PEACEMAKER Season 2: James Gunn Teases Huge Cameos, a SUPERMAN Tie-In, and DCU Connections
James Gunn is not holding back when it comes to Peacemaker Season 2. With the DCU getting a full-blown reboot, Gunn is making sure Peacemaker thrives in his future DC plans. In a new interview with EW, Gunn shed some light on what fans can expect, and it’s a lot.
The recently released trailer already gave us a glimpse of what's coming, including the official debut of characters like Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner and Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl. But those cameos? That’s just the beginning. Gunn said:
“I developed it along the way, in conjunction with the other DC projects that we're doing, so it's very much connected to Superman and it's very much connected to what comes after.
“I had a rough idea of what I was going to do, but it was actually quite different than what the show ended up being.”
One of the key connective tissues between Peacemaker and the larger DCU is a piece of tech introduced in Season 1 called the Quantum Unfolding Chamber or QUC, which was created by Peacemaker’s deeply problematic father, White Dragon.
This pocket-dimension technology is apparently the center of Season 2’s story and will carry over into Gunn’s Superman film. Gunn shared:
“You've seen what we call the QUC, the Quantum Unfolding Chamber, in the first season of Peacemaker, and we see more about that technology in Superman.
“The QUC is the center of the story in Peacemaker season 2... We see a lot of different characters from Superman in the [season], [including] Isabela and Nathan and Sean, and then we see a bunch of other characters later on in the season from other parts of the DCU and from Superman.”
He then teased:
“There might even be one really, really, really big cameo near the end of the show.”
Naturally, this opens the door for a lot of wild possibilities like alternate timelines, doppelgängers, retcons, and whatever else Gunn’s imagination is cooking up behind the scenes.
As for Peacemaker himself, we’re picking up “roughly” two years after the events of Season 1, and Chris Smith has developed a bit of an ego. Having saved the world from the Butterflies, he thinks he’s ready for the big leagues.
“We come into season 2 with Peacemaker knowing that he saved the world from the Butterflies. He thinks he's a big star now, and he should be a real superhero.
“And we see at the very beginning of episode 1 that he's meeting with the group of superheroes from Superman, and he's basically interviewing for membership in the group. But they just mock him the entire time, so he's not taken seriously.”
Gunn goes on to say:
“He's still considered a punchline among all of the other metahumans, so he's starting the season in a bad place. As are all of our heroes, all of the 11th Street kids — well, everybody but Vigilante [Freddie Stroma], who just always seems to be okay with everything.”
Warner Bros. describes Season 2 as continuing “the story of Christopher ‘Chris’ Smith, aka Peacemaker, the vigilante Super Hero as he struggles to reconcile his past with his newfound sense of purpose while continuing to kick righteous evil-doer butt in his misguided quest for peace at any cost.”
So, we’ve got big cameos coming, Superman connections, dimension-hopping tech, and Peacemaker still being a lovable jackass. I’m excited to see how this plays out and I hoipe that Gunn sticks the landing with his big an ambitious plans.