Warning: SPOILERS for the Peacemaker episode “Back to the Suture” are ahead!
Emilia Harcourt was put in a difficult position in last week’s episode of Peacemaker Season 2 when she was instructed by Rick Flag Sr. to lure Chris into a trap so she could get her job at A.R.G.U.S. back. Jennifer Holland, who plays Harcourt, told me that her character did indeed feel conflicted about this curveball, and that’s factoring in how he killed her only friend, Rick Flag Jr., in The Suicide Squad. Well, that trap resulted in Chris going through hell in the newest Peacemaker episode to drop on the 2025 TV schedule, and Holland also opened up about Harcourt having to deal with a new “complicated set of emotions.”
In “Back to the Suture,” Chris showed up for the meet at Kupperberg Park despite Emilia Harcourt secretly warning him to stay away. Chris was well aware that A.R.G.U.S. agents were nearby ready to neutralize him, but he was still determined to find out if what happened on the boat between them pre-Season 2 meant anything to Harcourt (we still don’t know what that was). To say she was angered by this would be an understatement, with Jennifer Holland saying:
She's so furious because you find out on the park bench that she was not giving him up. She wasn't giving him up. She told him that she typed ‘copacetic.’ That was the warning word. She said, ‘That was the warning word, you dumb fuck!’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I know but like, I wanted to talk to you.’ And she's just like, ‘What is wrong with you? Your ego is so out of control that you can't even listen to me. You think you can get out of this?’ She knows that he cannot get out of this situation. He's totally fucked in this situation. And so she was trying to save the guy, and she's like, ‘Seriously, if you were just gonna give yourself up anyway, I should have fucking done it and gotten my job back.’ So she's just so mad at him in this moment.
After Harcourt told Chris that their time on the boat meant nothing to her, he tried to make his escape and was nearly shot by Sasha Bordeaux on Rick Flag Sr.’s orders. It was only thanks to Harcourt running in and knocking Chris unconscious that this didn’t happen, and upon being brought to A.R.G.U.S., Rick proceeded to beat Chris to a pulp as revenge for killing his son. He might’ve ended our main protagonist’s life had John Economos, on Harcourt’s urging, not booked him in the system and generated an arrest record, meaning he couldn’t just “disappear.”
Rick Flag Sr. claimed to Bordeaux that his aggressive actions were part of his long game to find the dimensional rift created by Peacemaker’s Quantum Unfolding Chamber, but that’s a conversation for another time. What’s more important is that upon being let go by A.R.G.U.S. and arriving back at the cabin where the QUC was set up, Chris departed to that other universe to be with the alternate Emilia Harcourt and left a note for his friends explaining his reasoning. Here’s what Jennifer Holland had to say about how the main Harcourt feels about Chris doing this:
I think that she is going through a really complicated set of emotions, and I think that she feels when she hears that sort of goodbye note that he wrote, she feels so guilty. Because she doesn't think that he should be in the other dimension, but she also feels like part of the reason that he left is that she wouldn’t take her wall down a little bit. So whether or not this means that she cares for him and wants to try to work things out with him, or this just means like, ‘I feel guilty that he's gone and left, and I feel like I need to go try to fix this situation because I'm partially responsible.’
That’s exactly what’s going to happen, as Harcourt declares at the end of “Back to the Suture” that she, Economos, Adrian and Adebayo will make their way to that other universe to get Chris back. First they need to find a new place to set up the QUC, and then it’s a matter of finding the right doorway to that other universe. As Jennifer Holland capped off this portion of my interview with her, Harcourt is just improvising at this point, saying:
I think that's what's going on with her right now. But right now, she doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't have plans. In the moment, she's like, ‘We’re gonna go get him. That's what we're gonna do.’
Another interesting wrench thrown in the works is how Judomaster, who lost his rematch against Peacemaker in “Need I Say Door” tracked Chris down to the cabin and walked through the portal before it closed. He left his own note for Rick Flag Sr. and the A.R.G.U.S. agents that arrived after Adebayo and Adrian were already there, so now it’s known across the board that stuff’s going down in that other universe, which I still suspect holds a dark secret.
There are three episodes left to go in Peacemaker Season 2, so head back to HBO Max next Thursday for the next chapter of this story. Don’t forget that Superman, the first DCU movie, will also be debuting on the streaming platform tomorrow, September 19.
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