Written by James Gunn and Directed by Brad Anderson
In a flashback, young Chris Smith and his older brother Keith are rocking out to "Home Sweet Home", and Keith tries to dissuade his brother from following white supremacist beliefs and instead encourages him to embrace rock. One of Auggie's henchmen calls them to fight each other in the trailer park while his father collects bets from the viewers. As both boys have done some damage to each other, Chris punches Keith in the face, making him fall to the ground. The younger Smith is elated for a bit until his brother starts shaking and foaming from the mouth. Auggie rushes towards his son and tries to save him, but is unable to do so and yells at Chris, blaming him for Keith's death.
In the present, Peacemaker is hiding from the police at Economos' apartment and is watching Locke telling the media about him being a dangerous psychopath. He and Vigilante leave the apartment, taking most of the helmets with GPS markers that allow the White Dragon to track them down. Peacemaker and Vigilante head out to kill the "cow".
Harcourt confronts Adebayo about the diary used to frame Peacemaker, and Leota reveals that she's Waller's daughter and that Peacemaker was chosen to be the fall guy. Murn quickly calms them down and tells them to get back to the HQ.
Peacemaker and his team are intercepted by the White Dragon on their way to the cow, and their truck gets tossed off the road. Auggie attacks his son, but Vigilante holds him off, throwing a grenade and getting caught in the blast while Chris and Economos escape. Peacemaker realizes the helmets allows Auggie to track him down, and ties them to raccoons and other wildlife. Vigilante steals a car from one of the white supremacists, but loses consciousness behind the wheel.
Judomaster, who has awakened from his coma, beats up two bullies near a convenience store and steals their car. Meanwhile, Murn and the rest of the team are cornered by the Butterfiles. He holds them off for a bit, but "Goff" kills the body and crushes the Butterfly that emerges, much to the horror of others. Harcourt comforts him in his final moments, while Judomaster arrives and attacks her and Adebayo. They fight for a bit before Leota zaps him with a taser.
Auggie and his henchmen discover the ruse, while Peacemaker and Economos find Vigilante and get into the car. Vigilante reveals that he's brought the rest of the helmets with him , making Peacemaker run off to dump them elsewhere. The white supremacists find him and attempt to beat him down, before Auggie arrives, critically injures Eagly and tries to kill his son. Vigilante jumps on the Dragon and disables his armor, while Economos guns down the henchmen. Peacemaker beats Auggie up in rage and is hesitant to shoot him before putting a bullet in his head, breaking down afterwards.
Adebayo tells Harcourt that Waller recruited her after her dog shelter has failed and wants to go back to Gotham. Economos tells them to come to the vet clinic while Vigilante is holding the personnel at gunpoint. Peacemaker is hoping that Eagly will survive and breaks into tears, asking for a miracle, when suddenly the eagle gets up and hugs him. Adebayo, inspired by this, decides to stay and help the team, while Harcourt assumes command.
"Goff" and the Butterflies arrive at the ranch to teleport the "cow" away, and Harcourt explains that it's necessary to get there quick to stop them from getting away. With their lowest point behind, the team drives off in a clinic van. Adebayo asks for forgiveness, but Peacemaker isn't willing to let this go.
Tropes:
- Anyone Can Die: Both Murn and Auggie, two rather important characters to the narrative, bite it this episode.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The White Dragon suit, it can be best summed up as: if an Iron Man Armor was made by a Klansman, and is pretty inferior to it in almost every way. Vigilante points out its flaws, which he handily uses when ambushing Auggie.
- Big Damn Heroes: Right as the White Dragon's minions are about to shoot Vigilante, Economos shows up and guns them all down.
- Bleed 'Em and Weep: Peacemaker breaks down in tears after killing Auggie.
- Boom, Headshot!: Peacemaker finally puts Auggie down by shooting him in the head after he tells Peacemaker he doesn't have the guts to kill him.
- Bullying a Dragon:
- Given there are superheroes and assorted costumed serial killers about, the two guys outside the convenience store really should be more careful around dudes in goofy costumes; Judomaster near-effortlessly hands them their asses and takes their car after they taunt him.
- Auggie insulting Peacemaker, after the latter already beat him to a pulp and has a gun pointed at his head, lands him squarely here as well.
