In an episode full of big reveals, the latest episode of “Peacemaker” made it clear that Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) and Rick Flag Jr. (Joel Kinnaman) were once romantically involved.
The episode opener showed the two talking in a bedroom after spending the night together, discussing their relationship. In typical Harcourt fashion, she is trying to push a deeper connection away while still clearly being into Flag. Unfortunately, Flag is about to head off to Corto Maltese where he’ll be killed by Peacemaker – as seen in 2021’s “The Suicide Squad” – which puts a quick end to their relationship.
Showrunner James Gunn informed Holland even before Season 1 of the show that Harcourt and Flag were secretly seeing each other. Holland told TheWrap that information justified how she played Harcourt’s constant anger toward Chris (John Cena).
“It helped me to understand why it was okay for me to be a total c–t, for lack of a better word, to Christopher Smith,” she said. “Her moral compass is very specific. And that’s, you can do really morally f–ked up things, as long as it’s not to the people who have entrusted their life to you, who are on your team. She’s a soldier, and so she believes in no man behind even if that means that you don’t like them.”
Holland continued: “It gave me the freedom in Season 1 to just hate Chris, sort of unabashedly, and not having to worry about layering in some other thing in those early episodes, when she’s just saddled on a team with this guy who she absolutely despises.”
Episode 3 complicates things more for the Chris and Harcourt romance more when – in a fit of drunken sad boy energy – he decides to use his dad’s dimensional gate to travel to the alternate dimension where his brother Keith (David Denman) is alive and they’re both celebrated as heroes. Also, in this world Peacemaker and Harcourt had dated before the latter’s toxicity forced her to end things
People seem to be drawn together in every world and after separating this alternate Harcourt began seeing the alternate Rick Flag Jr. – much to our Chris’s dismay when he meets the two of them. Holland is pulling double duty this season playing the original, deeply damaged Harcourt we know and love alongside this alternate one who is much more put together and has a healthy communication style. She said the main thing she wanted to focus on to differentiate the two was never to play one or the other for a laugh.
“My first goal was for it to not be funny,” Holland said. “I didn’t want her to be comically different than Harcourt from our original dimension. So that was sort of a weird line to toe because I wanted it to feel very grounded. I thought that the best thing to do was to approach it like they’re the same. They have the same genetic makeup. They’re genetically the same person, but what would happen if Harcourt from our dimension had a different upbringing and had a different set of circumstances in her childhood, and maybe had less damage or a different kind of damage?”
She added about this new Harcourt: “She’s a friendlier, more gregarious, quicker to smile person, but she still has damage, and her damage makes her a little more thirsty. It makes her a little more insecure in love, than Harcourt from our dimension.”
This dimension’s Peacemaker clearly was a different brand of terrible before the original Peacemaker killed him back in the first episode of the season. Whether it’s the gaudy shirts, the tight leather pants, the massive pill and drinking addictions, it’s clear he was bad news. Yet despite all that, Alt Harcourt was still drawn to him and Holland suspects the reasons are simple – “daddy issues.”
“I think what she’s attracted to is that he’s a douchebag, really,” Holland said. “I think she’s attracted to him because of the fact that he treats her like s–t. There are a lot of women, a lot of men, a lot of of every type of of human being, who are naturally attracted to someone who either they think that they can fix – which I think is partially what’s going on with Harcourt Two. And also they’re repeating a pattern that maybe they had when they were a kid.”
She finished: “She’s got daddy issues. Very thirsty. We call her ThirstCourt.”
