Peacemaker S2E01 Review | "The Ties That Grind"
Move over Marvel, the new DCU can do multiverse shenanigans too!
[Welcome to Decoding TV’s coverage of Peacemaker Season 2! For each of Peacemaker’s eight episodes, we’ll run reviews by Dan Gvozden. If you’d like to support what we’re doing here, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. The review below contains major spoilers for Season 2, Episode 1 of Peacemaker.]
Any review of Season 2 of DC Entertainment’s Peacemaker that operates without acknowledging the enormous contextual shift in the DCU Universe (DCU) that undergirds the very fabric of the show’s existence would be incomplete. Before viewers see even a single frame of the new season, the cancellation of the previous DCU experiment — which started with Zach Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013) and ended with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) — places Peacemaker in an unusual position. What would a second season of a show that began in 2022 in the world of the former DCU even look like?
The first season of Peacemaker was an unexpected spin-off of James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (2021), a box office bomb that had the impossible task of navigating audiences’ return to theaters in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the reception of the first Suicide Squad (2016) film, as well as it’s day-one availability on the HBO Max streaming service. Peacemaker began as a “mostly for fun” writing project for Gunn during post-production on The Suicide Squad, inspired by the potential Gunn saw in John Cena to evolve his on-screen presence from that of a professional wrestler and comedic actor to a dramatic lead as Peacemaker.
Peacemaker was a classic Gunn creation: full of silly superhero antics, nonstop raunchy humor, splashy, exaggerated gore, a towering, baby-faced kaiju, sincerity masked by a thin veneer of cynicism, a critique of the “protofascist libertarian idea of freedom,” and a heartfelt look at a group of damaged people who reluctantly find a new family in each other. It felt no need to connect to the larger DCU except for laying groundwork, focusing on Amanda Waller’s (Viola Davis) Taskforce X, or for a joke, including the appearance of the Justice League and cameos from Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller as Aquaman and the Flash.
But with the release of this summer’s Superman, directed by DC Studios’ new co-CEO James Gunn, which essentially resets the previously established DCU timeline, the second season of this spin-off show suddenly gained attention, not only for its story but also as a indicator of the new DC Studios’ shared world, production quality, tonal range, and more. In one of Gunn’s first statements after becoming co-CEO, he clarified that Peacemaker and parts of The Suicide Squad would carry over into this new universe, and he followed through on that promise with John Cena’s cameo as Peacemaker in Superman.
So, when Peacemaker Season 2 begins with a renamed “Previously in the DCU…” recap segment, it’s clear that Gunn is playfully acknowledging the significant burden and scrutiny the show now faces. What does “Previously in the DCU…” even mean anymore?
There is almost no precedent for the kind of cinematic gaslighting that the opening of Season 2 of Peacemaker attempts to pull on its audience, short of Dallas’s infamous “Dream Season.” We’ve seen silent recastings of actors in both the DCU and Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) that haven’t needed more than a wink and a nod, if that, but Peacemaker’s “Previously in the DCU…” takes it to a whole other level. Whether it aims to trigger a Mandela Effect or relies on the audience’s inattention, the nearly five-minute recap plays normally until suddenly the words “Justice Gang,” the formative name for the Justice League from this summer’s Superman, come out of Adebayo's (Danielle Brooks) mouth.
At first, I thought, “Oh, I don’t remember that moment, but it’s clear that Gunn must have liked that joke name for the Justice League and found a way to reincorporate the terminology into Superman.” But then, moments later, when recapping the appearance of Zack Snyder’s version of the Justice League in Peacemaker’s first season, the Justice Gang—including Superman, Supergirl, Mr. Terrific, and speaking roles for Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced)—are now in their place, as if they had always been part of Peacemaker’s story. From then on, the change goes uncommented on and manages to integrate the new Justice Gang characters into the episode more seamlessly than perhaps any other comic book property has so far, with direct references to the events of Superman from its theatrical release just weeks earlier.
Is this Peacemaker even the same character that we followed last season, or an alternate universe version where the events played out identically, save for its references to the Justice Gang? Should audiences expect an answer to this question? Does it matter? In some ways, I suspect it will matter for the Peacemaker show, if not narratively but thematically, as the shift to Gunn’s vision of the DCU becomes complete.
