Peacemaker (TV series)

Image
Caption	Intertitle from the first season's opening dance number
Based On	Characters from DC
Creator	James Gunn
Showrunner	James Gunn
Writer	James Gunn
Country	United States
Language	English
Num Seasons	2
Num Episodes	16
Runtime	33–58 minutes
Network	HBO Max
First Aired	2022-1-13
Last Aired	2025-10-09

Premise

The first season follows Chris Smith / Peacemaker after he recovers from the injuries he suffered during the events of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) film The Suicide Squad (2021). Peacemaker is forced to join the mysterious A.R.G.U.S. black ops squad "Project Butterfly", who are on a mission to identify and eliminate parasitic butterfly-like creatures who have taken over human bodies around the world. The second season is set in the DC Universe (DCU) after the events of the DCU film Superman (2025). It follows Peacemaker finding an alternate universe where he is a beloved hero alongside his brother and father.

Cast and characters

Main

• John Cena as Chris Smith / Peacemaker:
  A jingoistic vigilante who believes in achieving peace at any cost. Showrunner James Gunn called him a "piece of shit" and said he was a "superhero/supervillain/the world's biggest douchebag". In the second season, Gunn said the character was no longer a "total asshole" and had become less obnoxious and aggressive. Cena also plays an alternate heroic version of the character from Earth-2 in season 2, while Quinn Bennet portrays a younger Chris in season 1. Myles Benson portrays a younger Chris in season 2.
• Danielle Brooks as Leota Adebayo: The daughter of A.R.G.U.S. director Amanda Waller.
• Freddie Stroma as Adrian Chase / Vigilante: A self-proclaimed crimefighter who looks up to Peacemaker like an older brother. Stroma also portrays Earth-2 Vigilante in season 2.
• Chukwudi Iwuji as Clemson Murn / Ik Nobe Lok (season 1): A mercenary and the leader of Project Butterfly who reports to Waller.
• Jennifer Holland as Emilia Harcourt: An A.R.G.U.S. agent who has a complicated relationship with Chris. Holland also portrays Earth-2 Harcourt in season 2.
• Steve Agee as John Economos: An A.R.G.U.S. agent who provides tactical support.
• Robert Patrick as:
• Auggie Smith / White Dragon (season 1, guest season 2): Peacemaker's abusive white supremacist supervillain father who supplies him with technology to aid his mission.
• Auggie Smith / Blue Dragon (season 2): An alternate version of Peacemaker's father from Earth-2, who is a caring father and well-known superhero alongside Peacemaker and his brother Keith, who died in the main universe.
• Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr. (season 2): The new director of A.R.G.U.S. and the father of deceased Suicide Squad leader Rick Flag Jr. who Peacemaker killed.

Recurring

• Dee Bradley Baker as the voice of Eagly: Peacemaker's pet eagle who is also his sidekick and best friend.
• Elizabeth Ludlow as Keeya Adebayo: Leota's wife who is worrisome of Leota taking the job.
• Nhut Le as Hadley "Rip" Jagger / Judomaster: A martial-arts based bodyguard who protects the Butterflies and Royland Goff, and later becomes an A.R.G.U.S. agent. He has a personal vendetta against Peacemaker and Economos.
• Annie Chang as Sophie Song (season 1): An Evergreen police detective assigned to investigate the murder of Annie Sturphausen.
• Lochlyn Munro as Larry Fitzgibbon (season 1, guest season 2): An Evergreen police detective assigned to investigate the murder of Annie Sturphausen. Munro also plays Earth-2 Larry Fitzgibbon in season 2.
• Christopher Heyerdahl as Caspar Locke (season 1): An informant of Murn who poses as a police captain to keep Peacemaker out of prison.
• David Denman as Keith Smith / Captain Triumph (season 2): An alternative version of Chris' older brother in Earth-2 who died in the main universe as a child but is still alive in Earth-2. In Earth-2, he is a member of the Top Trio with his brother and father as Captain Triumph.
• Sol Rodríguez as Sasha Bordeaux (season 2): A cyborg A.R.G.U.S. agent assigned to track Peacemaker by Rick Flag Sr.
• Tim Meadows as Langston Fleury (season 2): An A.R.G.U.S. agent assigned to survey Peacemaker.
• Michael Rooker as Red St. Wild (season 2): An eagle hunter hired to kill Eagly by A.R.G.U.S. Rooker previously played Brian Durlin / Savant in The Suicide Squad (2021).
• Dorian Kingi as Kyphotic Alien (season 2): An alien who, like Peacemaker, owns a dimensional rift which is right next to Peacemaker's.
• Reinaldo Faberlle as Vega (season 2): An A.R.G.U.S. agent who raids Peacemaker's home.
• Brandon Stanley as Kline (season 2): An A.R.G.U.S. agent who raids Peacemaker's home and is nicknamed "Kewpie Doll" by Fleury.

