Peacemaker Season 2 Finally Puts One Signature Character On The Right Team

Hey, Eagly-heads! The following contains spoilers for "Peacemaker" season 2, episode 8, "Full Nelson."

If there's one thing writer and director James Gunn has gotten great at doing, it's introducing audiences to seemingly villainous characters who actually end up being kind of great in the end. His series "Peacemaker" is, in itself, kind of an ode to giving people second chances, as we follow Christopher Smith, A.K.A. Peacemaker (John Cena) after he kills his hero Rick Flag, Jr. (Joel Kinnaman) on government orders and decides to turn his life around. "Peacemaker" is the character's redemption after "The Suicide Squad," proving that Gunn knows a thing or two about complex antiheroes. 

Now, in the season 2 finale of "Peacemaker," he's given a couple more sorta-baddies the chance to prove they're alright, as former A.R.G.U.S. employees Langston Fleury (Tim Meadows), Sasha Bordeaux (Sol Rodriguez), and Judomaster (Nhut Le) have all joined forces with the 11th Street Kids to create Checkmate, a covert operations agency working for the common people. 

While it's neat that Gunn is setting up Checkmate, and it makes sense for Bordeaux to have switched sides since she's part of the group in the DC comic series, it's honestly even better that Judomaster has finally joined up with the gang of misfits that surround Peacemaker instead of fighting against them. Sure, he saved Adebayo's (Danielle Brooks) behind by electrocuting a whole pool of Nazis in episode 7, but this feels way more official.

Even back in season 1, Judomaster felt like he belonged alongside the 11th Street Kids instead of fighting them, no matter how hilarious their dust-ups might be. His penchant for snacking on Flamin' Hot Cheetos and swearing like a sailor on shore leave make him a better fit for the kids than the U.S. government, and his time chatting with Adebayo on Earth X shows that there is a really interesting person beneath all of that violence and Cheeto dust. 

Like Peacemaker or Vigilante (Freddie Stroma), Judomaster is a masked superhero with an unfortunate tendency towards hyper-violence who also happens to be kind of charming and adorable. Seriously, they're all adorable masked murder machines and it's a shame we didn't get to see the three of them fighting something together this season, but at least we got to see them strolling the halls of their new Checkmate offices together. 

There's clearly more mystery to Judomaster, as he's the only one in full costume pretty much all the time (and even wore his costume and mask underneath another helmet when visiting alternate dimensions in the finale). Hopefully we'll get to learn what that's all about in a third season of "Peacemaker" or some kind of Checkmate-based spin-off. All I know is that the very best part of "Peacemaker" is watching the 11th Street Kids and their love for one another, and audiences deserve to see more of them together — with Bordeaux, Fleury, and the absolutely amazing Judomaster all along for the ride.