Peacemaker's Production Designer Reveals The Art Of The Easter Egg

What goes into creating alternative dimensions? In Peacemaker Season 2, Chris Smith (John Cena) has a personal crisis on nearly infinite Earths, which created not just a compelling superhero character arc but also added new layers to the new DCU. While new episodes were airing earlier this year, fans were trying to freeze-frame different moments, with the hopes of unlocking the secrets of various Easter eggs. And now that the season is over, the secrets of the series are out.

Inverse recently caught up with award-winning production designer of Peacemaker, Kalina Ivanov, to get some behind-the-scenes details on what went into making the various aspects of Season 2 click. Inanov revealed some behind-the-scenes concept art for various aspects of the series, seen here, for the first time.

As a very experienced production designer who had worked on The Penguin before working on Peacemaker, Ivanov has unique insights into various aspects of the DCU and how James Gunn is building out various aesthetics for different stories and characters. Ivanov reveals to Inverse her processes for working on Peacemaker, how it differed from The Penguin and her colleagues’ work on Superman, and exactly what goes into the art of making the perfect comic book Easter egg.

Mild spoilers ahead.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

How did working on The Penguin differ from Peacemaker? I imagine Peacemaker was slightly more over-the-top from a design perspective?

The Penguin and Peacemaker were total opposites from a design point of view. In The Penguin, we were convincing the audience that this was their grand city that had been decimated. We wanted everyone to feel the destruction left by the Riddler’s bombs, and we went to great lengths to conjure environments that were believable. We brought in over 40 tons of dirt for the streets to create a grimy reality. It was a portrait of a great city in decay, where the rich had not lived on the streets, and they luxuriated in villas outside the city.

In contrast, Peacemaker was set in suburbia, in Washington State. It was a small town story — and the design certainly reflected that. Every character in the story lived in smaller homes or a motel room. There was a twist when we entered the alternate universe. Then the design reached out to different dimensions and extraordinary heights, such as Auggie's Mansion, Candyland, the Hieronymus Bosch planet, and the Zombie planet.

How did you go about creating some of the newspaper articles and band posters in the alternate universe?

There are quite a few little blink-and-you 'll-miss-it Easter eggs there! It was a very laborious process designing the band posters. James Gunn cared tremendously about them and all the Top Trio memorabilia. Some of it was scripted, and some of it was contributed by the art department. James Gunn really paid attention to how we designed the poster for Hanoi Roxx, which was made of the five real guys from the band Hanoi Rocks, as well as the poster for Deaf Leopard, which had the words “pour some honey on me,” instead of the [real] Def Leppard’s “pour some sugar on me.”

The discussions were intense and very satisfying. The rest he left up to me to design, and I had a lot of fun with Scorpionz and The Cruel Interventions, and so on. You can clearly see the bands we were spoofing. The memorabilia was also scripted, so we had to follow the writing. All the Easter eggs were written by James Gunn.

Was there ever specific guidance from James Gunn to match the look of this show with that of the new Superman film? If so, how did that aesthetic guide your process?

We were on the same lot in Atlanta, and I’m friends with the production designer on Superman, Beth Mickle, which made it very easy to get the references we needed. The biggest piece from the movie was Lex Luthor’s Comms Hub, which, for Superman, was suspended 30 feet in the air because it was a part of the Lex Luthor Corporation skyscraper.

In our story, the Comms Hub was secured in an undisclosed government warehouse after it had fallen down and broken into pieces. To show that, I added a layer of plastic obscuring the entryway. Another layer of dust was added by our scenics.

The whole feeling was not the glamour of Superman, but rather it felt like a construction zone. I then created all the see-through tents with medical equipment, decontamination pools, and the gate to the alternate universes, which stood in the middle of the warehouse. I’m very proud of insisting on the clear tents — which made it more difficult for our set decorator, Andrea Doyle, to find — but I knew it was going to be magical. James Gunn loved that set, that was the biggest reward for me and my team.

What was the hardest thing to design?

That’s an easy question — the opening sequence! I must have presented five different ideas to James, and he was in the middle of Superman! I kept taking a crack at it and felt responsible because the opening sequence for Season 1 was such a hit. Then, I came up with the idea of neon tubes in orange and turquoise to represent the alternate universe, animated them, and the rest is history. Our supervising art director, Drew Monahan, did all the illustrations for that sequence.

What's one piece that you're most proud of in designing that you haven't been able to talk about?

I’m very proud of coming up with the idea of a billboard from which Peacemaker/Chris jumped into the DMV building in Episode 3. Originally, it was just the roof of the building he was leaping off of. James Gunn loved the concept, and he suggested a fictitious band, The Mighty Crabjoys. We ran with it, and our lead graphic artist, Jenn Moye, had fun making the heads come out of the contours of the board.

Peacemaker Season 2 streams on HBO Max.