The main conversation surrounding Peacemaker Season 2 has been all about how the DC Studios series will fit into James Gunn’s new DCU. With the first season spinning off The Suicide Squad and involving members of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, how will it all fit together? Will it launch the DCU in new directions, or take it backwards? Where does Peacemaker, aka Chris Smith (John Cena) fit into all this? But like Gunn’s Superman, which was also plagued by questions of “Greater Cinematic Universe” pre-release, but saw all that evaporate once people actually got to see the critically acclaimed movie, Peacemaker Season 2 dispels any questions about franchise filmmaking (or in this case, TV making) by crafting a season of TV that is sweeter, sadder, funnier, more focused and just overall better than the season before it.
In the eight-episode season (the first five were provided for review), the “11th Street Kids” — the de facto team at the center of the show — is dealing with the fact that, despite saving the world from an alien invasion in Season 1, their lives aren’t any better. In fact, they’re appreciably worse as something that should have gotten them out of their doldrums, instead stuck them right back in it. Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) is on the outs with her girlfriend and out of a job after revealing her mother, Amanda Waller’s (Viola David) misdeeds in the Season 1 finale. John Economos (Steve Agee) is avoiding his friends and toeing the corporate line, desperate not to lose a job he hates. The lone hold-out is Adrian Chase (Freddie Stroma), who is just sort of doing his thing thanks to a season-long running joke about him being obsessed with – but never knowing – any animal facts.
The focal point of the season, though, is the title character and his romantic interest, Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland). If there’s one big fault with the episodes provided, it’s that the story is so squarely focused on Harcourt and Smith’s emotional journey, everything else either doesn’t hit that hard or falls by the wayside entirely. The cast is game, they’re clearly having a great time with each other. But everyone else is mostly moseying along in service of the main plot.
That main plot? While Harcourt devolves into a one-woman fight club after getting banned from every intelligence agency, Peacemaker is avoiding the trauma of killing his father (played by Robert Patrick) as well as having killed his brother when he was young. And compounding that, a humiliating audition for the guest stars The Justice Gang – as seen in the DCU’s Superman! – means he doesn’t even have being a hero to fall back on. Reverberating throughout the season, Rick Flag Jr’s (Joel Kinnaman) final line in The Suicide Squad after Peacemaker stabbed him in the heart – “Peacemaker… What a joke” – is the main motivator for our titular character.
Last season, we weirdly discovered that Peacemaker’s racist hick of a father had a pocket dimension with doors to 99 dimensions (98 other dimensions, plus the DCU). So in a drunken stupor, Peacemaker stumbles into one where mostly everything is the same… Except everyone loves him. He’s a hero. His whole life has everything he’s ever wanted. It’s the MacGuffin that drives the plot as the new head of ARGUS, Rick Flag Sr (Frank Grillo), wants to shut down any portals after one destroyed half of Metropolis in Superman. He also has a bone to pick with Peacemaker after the death of his son, of course. And consequently, while Peacemaker slowly realizes he can have the life he dreamed of somewhere else, things get significantly worse for everyone in his home dimension. Not only that, but his mere presence in the DCU makes everything more dangerous for his friends.
Cena plays this to the hilt, showing off his growing acting chops that go far beyond mere posing in the wrestling ring. In the prior movie and TV season, Peacemaker kind of was a joke. And while there were plenty of moments of pathos, this is the first time that feeling has really come through from the former wrestler. The character is very much the underdog here, and while it’s likely the overall outcome of the season will be a simple “accept the place you are,” Cena’s joy in the other dimension is infectious, and heartbreak in the main one, well, heartbreaking.
As mentioned, Holland (who got engaged and married to Gunn between seasons) gets the second most to do, and she plays it to the hilt as well. There’s real chemistry between Cena and Holland, and while her character, through various films and TV shows, has thus far been “angry lady,” like Peacemaker, Harcourt gets to let a visceral sadness creep around the edges of her performance. It’s also probably not too much of a spoiler to say that we get to see another side of Harcourt as well, also free of her deep-seated trauma. There, Holland acquits herself with aplomb, too.
By contrast, while Peacemaker Season 1 was met with acclaim, it often relied on Gunn’s baser instincts: a lot of people sitting around and insulting each other for laughs, and a more macho baseline that matched with the greater DCEU. Not to undermine what I said in the opening, but perhaps part of the ethos of the DCU, at least based on Superman and Peacemaker season 2, is a kinder universe where people care about each other. There’s a fair amount of razzing that still goes on, but it’s softened this time around. It’s less cringe, less punching down, a little sweeter – and therefore, funnier.
And Gunn also – see above regarding Peacemaker and Harcourt – channels his best romantic instincts, which we saw on display in Superman with Clark (David Corenswet) and Lois (Rachel Brosnahan), or in the MCU with Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and Gamora (Zoë Saldaña). The Harcourt/Peacemaker romance always felt one-sided in Season 1, a kind of gross dude shooting his shot but mistaking possible friendship for possible romance. That’s still present here, but you can feel the puppy dog yearning coming off Peacemaker in every frame, as he slowly chips away at Harcourt’s steely resolve. To be clear, Peacemaker is a sexually fluid gentleman who respects women; he would never make a move on Harcourt if she didn’t want him to. This is about whether two very different people can ever meet somewhere in the middle.
As for the new cast, Tim Meadows, who joins as ARGUS agent Langston Fleury, is, as always, the best, an effortlessly hilarious performer with so many weird quirks he could power a show of his own. Sol Rodríguez is adequate as Sasha Bordeaux, a no-nonsense ARGUS agent who does point to Gunn’s general weakness in writing female characters… She’s not much more than an antagonist, a la The Engineer (María Gabriela De Faría) in Superman. And Michael Rooker is delightful as always as the extremely racist caricature Red St. Wild, who is hunting Peacemaker’s all-powerful sidekick Eagly.
Don’t worry, if you are here for the lore dump, nearly every episode is packed with Easter eggs and DC Comics references. There are plenty of surprises, too, that will thrill fans of the DCU, as well as the comics — and both The Suicide Squad and the Peacemaker series itself. But laudably, like Superman before it, that’s all there in service of the main story about the main character, and his emotional journey. Gunn has noted that this season both continues and expands the main story of the DCU started in Superman, so fans will certainly look through each frame for clues. But this isn’t an Easter egg hunt, it’s a TV show, first and foremost.
It’s also a TV show that is decidedly for adults only. The violence is extreme, and while relatively tastefully done, there is graphic, full-frontal nudity in multiple episodes and extreme sexual content. If you have kids who saw Superman and are excited to follow the new DCU? Umm… Maybe skip this one.
But that aside, the action is tightly directed, the jokes are laugh-out-loud funny, and the performances are heartfelt and lovely. Peacemaker may be a joke… But in Season 2, it’s a very good one.
Peacemaker Season 2 premieres Thursday, August 21 at 9pm ET on HBO Max.
Peacemaker Season 2 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
Peacemaker season 2 will officially premiere on HBO Max on Thursday, August 21. The season will be eight episodes long, with one episode premiering per week.
Here’s the full list of episodes in Peacemaker Season 2, with premiere dates:
- Thursday, August 21, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 1
- Thursday, August 28, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 2
- Thursday, September 4, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 3
- Thursday, September 11, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 4
- Thursday, September 18, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 5
- Thursday, September 25, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 6
- Thursday, October 2, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 7
- Thursday, October 9, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 8 *Season Finale*
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