dance included), then they build their own office with Judo Master and Agent Langston Fleury on hand — he’s the one who can’t see birds, bless him. There’s a cheesy slow-mo hero walk they absolutely earn. Langston and Adrian also inform us spiders can produce milk. In this specific case, Google actually agrees.

Checkmate: the deep-cut setup

As they leave, the camera reveals the name above the door: Checkmate. In the comics, Checkmate is a spy outfit with chess ranks (Kings, Queens, the whole board). The white side handles intel; the black side does field work. Peacemaker has history with them on the page, and their whole gig — balancing humans and metahumans — screams future DCU connective tissue. The twist: it might be the team’s show going forward, but not with Chris.

Flag flips the board

Flag kidnaps Peacemaker and hurls him through the portal to Salvation, calling it a science test to see long-term effects on a human body. It’s revenge, obviously. The door snaps shut, vanishing, and Chris is stranded with horrible creature screams echoing in the distance — a tidy callback to Chris killing Flag’s son in The Suicide Squad a few years back.

"This is for Ricky, you piece of s**t."

Two tags at the end

Post-credits 1: a government suit suggests putting a vaporising barrier around Salvation, like a galactic bug zapper. Post-credits 2: a deleted-scene-feeling bit where John tries another awful joke — this one about a serial killer with a permit — and actually gets a fan out of it. He is unreasonably pleased.

So… finale without a massive CGI brawl?

Some viewers are grumbling that the episode holds action in reserve and prioritizes setup and cameos — and yes, the cameos are old rock bands, not the season 1 Justice League drop-in James Gunn teased. But the episode also doubles down on character work instead of defaulting to a fireworks factory ending. There are loose threads on purpose, likely to be picked up elsewhere in the DCU rather than jammed into a Peacemaker season 3 premiere.

Where Superman fits into this

DC lore heads will clock the likely play: the comic arc Salvation Run strands villains on a prison planet and forces uneasy alliances. With Lex poking around promising dimensions and a new flick called Superman: Man of Tomorrow on the horizon, don’t be shocked if Lex and Supes end up on Salvation, making the enemies-to-allies deal work out of necessity — with Checkmate sitting in the middle.

Either way, Chris is not finding peace anytime soon, slow-mo group smiles or not.

Peacemaker is available on Sky Max and NOW.