Peacemaker, HBO Max’s series based in James Gunn’s DCU, is shaping up to be another hit for the former MCU director.
The series stars John Cena in the titular role, but features an all-star cast that also includes Danielle Brooks, Jennifer Holland, Freddie Stroma, David Denman, Steve Agee, Sol Rodriguez, and Frank Grillo.
The second season of the show premiered in September, and it’s been a lot of building tension and putting the pieces in the right place. But it looks like we’ve finally hit the point in the season where things get really interesting.
Episode 6, entitled “Ignorance is Chris,” blew the lid off the multiverse maneuvering by Peacemaker, forcing him and his friends into open mayhem. But even more importantly, Nicholas Hoult made a cameo as the villainous Lex Luthor, last seen in this summer’s Superman.
Lex is locked up in Belle Reve, a prison for metahumans, after his battle with Superman. He is visited by Rick Flag Sr., who makes a deal with him in an effort to locate Peacemaker’s interdimensional portal.
Superman was rated PG-13, but since Peacemaker is for mature audiences, we got to see a much colder Lex, full of expletives. Hoult does an amazing job here, taking full advantage of the Rated-R setting.
We also see Lex walking with a cane. I’m taking a wild guess here that being tossed around like a rag doll by Krypto, Superman’s dog, caused some lasting injuries. It’s possible that this will tie into Lex donning his infamous war-suit from the comics. James Gunn also teased the suit as being in Man of Tomorrow, the Superman sequel that he’s working on.
Lex’s deal with Rick Flag Sr., which makes the former essentially a partner with ARGUS, also feels like something that will be a foundational piece in Man of Tomorrow, since Gunn also revealed that Superman and Lex would be working together in the film.
“This was one of the first scenes we shot,” Gunn said on the Peacemaker podcast of the Lex Luthor scene. “We shot it in the middle of Superman, while we were shooting the Pentagon sequences in Superman. It was cool, it was weird because tonally it instantly felt different from Superman, which is so big and brash, and then this show is so strangely grounded and gritty. And then also hearing Nick curse, I felt like even Nick’s performance was different.”
The director also noted that the scene is “a really important moment for not only Peacemaker, but the entire DCU.”
Gunn also revealed that Peacemaker Season 2 was shot at the same time as Superman, which gave him access to the full cast of both projects to use at the same time. Peacemaker does make an appearance in Superman, and now we’ve seen quite a bit of the film’s cast in the show as well.
I’m enjoying how smoothly Gunn is weaving together the new DCU… let’s just hope we get an Aaron Pierre Green Lantern cameo next (fingers crossed).
Are you watching Peacemaker Season 2 on HBO Max? What do you think of it so far? Let me know in the comment section below.