The proper start of the show rejoins Chris Smith, aka Peacemaker, asleep in his deceased father’s home and enduring his pet Eagly’s reign of pecking terror, desperate to go out and fly in the falling snow. Instead, Chris uses a code to reopen his father’s closet door, which he describes as a “quantum-unfolding storage area that leads to a dimensional nodule outside normal space,” allowing Eagly to spread his wings and fly. There, he encounters an unnamed creature with no previous DC Comics lore, listed only as a “Kyphotic Alien” (Dorian Kingi) in the show’s credits, who incinerates a cat before his eyes. The screeches of Eagly draw Chris further into the storage area, which previously seemed accessible only to Chris’ father, Auggie (Robert Patrick). He then finds his pet eagle/best friend clawing at a familiar door across from a workshop full of Peacemaker helmets—of the kind only his father could build.
With his mind reeling, Chris enters the 2-6-1-0-1-1 code into the new door and finds it works, opening to a high-end, beautifully furnished office lounge. Framed on the wall are newspaper articles, a key to the city, and a series of photographs of ”The Top Trio,” an alternate superhero team consisting of Peacemaker, his father, and a previously unseen hero.
And with that, Season 2 of Peacemaker kicks off with its new title sequence, set to Foxy Shazam’s “Oh Lord,” with that tantalizing tease of the multiverse left dangling. As viewers of Peacemaker Season 1 learned, the much-lauded opening title sequence of those episodes was not only a hilariously stoney-faced dance sequence, but also gave a clear look at the show’s expanded cast, including minor characters, and hinted at some of the future alliances among the characters, including a team of dancing actors who would eventually lead the antagonistic, parasitic, body-swapping aliens known as the Butterflies.
So, I think it’s fair to assume that this new opening could reveal a lot about the upcoming season, including multiple costume changes even within the same sequence (multiversal shenanigans?), returning and new faces, including Saturday Night Live-alumni Tim Meadows, a Dirty Dancing tribute that hints at a broader romance storyline between Chris and Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and our first clear look at the alternate White Dragon and the final member of “The Top Trio,” who isn’t based on any existing DC Comics character. But mainly, it’s a reassurance that Peacemaker hasn’t suddenly changed its tone with its expanded role in the DCU, and that it will stay just as irreverent as before. However, what’s different is also important— this sequence features a larger, flashier, and expanded cast, a colorful new stage, smooth camera work, sophisticated and dynamic lighting, and stunning pyrotechnics. This is a bigger-budget Peacemaker that has settled into its space and is more confident than ever. If the previous season was a surprisingly fun jaunt into a small corner of the DCU, this episode of Peacemaker cements the show’s status as a rare must-watch superhero program.
What’s true for the title sequence also applies to the rest of the episode, “The Ties That Grind.” Cinematographer Sam McCurdy returns from Season 1, and his work, which features richly shot interiors with a diverse range of looks, styles, and tones, reflects an increased budget. Gunn’s writing, too, feels less desperate to get to the joke and instead offers a more nuanced look at these developed characters, even if it resets some of the supporting cast’s established roles. I mean, who even is Dye-Beard, Economos (Steve Agee), without a partially dyed beard?
While Peacemaker Season 2 is still an ensemble show, this first episode focuses more on Chris’s journey than on his now-dissolved 11th Street Kids team, which includes John Economos, Leota Adebayo, and Adrian Chase’s alter ego, the ruthless Vigilante (Freddie Stroma). However, each character gets a meaningful update to check in on their current status after the events of the first season.
The story picks up six months later as Adebayo arrives to drive Chris from his father’s house to an interview to join the Justice Gang, after seemingly abandoning the alternate dimension he discovered in his father’s quantum storage closet (never trust shared storage spaces). The two catch each other and the audience up to speed with some fairly blunt exposition dumps that contain just enough Gunnisms to avoid feeling insulting. Her wife, Keeya (Elizabeth Faith Ludlow), is now her ex-wife, having left because she couldn’t handle Adebayo’s job, despite their reunion at the end of Season 1. Adebayo tells Chris, “I’m into hardcore shit now. Her not being able to accept that is like her not being able to accept me, right?” It sounds like Adebayo is deflecting, but either way, I’m grateful that we won’t have to spend this show’s time with another thinly-sketched, nagging wife character that has become a recurring trope across countless anti-hero shows and films.