- But Not Too Bi: The rare invoked case of this. There was already a sign in a previous episode that showed that Peacemaker and Vigilante had no problems being in a three way together. This episode sees Peacemaker's dad, during his villainous rant, rage over how his son had relationships with both males and females. This leads into the idea that a lot of Peacemaker's overt machismo was him overcompensating for having a homophobic father.
- Blunt "No": Happens when Economos asks who they have left to lead the team, with Murn being dead. Adebayo says that she can think of someone:Economos: [incredulous] ...Me?
Adebayo: No! Fuck no! - Character Death:
- Murn is finally found out, caught and then killed by his fellow Butterflies for rebelling against them.
- Auggie is shot in the head when his attempt on his own son's life (and his friends) goes horribly wrong.
- Deadly Sparring: A Flashback shows Auggie Smith having his sons Christopher and Keith fight each other as he and his friends watched. While the boys treated it as just a fun match, a lucky hit from Chris caused Keith to fall backward onto a rock, killing him.
- Death by Irony: Auggie gets shot in the head by Peacemaker... using a Luger pistol, a weapon famously used by Nazi officers.
- Defiant to the End: When "Goff/Song" and her crew arrives to capture Murn, he kills one of them before they're able to disarm him. When "Goff/Song" questions how he knows about the Cow, he refuses to talk and "Goff/Song" kills him on the spot. When he crawls out of Murn's body and tries to fly away, "Goff/Song" catches and crushes him before throwing him to the ground.
- Didn't Think This Through: Murn points out to Leota that if she was going to plant the forged diary in Peacemaker's trailer she should have waited until after the mission was completed.
- Dramatic Irony: Vigilante threw away Peacemaker's phone thinking that they could be tracked by the police through it note in the previous episode. It's then revealed in this one that not only did he keep all of Peacemaker's helmets that Auggie made, but said helmets are also being used by Auggie to track his son down.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Adebayo reveals to Harcourt that she planted the fake diary in Peacemaker's trailer at the behest of Amanda Waller, in order to make him their fall guy after the operation was completed and ensure his prison sentence get extended. Naturally, this pisses Harcourt off and Peacemaker figures out on his own and refuses to forgive her.
- Even Evil Has Standards: After "Goff/Song" kills Murn for betraying her and their kind, "Fitzgibbon" is horrified that she killed one of their own. She justifies it by saying there were no other alternatives and he was a warrior.
- Everybody Knew Already:
- When Harcourt reveals to Murn that Leota is Amanda Waller's daughter, he reveals he already knew because he did a background check on her.
- Peacemaker, Harcourt, and Murn already figured out that Leota planted the forged diary in Peacemaker's trailer.
- Foreshadowing: In a prior episode, Vigilante saw the White Dragon suit on display in Auggie's armory and remarked upon how impractical it was, specifically citing gaps between the armor plates as a potential weakness. Here, he takes full advantage of this weakness to disable the suit in a surprise attack that gives Peacemaker the upper hand.
- He Knows Too Much: Vigilante argues they should kill the veterinarian and two nurses that attended Eagly, but Harcourt and Economos manage to talk him out of it. They actually don't hold it against them much, except Vigilante.
- Hypocritical Humor: Vigilante denigrates one of his hostages for being a male nurse at an animal clinic. Economos lashes out "You're a fucking busboy".
- Internal Reveal:
- Leota reveals to Harcourt that Amanda Waller is her mother.
- "Goff/Song" and her crew are shocked to discover that one of their own is rebelling against them, and only discover it after they kill Murn and the Butterfly inside him emerges from his body.
- It Has Been an Honor: When "Goff/Song" and her crew knocking on Murn's door, he knows his time is up and he leaves his walkie talkie on to talk to Harcourt and Leota, and tells them he's proud to have them on his team and to finish the job before he's killed.
- Karmic Death: Given how Auggie has been an awful father to Peacemaker, tried to kill his son himself, and actually mocked him when Peacemaker has him at gunpoint, it seems pretty fitting that Peacemaker killed by shooting him in the head.
- Kick the Dog: Auggie smacks Eagly out of the air, despite the bird seemingly posing little threat to Auggie in the armor.