Notable guests

• Antonio Cupo as Royland Goff (season 1): A U.S. Senator who is secretly a Butterfly.
• Rizwan Manji as Jamil (season 1): A janitor Peacemaker meets in the hospital who informs him that no one is looking for him.
• Lenny Jacobson as Evan Calaterra (season 1): A witness to Annie Sturphausen's death and Amber Calaterra's husband who was taken hostage by Peacemaker.
• Viola Davis as Amanda Waller (season 1): Leota Adebayo's mother who assigns her to Project Butterfly after Leota's business fails.
• Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry / Aquaman (season 1): A superhero and member of the Justice League with sonar and aquatic abilities who Peacemaker claims has intercourse with fish.
• Ezra Miller as Barry Allen / The Flash (season 1): A superhero and member of the Justice League with super speed.
• Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner / Green Lantern (season 2): An abrasive member of the Green Lantern Corps and the Justice Gang, replacing Aquaman due to the DCU reboot.
• Isabela Merced as Kendra Saunders / Hawkgirl (season 2): A member of the Justice Gang with wings and various melee weapons, who is reincarnated from an alien, replacing the Flash due to the DCU reboot.
• Sean Gunn as Maxwell Lord (season 2): A millionaire business magnate who provides funding to the Justice Gang.
• Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag Jr. (season 2): The former leader of the Suicide Squad, whom Peacemaker killed in Corto Maltese, and the former lover of Emilia Harcourt.
• Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, a billionaire inventor turned supervillain.

Episodes

Season 1 (2022)

Peacemaker season 1Peacemaker season 1

Season 2 (2025)

Peacemaker season 2Peacemaker season 2

Production

Development

While completing work on the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) film The Suicide Squad (2021) in August 2020, writer and director James Gunn began writing a spin-off television series centered on the character Peacemaker portrayed by John Cena. DC Films president Walter Hamada approached the filmmakers of the studio's film slate about creating interconnected spin-off television series for the streaming service HBO Max, and the service ordered Peacemaker straight-to-series in September 2020. Gunn was writing all eight episodes of the first season and directing five. He and Peter Safran were set as executive producers, with Cena as co-executive producer. The season was produced by Gunn's Troll Court Entertainment and the Safran Company in conjunction with Warner Bros. Television. Matt Miller joined as an additional executive producer in December 2020.

HBO Max announced a second season of Peacemaker in February 2022, with Gunn set to write and direct all episodes. That April, Discovery, Inc. and Warner Bros.' parent company WarnerMedia merged to become Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), led by president and CEO David Zaslav. The new company was expected to restructure DC Entertainment and Zaslav began searching for an equivalent to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige to lead the new subsidiary. Gunn and Safran were announced as the co-chairs and co-CEOs of the newly formed DC Studios at the end of October 2022. A week after starting their new roles, the pair had begun working with a group of writers to develop an eight-to-ten-year plan for a new DC Universe (DCU) that would be a "soft reboot" of the DCEU. Gunn and Safran said some cast members would return from The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker in the DCU, and a "rough memory" of those events would remain in the new universe. Because Gunn was busy with his new responsibilities, the second season of Peacemaker was put on hold by January 2023.

Later in 2023, Gunn said the second season was his next project after the DCU film Superman (2025), and said it would be part of the DCU's Chapter One: Gods and Monsters slate of content. He stated that the first season was not canon to the DCU, but later clarified that most of the first season's events are canon to the DCU except for specific moments such as the appearance of the DCEU's Justice League. In March 2024, Gunn said filming for the second season would take place simultaneously with Superman later that year, in the interest of getting the season ready as soon as possible, so he was no longer able to direct all of the episodes.

Casting

Filming

Filming for the first season began on January 15, 2021, in Vancouver, under the working title The Scriptures, with Michael Bonvillain as cinematographer. Gunn directed five of the season's episodes, with Jody Hill, Rosemary Rodriguez, and Brad Anderson each directing one. Production lasted 131 days total, and wrapped on July 11.