On the other hand, Adebayo, having revealed her mother, Amanda Waller's, actions and criminal behavior while leading Task Force X, plans to start her own security consulting business, even if the graphic design on her business cards isn’t her passion. Chris takes this chance to probe into her friendship with Harcourt, which has fallen apart due to her whistleblowing. However, he’s mainly self-interested, as his romantic interests in Harcourt seem to have hit a snag after they had a brief moment of connection in Season 1’s finale.
The two arrive at Krank Toys, a nod to the Batman villain Toymaker from the 2004 animated series, depicted here as an abandoned shop in a rundown strip mall, with its entrance flanked by two oddly out-of-place guards. As they pull up, a woman (Brey Noelle) dressed in a sexy bunny costume, White Rabbit from DC Comics, bursts out of the shop’s doors and runs away with tears streaming down her face. When Peacemaker enters the shop, he faces Maxwell Lord, Guy Gardner’s Green Lantern, and Kenda Saunders’ Hawkgirl. Sean Gunn, James Gunn’s brother, reprises his role as the recast Maxwell Lord from Superman, after replacing Pedro Pascal’s version from Wonder Woman 1984. It seems that both Peacemaker and Superman were the only projects Pascal turned down in 2025.
The three start interviewing Chris, but because of a mistake with Guy’s microphone setup, he can hear them when they believe they are speaking privately. Chris quickly sizes up the three of them, as they hilariously lean into and mock all of his insecurities, including his bisexuality and his history of murder and assassination. When Chris opens up about the work he’s done to heal from the trauma of his brother’s accidental death at his own hands, they simply ignore him. Fed up, he points out the problem with their sound system, and as they bicker, he storms out the door without any interest in joining their Gang. The scene is funny, has a joke about genetalia, outstays its welcome by a hair, and will probably offend – classic Gunn.
Harcourt’s day is going as poorly as Chris’s. We join her talking to an NSA psychologist who refuses to clear her to work with the agency because, as he puts it, “you suffer from a severe form of toxic masculinity.” Harcourt is convinced that Amanda Waller is blacklisting her, having been rejected from every government agency from A to Z, and she storms out of his office. In her car, she vents her violent anger on her dashboard, enough to draw blood. For the normally composed Harcourt, this change in her behavior is a significant departure intended to alter how we perceive her, but it felt like too sharp a turn for me. That said, for a character who mostly served as a badass love interest for Peacemaker and an audience surrogate last season, it makes sense that Gunn would want to give her character more to wrestle with in Season 2.
That includes her relationship with Peacemaker, who she finds waiting outside her apartment. He claims he's there to see how her interview went, indicating a continued familiarity between them. However, it’s soon revealed that they share an unspoken history from between seasons, which reignites tensions. It's strongly implied that they got drunk on a party boat and hooked up, but rather than bringing them together, it has driven them apart, with Harcourt resisting Chris’s further advances.
Frustrated by both rejections, Chris angrily returns home and indulges in every drug in his house, including the cocaine he’s saved “for a rainy day.” In his drug-fueled state, Chris then hosts an orgy (he’s ambitious!) in which Gunn and an army of extras aim to utterly demolish Marvel’s sexless stories with countless nude, screen-filling, full-frontal bodies in every sexual position imaginable. Did you see that “HBO” is back in the name of this streaming platform? If not, consider this episode its red-carpet—and matching drapes—re-debut.
Outside Chris’s home, Economos conducts illegal surveillance on the house while fielding nonstop, insipid phone calls from “Vij,” their lonely Vigilante friend who has sneaked out from his shift at Fennel Fields. But their call is cut off when Economos receives an alert from his radar, and thus a call from A.R.G.U.S. (Advanced Research Group Uniting Super-Humans), the organization run by Waller that oversaw the now dismantled Task Force X. On the line is General Rick Flagg Sr. (Frank Grillo), whose son, Colonel Rick Flagg Jr. (Joel Kinnaman), was killed by Peacemaker during The Suicide Squad. His team has found signs of cross-dimensional activity similar to what they observed during the “Luthor incident,” when Lex nearly destroyed Metropolis in the climax of Superman.
Economos, who has seen Peacemaker peering through the portal door, lies to Flagg to keep suspicions away from his friend. However, Flagg doesn’t trust him and assigns another unnamed agent to the case, elevating it to “A.R.G.U.S. Priority One,” which, based on his assistant’s reaction, seems more serious than it sounds. Economos, trying to avoid a confrontation, seeks out Adebayo to convince her to talk to Chris on his behalf.
