WARNING: Spoilers for Peacemaker below.
After Peacemaker (John Cena) and the team of ARGUS agents spent all season gathering intel on the “Butterflies” — a race of tiny alien creatures that look like multi-color praying mantis and bloodily burrow into a person’s brain through their mouth and take over their body — the situation comes to a head as what’s left of the not-so-covert team prepares to destroy the “Cow.” That’d be the massive caterpillar-like creature that provides the only source of food for the Butterflies.
After tracking the Cow to a remote farm where its being milked in an underground lair, Peacemaker, Vigilante (Freddie Stroma), Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and Economos (Steve Agee) concoct a plan to have Eagly place Peacemaker’s sonic boom helmet on the roof of the barn where the Butterflies are gathered. That plan quickly goes awry as Eagly flies right past the barn and dumps the helmet in the woods nearby.
While searching for the helmet, Peacemaker is haunted by a vision of his dead father, the racist villain White Dragon (Robert Patrick), who he killed in the previous episode. Peacemaker “shoots” the ghost of his father with a poisonous blow dart, and Harcourt witnesses the aftermath as Peacemaker is seen yelling defiantly at a tree. However, her concern is cast aside as the sonic boom helmet is found near the same tree.
With the helmet in hand, the team sends an extremely reluctant Economos to drop the sonic boom inside the barn while disguised as a Butterfly security guard. Unlike Eagly, this plan goes much smoother, until a Butterfly notices the duffel bag Economos left on a stairwell leading towards the Cow. The Butterflies begin to swarm on the now-fleeing Economos, which prompts Adebayo to activate the sonic boom helmet. After exhausting all of its blasts, and collapsing a significant portion of the Cow’s lair below, Peacemaker, Vigilante, and Harcourt load up their weapons and charge at the remaining Butterflies.
While taking out as many Butterflies as possible, Harcourt tells Peacemaker to finish the mission and make sure the Cow is dead. However, after he leaves, Harcourt is severely wounded after taking a shotgun blast to the torso. Grabbing two guns, Adebayo ignores her orders to stay back and charges into the fray. Economos attempts to follow her, but instantly drips over a fence and grotesquely breaks his leg, not even a foot from their hiding spot.
Proving that Adebayo was “born for this sh*t” — she is the daughter of Amanda Waller after all — she makes short work of remaining Butterflies and rushes to Harcourt, who is not looking good. She tells Adebayo to help Peacemaker just as Economos crawls up to them with a Human Rocket helmet that the group was warned not to use because it’s dangerous as hell.
Armed with the helmet, Adebayo descends into the underground lair, where she finds the Butterfly-controlled Officer Song (Annie Chang) slamming Peacemaker against a wall. Adebayo activates the human rocket helmet and… completely misses Song by a mile before slamming into the cave wall. Song then releases Peacemaker and tells him she’s not going to hurt him.
Inside the Cow facility, Song reveals that the Butterflies have the same mission as him: peace. (Song is also controlled by the Butterfly Goff, who Peacemaker had kept alive in his house earlier in the season.) They came to Earth after recklessly exhausting the resources on their own planet. However, they soon realized that humans were making the same mistake, their plan was to infiltrate world leaderships and steer humanity away from destroying the planet. All Peacemaker has to do is help them teleport the Cow, their sole food source, to another facility in Maine, and the Butterflies can get back to their mission of protecting the Earth.
While it seems like Peacemaker is about to take the offer, he reactivates the Human Rocket helmet and sends Adebayo straight into the Cow, killing the massive creature and leaving poor Adebayo on the ground in a pile of alien guts. Peacemaker kills Song, but he does not kill Goff when she emerges from her now deceased human host.
After exiting the facility, Peacemaker finds the wounded Harcourt and picks her up so he can get her to a hospital. However, the team has guests. In a move that immediately had social media exploding with reactions, the Justice League appears, minus Batman and Cyborg. Clearly unimpressed, Peacemaker walks right past the superhero group while calling them “d*ckheads” for being late and mocking Aquaman (Jason Momoa) for “f*cking fish.” A rumor which Aquaman clearly hates, so naturally, The Flash (Ezra Miller) jokes that it’s true.
As Harcourt recovers in the hospital, Adebayo goes public with the team’s actions and also reveals the existence of Task Force X (a.k.a. The Suicide Squad) much to chagrin of her mother. As the group goes their separate ways, Peacemaker returns home where he finds Goff waiting for him and feeds her what little bit of alien goo he has left in jar while sitting outside on his porch. However, the quiet moment is disrupted by Peacemaker’s father showing up on the porch to laugh at his son, who is clearly terrified this is going to become an ongoing thing heading into Season 2.
Peacemaker Season 1 is available for streaming on HBO Max.