Filming for the second season began in April 2024, taking place simultaneously with production on Superman at Trilith Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, and concluded in November 2024. Sam McCurdy was the cinematographer. Gunn directed three of the season's episodes, with Greg Mottola, Peter Sollett, and Alethea Jones also directing.

Music

Gunn revealed in June 2021 that Clint Mansell and Kevin Kiner were composing the score for the series, after The Suicide Squad composer John Murphy was busy writing the score for Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023). A soundtrack album featuring Mansell and Kiner's score was released on February 18, 2022. The first season also features hair metal songs that Gunn selected and wrote into the scripts.

Release

Reception

Viewership

Deadline Hollywood reported that each episode of Peacemaker received higher viewership than the last, and HBO Max stated that the season finale's viewership was 44 percent higher than the series premiere's. According to the service, the finale broke the record for highest single day viewership of an HBO Max original episode. In the UK, where Peacemaker was not released until after it had finished airing in the US, the series was the third-most pirated for the first quarter of 2022 after HBO's Euphoria and Disney+'s The Book of Boba Fett.

According to Samba TV, 22% more U.S. households watched the premiere of the second season than the finale of the first season.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 91 critics' reviews for the first season are positive. The website's consensus reads: "John Cena's still in solid form as Peacemaker, leading a bloody good time that gives writer-director James Gunn full permission to let his freak flag fly." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the season a score of 70 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. The title sequence was praised, with critics also highlighting Gunn's sense of fun and "raunchy humor", and Cena's performance. Some found other characters and story elements to be underdeveloped.

On Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 147 critics' reviews for the second season are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Peacemakers second season goes multidimensional while still maintaining a singular focus on emotional stakes, seamlessly transporting this outrageous antihero into a fresh cinematic universe." Metacritic assigned the season a score of 78 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Critics found the season to be better than the first, calling it "just as dark, brutal, and silly" but more grounded, character focused, and heartwarming, with praise for Cena's performance and the wider cast.

Accolades

The first season was nominated for a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award, an Annie Award, three Critics' Choice Super Awards, two MTV Movie & TV Awards, and two Saturn Awards. The second season was nominated for a Critics' Choice Award, an Astra Creative Arts Award, and three Saturn Awards.

Podcasts

HBO Max and DC worked with production company Rooster Teeth to produce an official, aftershow-style video podcast titled Podly. Hosted by Fiona Nova and Ify Nwadiwe, each episode includes a recap of one of the first season's episodes as well as interviews with cast and crew. The video podcast was made available to stream on HBO Max and YouTube, with an audio-only version available via audio platforms.

Gunn announced Peacemaker: The Official Podcast with James Gunn in July 2025, a new companion podcast for the series featuring himself and the cast. It begins with a rewatch of the first season, including discussion of what parts of the first season are DCU canon, followed by a new podcast episode after each of the second season's episodes. The podcast is being made available on HBO Max, YouTube, and audio platforms.

Spin-offs

In January 2021, James Gunn said he had ideas for more The Suicide Squad television spin-offs beyond Peacemaker, and confirmed that he was working on another one a year later. In May 2022, a series featuring Amanda Waller was revealed, with Viola Davis in negotiations to reprise her DCEU role. Christal Henry was writing the series, which was expected to build off Waller's guest appearances in Peacemaker. The next month, Gunn said the series that he had revealed earlier was separate from a potential Amanda Waller project though there would be "some blending" of characters from Peacemaker in both. On January 31, Gunn and Safran unveiled the first projects from their DCU slate, which begins with Chapter One: Gods and Monsters. The second project in the slate was Waller, with Davis confirmed to be reprising her role. Henry was revealed to be working on the overall story for the DCU with Gunn and some other writers, and was set as co-showrunner of Waller alongside Jeremy Carver. The spin-off is expected to be made after the second season of Peacemaker.

In 2024, a tie-in non-canonical comic, Peacemaker Presents: The Vigilante/Eagly Double Feature! was announced. The comic centered around Peacemaker characters Vigilante and Eagly in two stories. Gunn was a story consultant on the comic, which was written by Rex Ogle and Tim Seeley with art by Matteo Lolli and Mitch Gerads. The comic released monthly from March through August 2025.

References

External links

• at WarnerBros.com
• at DC.com
• Peacemaker on HBO Max