- Killed Off for Real:
- When "Goff/Song" and her crew corner Murn and she tries to get answers from him and he refuses to talk, she shoots him dead. When the Butterfly that's controlling Murn's body, Ik Nobe Llok, leaves the body and tries to escape, "Goff/Song" grabs and crushes him in her hand before throwing him to the ground. After they leave, Harcourt picks up and holds him in her hand where they have a tender moment before he perishes.
- Auggie is gone for good when Peacemaker puts a bullet through his skull.
- Laser-Guided Karma: In a messed up way, Adebayo's betrayal of Peacemaker's trust is an echo of what he did to Task Force X in The Suicide Squad.
- Logical Weakness: Vigilante had previously pointed out that there are gaps in the White Dragon armor that could easily be exploited. One guess as to how he disables the suit.
- Mood Whiplash: The Cold Opening of the episode is actually really sad. Showing a flashback of how Peacemaker accidentally killed his brother, Keith. This is immediately followed by the goofy and over-the-top opening theme song to the series.
- Never My Fault: The nature of the death of Peacemaker's brother Keith finally gets revealed here. It turned out Auggie once made them take part in a fight for the enjoyment of him and his friends. Chris won the fight, but then Keith died of a seizure. Auggie immediately places the blame on Chris ignoring the fact that his irresponsibility as a parent caused Chris to accidentally kill Keith.
- Oh, Crap!: Three in a row. After Peacemaker, Vigilante, and Economos escaped from Auggie and his crew in one of their cars, Vigilante asks how they found them and Economos reveals they're tracking them through Peacemaker's helmets. After learning this, Vigilante has this reaction and reveals he took the rest of Peacemaker's helmets with him when he escaped. After Peacemaker throws away the rest of the helmets, Auggie's crew finds him and he freaks out and runs away. When Economos sees Peacemaker being chased by Auggie's crew and they're heading towards his direction, he goes inside the car and crawls out from the other side to escape.
- Paper Tiger: Ultimately the most dangerous thing about White Dragon is his armor, gadgets and the fact that he fights with backup. Once stripped of these advantages, Peacemaker rather handily gives him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
- Pretty Little Headshots: Averted. While the front of Auggie's head is barely damaged, the back is almost completely blown out.
- Rage Breaking Point: Once he realizes that White Dragon's lost both his numbers advantage and his weaponry, Peacemaker's face contorts into a mask of fury before he charges and brutalizes his villainous father, unloading on him both physically and emotionally as well as finally absolving himself of guilt over his brother's death and accepting it was Auggie's fault.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- While Vigilante's armor saves him from being obliterated by the grenade he threw just a few meters in front of him, he's very clearly concussed and passes out while driving a car mere minutes later, and is loopier than usual once he regains consciousness.
- Peacemaker's relationship with Eagly might lead people to believe that he has some special power over wild animals. Peacemaker's encounter with a raccoon shows that Eagly is a special case and him trying to capture a wild animal barehanded is a bad idea. Economos lampshades the fact that an animal can seriously mess you up if it thinks it is fighting for its life.
- Auggie might be an experienced supervillain in a suit of Powered Armor, but even if his glory days weren't at least a couple of decades behind him, which they painfully obviously are — running around in his armor very obviously makes him winded — he has spent at least the past eight years doing nothing but living a lean and docile suburban life probably mostly spent stewing in his own impotent anger while watching right-wing television. It is no wonder he is physically outmatched and eventually killed by his son and his friend who are far younger and more athletic than him.
- Undignified Death: Auggie dies in a suit of broken Power Armor mid-sentence. No melodramatic dying words. No final cruel zingers to his son. He just drops dead like a sack of racist balding potatoes on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere.
- Villain Ball: Not only did one of the henchmen leave their keys in the car which allows Vigilante to escape, but Auggie tells everyone to ignore him and focus on Peacemaker. By ignoring Vigilante, he gets the jump on Auggie and exploits the aforementioned weak point on his suit, which allows Peacemaker to take him down.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Subverted. Peacemaker wastes little time in beating the shit out of Auggie and later shows only slightly more hesitation in shooting him square in the head mid-speech, but he's still severely torn up about it afterward.
- You Are in Command Now: Harcourt becomes the team's new leader following Murn's death.
- You Should Have Died Instead: There is at the very least an implied one in Auggie's shouting of "You dumb fuck! You killed your brother!"
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Auggie rather confidently pulls this on his son. He is proven wrong.
