Navigating a parallel dimension is a true minefield. Most of the stuff is the same, but some stuff changed. And a lot of it is so subtle that there’s no way to know about it. What if Looney Tunes was Looney Toons, or the Kardashians never got famous? People will constantly think you’re crazy, but only in the smallest, most random ways. Maybe Mandela Effect people are just dimensional travelers.
This review may contain some spoilers for Peacemaker Season 2, Episode 3.
Watching this season of Peacemaker, I’ve come to call Emilia Harcourt by Harcourt in the home dimension, and Emilia in the Peacemaker Fantasy World. One thing I always enjoy is when one actor players two variants of a character in the same story. Twin Peaks: The Return was maybe the greatest example of this. I don’t mean to compare Jennifer Holland’s two Emilia Harcourts to that, of course, but it’s still fun to watch.
Emilia has an entirely different demeanor from Harcourt. Setting the difference in dress aside–Harcourt dresses like she’s about to go on a night mission, Emilia dresses for a midday picnic–it comes down to things like her posture and even how relaxed her facial expressions are. Emilia is someone trying to be happy, even though her life isn’t perfect, while Harcourt is someone who wouldn’t know how to be happy if you gave her a step-by-step guide and called it a secret mission.
You can feel it in everything she does, and an important part of this episode is flashing between the two. While Emilia is trying to have a heart-to-heart with Chris, Harcourt is denying even a minimal interest in him to Adebayo.
That heart-to-heart is interrupted when someone runs by Chris and Emilia in the park, falls flat on their face, and explodes. It happens so fast that you can’t call it gory or anything, but it’s startling and shocking in a way a movie explosion hasn’t been in a while. Watching it on my TV or even on my phone on a second viewing, it still feels shocking.
The action sequence that follows is another highlight setpiece. Chris interrupts a hostage situation at the DMV in a violent, bloody stealth takedown of a terrorist cell. The last time we saw Cena fight, he was literally killing himself, so it’s kind of a relief to see him doing his thing and doing it well.
Langston Fleury is back as well, blaming Economos for not warning him about Eagly, which he insists was done as a prank.
“Was it funny?!” Fleury asks. “Yes!”
Bird blindness is a real problem.
So far the show is doing a great job of making Chris’ new world a very tantalizing place, while working hard to make his home world as unappetizing as possible, setting Chris up for disappointment.
I’ll admit that it’s taking a minute to get going, but I like where things are heading.
