Peacemaker Season 2 Is The Multiverse Done Right
The DC series dabbles in revisionist history and tells a heartbreaking multi-dimensional story.
It’s very clear that Peacemaker is where the new DCU spent its awkward phase. Season 1 adopted parts — not all — of The Suicide Squad as canon under James Gunn’s new tenure as DC Studios co-president, and Season 2 doubles down on this by cherrypicking more of The Suicide Squad and even changing some of Peacemaker Season 1.
It’s confusing, but it’s all done in the quest for a blank slate for new fans, an entry point where anyone can get stuck into the DCU without having to consult anything else. Thankfully, that’s exactly what Peacemaker Season 2 is: an entry point that delivers a DC primer while also delivering a touching story. It proves itself as truly belonging to the new franchise with a story that’s as affecting as it is influential, even for the newbie diving in right after watching Superman.
Peacemaker’s past trauma takes the spotlight with a multiversal twist in Season 2.
Peacemaker follows Chris Smith (John Cena), a vigilante who uses his excellent combat skills to attain peace at any cost. In Season 1, he got caught up with ARGUS, the bureau behind the events of The Suicide Squad. In Season 2, he has much loftier goals: to join The Justice Gang, a simple goal that provides some early levity (and further cameos by Guy Gardner and Hawkgirl). But quickly, Chris realizes he’s got bigger problems than climbing the superheroic career ladder. The new director of ARGUS is Rick Flag, Sr., and his first order of business is to read the sealed files surrounding the murder of his son that list Peacemaker as the culprit, another plot point lifted from Gunn’s The Suicide Squad.
Now, Chris is firmly in the sights of ARGUS, and that means not being able to trust anyone in his inner circle. But one day, while exploring the multidimensional door his dad established as a makeshift superheroic lair, he stumbles on a Monsters, Inc.-style door leading to a library/trophy room for something called “the Top Trio.”
It turns out this room belongs to another universe, one that is just like the original but “better,” and it quickly becomes a safe haven for Chris. But as we’ve learned from every story that has ever involved a multiverse, crossing the streams has its consequences.
Chris still has his gang — but ARGUS is now out for blood.
James Gunn has long teased that Peacemaker Season 2 will contain clues as to the future of the DCU as a whole, so it’s easy to assume that means we’ll get more multiversal stories in the future. If that’s true, then this series is a good omen of what’s to come. There’s no complicated quantum physics to deal with: the multiverse is used for emotional stakes, not some grand sci-fi plotline. It’s like if Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was just about Wanda Maximoff moving to another parallel universe to be with her children and live a quiet life with them.
That said, not all of Peacemaker Season 2 (for which critics received the first 5 episodes of 8) is emotional. This is very clearly James Gunn’s release valve for his sillier ideas that didn’t make the cut of Superman, like how ARGUS agent Fleury (Tim Meadows) is “bird-blind,” meaning he sees all birds as the same shape and size, making Chris’ bald eagle sidekick Eagly a particularly sore subject. In fact, Eagly has one of the most prominent — and silliest — subplots in the season, evoking a certain facet of Game of Thrones more than DC Comics. There are also some truly inspired action sequences, with the same creativity in the combat you’d normally see in slasher movies.
Frank Grillo plays grieving father Rick Flagg Sr. in Peacemaker Season 2.
Peacemaker may be suffering the brunt of the DCU’s growing pains, but it benefits from the success of Superman. Compared to the MCU’s tendency to make its TV shows feel like movies divided into chapters, this series is the perfect amount of integrated into the main canon: Superman is only mentioned as “the Luthor Incident” or “what happened in Metropolis,” and the events of Peacemaker introduce and flesh out what may happen in the future, but not in a way that makes it required viewing. It’s the sweet spot of what role TV spinoffs should play in a franchise: enhancing the story of the movies, not requiring it.
If Superman and Peacemaker Season 2, the first live-action series and movie of James Gunn’s DCU, are our sign of what’s to come ahead, then clearly we’re in safe hands. Chris Smith walks through the multiverse so, presumedly, a future hero can run, and he still has the wiggle room to get a little weird with it.
