For Friends and Family

It’s interesting to think where we’ve come with the DC UniverseThe successor to WB's failed cinematic universe, the DCEU. Headed by James Gunn and Peter Safran, this new DC Universe carries over some continuity from the former film and TV series while crafting a new, rebooted universe for the future. from before it even was the DCU. Peacemaker, the show, spun-off from the (critically regarded but financially unsuccessful) The Suicide Squad, a very strange and delightfully dark superhero team up film. Within that team was Peacemaker, the character, played by John Cena who seemed to be included simply to make a joke that the DC Universe had way too many characters that were assassins skilled in the use of every firearm. Hell, the first Suicide Squad film had Deadshot, while James Gunn’s not-sequel had both Peacemaker and Bloodsport. The film goes out of its way to underline this point.

But it’s amusing that of all those characters – Deadshot, Bloodsport, and Peacemaker – it’s Cena’s Peacemaker that got his own show, which has gone on for two seasons, along with the character showing up in other works (with plans to continue to do so). If anyone had bet back in 2016 which characters would be the ones to continue on in the then-DC Extended UniverseStarted as DC Comics' answer to the MCU, the early films in the franchise stumbled out of the gates, often mired in grim-dark storytelling and the rushed need to get this franchise started. Eventually, though, the films began to even out, becoming better as they went along. Still, this franchise has a long way to go before it's true completion for Marvel's universe. for a long time to come, Will Smith’s Deadshot would have been high on the list while a random third-rate assassin played by John Cena wouldn’t have even been imagined. And yet here we are.

Two seasons have now come and gone for Peacemaker and, for sure, the show has had its highs and lows. Fans are torn on this season largely because (by design) it zigged when it was “supposed” to sag. Fans expected one thing, but the series delivered something else right when they least expected it. Good or bad this was James Gunn’s vision, and this show is one of his baby’s. You can tell he’s attached to this show, these characters, and this world, and not just because he is now in charge of the DCU. He’s carried over ideas and plot points from The Suicide Squad, his first foray into this universe, and he has a plan for where things will go.

My gut says that we’ll see a grander scope for all of this, and how it ties together, once more films and shows in the universe are done, but taken on its own merits, Peacemaker: Season 2 is a strong emotional journey that just so happens to also feature a Nazi dimension and a late game twist that could redefine everything. But then, we’re still early in this universe, so it’s hard to know where it’s all going to go next.

This season, despite wandering through the multiverse on more than one occasion, is really all about Chris Smith / Peacemaker (Cena). The vigilante-turned-hero helped save the world at the end of the first season, but since then the world has still continued to view him as, at best, a joke and, at worst, a violent criminal. No one takes him seriously, even when he tries to be a good guy. He’s rejected by the Justice Gang when they hold open auditions, and he’s struggling to make his personal life work. He has friends he loves – Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), Adrian Chase / Vigilante (Freddie Stroma), John Economos (Steve Agee), and Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) – but he doesn’t feel like his life is coming together.

When ARGUS catches wind that he has a dimensional portal in his house, a weird bit of tech that he found from a dead alien, ARGUS head Rick Flagg, Sr. (Frank Grillo) puts out a warrant for Chris’s arrest. This leads Chris to decide to leave it all behind and move on to a new dimension, one he found previously where his father (Robert Patrick) and brother (David Denman) not only are still alive but also act as public accepted superheroes, Chris elects to slide in there and take over for his dimensional duplicate (who, in fairness, he also accidentally killed). But Chris might not be ready for what kind of place this new dimension really is, and it might just be that ARGUS isn’t ready to let go of Peacemaker that easily.

I’ve already discussed one of the episodes from this season, "Ignorance is Chris", so some of the spoilery moments of this season have already been unleashed. As I noted in my discussion of that episode, Chris does end up going to a new dimension to live, but as it turns out that dimension is Earth-X, the world where the Nazis won World War II. Despite what some right wing discourse might say, this alternate dimension clearly wasn’t used to make some broad political statement (although if you think “Nazis are bad” is a broad political statement, that says a lot about you specifically). Instead it’s meant to show the rose-tinted glasses that Chris has put on. He’s so desperate to find a place that will accept him and treat him like a hero that he’s willing to ignore massive warning flags, like American flags with the swastika on them or giant murals of Hitler, just so he can find a home where he “belongs”.

But that’s part of Chris’s arc this season: he doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere. His world doesn’t treat him like a hero despite helping to save it from a massive alien invasion last season. The girl he loves, Harcourt, doesn’t want a relationship with him. His father is dead, by his own hands. His brother dies years earlier, also by his own hands. To find a world where none of that matters, where his dad and brother are alive and there’s a version of Harcourt that wants to be with him, that blinds him to everything else. He wants a world that’s clean and simple and easy, and the fact that it’s a Nazi planet says a lot about ignoring things to find what you want.

It also says a lot about Chris. He’s both a dumbass, which Gunn has explicitly acknowledged, and also someone desperate to find his place. But it says a lot about his friends, too, that, in that episode, they’re willing to come to a new dimension to track him down and try to bring him home. Things take a turn, because they’re on a Nazi planet, but, well, I won’t spoil where things go from there. But it shows just how much they care about Chris. When the series started they all hated him (and, in fairness, it’s because he was a giant douchebag). But he’s grown and they’ve grown and that’s led the series into a new place that feels right for the characters and their emotional arcs.

I think that’s the part that fans are getting caught up on. The emotional arc is what was important to the season, not any bombast or further developments on Earth-X. That Nazi planet was kind of a red herring because this isn’t a series devoted to bringing down a Nazi regime. Yes, they fought alien butterflies in the previous season, but to bring down a whole planetary government would take more than a single season (or an ArrowverseWhen it was announced that the CW was creating a show based on the Green Arrow, people laughed. The CW? Really? Was it going to be teen-oriented like everything else on the network and be called "Arrow High"? And yet that one show, Arrow has spawned three spin-offs, various related shows and given DC a successful shared universe, the Arrowverse on TV and streaming. crossover event) to really do properly. Peacemaker isn’t that kind of show.

No, this is a show about Chris and his journey from guy that thinks he’s a hero to one that actually can act and feel like one. The season is less bombastic, less weird, less strange, but I think that’s what made it good. A critique I had about the first season was that it was Gunn playing very clearly in his wheelhouse. The alien threat with butterflies taking over people’s bodies felt a lot like the alien threat in The Suicide Squad, with Staro babies taking over people’s bodies, or the alien threat in Slither, with slugs taking over people’s bodies. It was well trod ground, and while Gunn is good at that story, you can only do it so many times.

This isn’t like that. Even the Earth-X part is more of a catalyst, a distraction, than a real part of the story. What matters this season is Chris and his friends, and that’s truly where the focus lies. It’s stronger for the characters, and better for the story. Maybe it doesn’t have all the action and weirdness fans wanted (or perhaps it was just the finale they felt let them down, which I disagree with), but it’s stronger for committing to the emotional arc for Peacemaker and his friends.

Peacemaker: Season 2 is a different kind of season from the first, but I also feel like that’s something the series needed. After four bombastic entries in this universe so far (counting not only the first season of this show and The Suicide Squad that came before, but also Creature Commandos and Superman) it was good to get something more character driven and intimate. I wouldn’t want this every time in my superhero stories but I think it really worked here. And to get it in the “joke” series about the “joke” antihero, well that makes it even better.