Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS for the Peacemaker episode “Another Rick Up My Sleeve” are ahead!
Peacemaker fans, another familiar face has returned! Joel Kinnaman, who played Rick Flag Jr. in the Suicide Squad movies, reprised his character for the 2025 TV schedule in two ways. First, we flashed back to Rick just before he embarked on his mission to Corto Maltese, and then we were introduced to the Rick Flag Jr. from that other universe. Seeing the deceased version of Rick was quite the throwback to The Suicide Squad, and Jennifer Holland informed CinemaBlend that his connection to Emilia Harcourt has been planned since Peacemaker Season 1.
The opening minutes of “Another Rick Up My Sleeve” show Rick Jr. and Emilia in bed together mere hours before the former was set to ship off for the Corto Maltese mission that would result in his death. It’s quickly laid out that these two were closer than was indicated in The Suicide Squad, where it didn’t seem like they even knew each other personally. As Holland, who’s also Peacemaker creator James Gunn’s wife, told out own Hannah Saulic:
… You find out that really Rick Flag Jr was Emilia Harcourt’s only friend. She says, ‘He was my only friend.’ And that is the crux of the hatred towards Peacemaker in Season 1, which is something that James always knew about Harcourt from the time we did Season 1, I didn't know if we were ever going to get to explore that, but yeah.
Emilia Harcourt disliking John Cena’s Christopher Smith was easy enough to understand in Peacemaker Season 1 because he killed a fellow A.R.G.U.S. operative. But now we know there was personal reasons behind it too, with Rick Flag Jr. being Emilia’s only friend and the two even sleeping together. Had Rick survived, it sounds like he would have been interested in the two of them entering into a romantic relationship. Yeah, breaking things off with Enchantress would have made that complicated, but it would have been worth the risk, right?
Alas, we’ll never know, as Peacemaker killed Rick Flag Jr. in The Suicide Squad when he attempted to expose the United States’ involvement in Operation Starfish. It’s unclear why his connection to Emilia Harcourt wasn’t incorporated into Peacemaker Season 1, but hey, better late than never. Perhaps that’s the reason why Emilia is unwilling to pursue something deeper with Christopher, as she can’t get past him taking her friend away from her.
Meanwhile, in that other universe, Rick Flag Jr. is alive and well, albeit worried that Prime Christopher Smith (i.e. the show’s main version of the character) is going to steal his girlfriend, that universe’s Emilia Harcourt. It’s understandable, because after learning his now-deceased counterpart had broken with that world’s Emilia, Prime Chris pretended to be the dead Chris and went to see her at A.R.G.U.S. headquarters. They were having a nice enough time together at the nearby park until the Sons of Liberty showed up to try and blow up the nearby DMV with Cefanalolol explosives as part of their crusade against the United States government.
By the end of “Another Rick Up My Sleeve,” Prime Christopher Smith seems to have a good thing going with Alternate Emilia Harcourt, who again, believes she spent the day with her ex-boyfriend. It’s just a shame that as Chris returned to his universe, A.R.G.U.S. is moments away from coming to his house to kill Eagly and try to access his quantum unfolding chamber. We’ll see how that turns when the fourth episode of Peacemaker Season premieres on HBO Max next Thursday.
