Critic Reviews

This new season is as emotionally investing as it is silly and violent, and that's what makes it so dang special.

We'll have to see how he sticks the landing and where things go after the rather large cliffhanger at the end of episode 5, but for now, "Peacemaker" is back, baby, and it still kicks major ass.

The series shows Gunn is invested in interrogating and investigating how people adopt extreme and harmful beliefs, and how they might change, not just on their own, but with other people’s help.

Peacemaker is just flat-out fun to watch.

James Gunn's first major TV project takes this blunt instrument of an anti-hero and uses him as the base for an at times strange, at times pretty fun action-horror adventure. (The term "superhero"... does not feel particularly applicable, in this case.)

Expands on The Suicide Squad's foul-mouthed and unrepentantly trashy action with eight episodes of cursing, stadium rock and body horror all wrapped around a surprisingly affecting character-driven drama.

By the seventh episode, you’ll be out of your seat, swinging your arms like they’re on hinges, trying to memorize every step. “Peacemaker” isn’t perfect, but it follows the beat of its own drum, and that’s enough.

Its violence is still nuts, its humor still juvenile, but beneath this second season of Peacemaker beats a wiser, more chastened heart.

There is a lot going on here. Yet the series functions as a sincere character study of its flawed hero — and the unfortunate souls who have to work alongside him — just enough for the joke to never quite wear thin. Even in a wildly oversaturated market for tales of hypermuscular men and women punching their way to justice, Peacemaker stands out.

Self-conscious but never smug, sociopathic and yet also sweet, and timely if never preachy, it’s the very sort of no-holds-barred, tongue-in-cheek endeavor that’s become Gunn’s specialty.