Meanwhile, Peacemaker re-enters the quantum space and uses the code to open the door back to the alternate universe he discovered six months earlier. He ventures further into the home until a car pulls up outside, and an older, living alternate version of his brother, Kevin (David Denman), the third member of “The Top Trio,” surprises him. “I thought you were in Blüdhaven,” he says to Chris, referring to the fictional Atlantic city in the DC Comics where an adult Dick Grayson fights crime as Nightwing.
What follows is a reunion between Peacemaker, his father, and his brother, where he gets a glimpse of a world where his family wasn’t completely destroyed by their toxic masculinity, racism, and violence. It follows the pattern of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, where the second chapter in an ongoing “found family” story revisits previously healed wounds by exploring lingering family trauma. In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Peter Quill rediscovered his long-lost father, who initially seemed like the perfect male role model, until his misogynistic and genocidal side revealed itself. It’s hard to say whether Peacemaker Season 2 will explore similar ideas, but thematically, it seems that Gunn may use this as an opportunity to use the character of Peacemaker to explore the DCU’s spiritual and narrative reboot.
What I assume this new universe presupposes is: What if Chris had never accidentally killed his brother? With enough time and care, would his family have been able to heal and form the openly emotional bonds that this alternate universe version of the Smiths displays, as they joke about Chris’s adventures with imps? Together, Keith and Auggie point at Chris, “You gotta love that boy. Life would have been a hell of a lot easier, but half as much fun without him.” Chris is presented with the family he always wished he had, but his insecurities as a hero, a son, and a brother will assuredly tell him that he’s undeserving of such happiness. The two men tell Chris that they love him. Auggie tugs on his ear, and Keith implores him to get back with his ex, leaving him to do his “face exercises” alone in the office.
The DCU faces a similar challenge. After enduring a dark and apocalyptic vision under Zack Snyder's leadership, how will this new DCU adapt when guided by someone who believes in redemption and the innate good of people?
Meanwhile, back in the prime universe, Harcourt wanders into a motorcycle bar looking for trouble. She quickly finds it and unleashes her rage as the whole bar joins in to stop her in a wildly choreographed, bare-knuckle brawl. The various men are eventually able to gang up on her, kicking her in the stomach until she can no longer move. Together, they throw her onto the sidewalk outside, where she lies, covered in blood, and smiles. Her newfound penchant for violence as an emotional release is, I think, meant to remind us of the Peacemaker we met back in The Suicide Squad.
As Chris explores his alternate family’s home, he discovers his alternate self’s room, which features a “Hanoi Roxx” poster—this universe’s version of “Hanoi Rocks,” the band the 11th Street Kids bonded over in Season 1. On the dresser is a picture of him and Harcourt together, as a couple. There’s no time to ponder how this reality came to be because his alternate self, dressed fully as Peacemaker, finds him and presses a gun to the back of his head.
Chris flees as the alt-Peacemaker fires “magic [homing] stars” that tear into his back. They fight through the storage room, with alt-Peacemaker gaining the upper hand and poised to deliver a killing blow when Chris activates his jet-pack and sends him flying toward the ceiling, where he is skewered by a metal stalactite (who builds these things?). The episode ends with a scene only the WWE could dream of: John Cena cradling another John Cena’s dying body. For Chris, he now has the chance to insert himself into a reality where he has everything he's ever wanted.
How will he fuck this up?
Stray observations:
According to the TV Tropes wiki, which does not provide a source, the passcode for the quantum unfolding storage area, 2-6-1-0-1-1, is an homage to Robert Patrick. He is the first Charter Holder of the 101st chapter of the Booze Fighters Motorcycle Club, identified by BF1011. Since B is the second letter of the alphabet and F is the sixth, that would then become 261011.
Keith Smith tells Chris that he should get back with his ex, Harcourt, and that she shouldn’t be seeing “that jarhead.” Given that Rick Flagg Sr. is in this show and Peacemaker killed his son, it only makes sense that, in this alternate universe, Harcourt would be dating Rick Flagg Jr. and that Joel Kinnaman will reprise his role from Suicide Squad and The Suicide Squad.
Dan Gvozden is a film and comics critic who lives and works in Baltimore. If you enjoyed this review, check out his Spider-Man podcast, The Amazing Spider-Talk.