Peacemaker season 2: What James Gunn and the cast have said so far

Peacemaker’s team has avoided a complete apocalypse, killed the cow, and yelled at a few superheroes on their way out. Peacemaker has officially been granted a second season, which means he will be able to shout expletives once again.

James Gunn calls Peacemaker “one of the true highlights of my life, both professionally and otherwise.” But that’s not the only statement he’s made on season 2. Gunn has spoken very highly of the TV-making process, and never hidden his optimism — and plans — for continuing the Peacemaker story with John Cena in the titular role.

“Being a TV show, you really do have more time to delve much deeper into these characters and much more deeply into the drama and comedy of them,” Gunn told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year. “So it has a lot of similarities [to The Suicide Squad], but it’s even more grounded, more natural and more real. It’s still within a big science-fiction storyline that lasts for one season. The main storyline lasts for that season, so that doesn’t mean there’s only one season of Peacemaker.”

Team Peacemaker is gone in season 1.

Photo: Katie Yu/HBO Max

We at least know that Leota (Danielle Brooks) and Chris are officially “BFFs” (sorry, Vigilante). Chris feeds Goff the butterfly, and sees his dad. (More on that later). Nhut Lee, Judomaster, lives on to face the next day, although he is still heartbroken about his lost butterfly friends. Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) is gone — as both a butterfly and a human, seemingly — so it seems the team will be on their own to figure out the next antagonist.

Harcourt, who is recovering from her fight against butterflies and was almost dead in the process, shares a sweet moment at Chris’ hospital bedside. Jennifer Holland tells Polygon she wasn’t completely sure how Harcourt would feel in that moment about herself, but seeing Chris at her bedside undeniably wore through her defenses.

“I think what Harcourt’s going through in that moment is kind of like […] Oh my gosh, I didn’t know it could feel so good to be cared for, you know, because she just has never really allowed anything like that in her life,” Holland says.

Agee was amazed that his character received as much emotion in the closing chapter of the story as any other actor, and that it involved a beard that he loathed. “As a character actor, you know, my career is usually boiled down to walking in at the end of someone else’s scene with a mouthful of food and saying something stupid and then they cut to a commercial,” Agee says. “So this was huge.”

As for what Economos was doing at Belle Reve penitentiary — well, even Agee is not sure what to make of that. “I don’t know if that’s his office, or if he has a new job,” Agee says. “It was still a sweet moment where he’s now back to work and he’s not being made fun of.”

What will Peacemaker 2 and its spinoff series be all about?

Photo: Katie Yu/HBO Max

Of course, in terms of full details Gunn’s keeping mum — about both the outline for season 2 of PeacemakerThe other Suicide Squad HBO Max has a spinoff currently in development

“I can’t say anything. It is connected to this universe, and I don’t think it will be the same genre as Peacemaker, it won’t be as much a comedy as Peacemaker, but it will be in the same universe,” Gunn told Deadline.

What did he learn? It has said, it’s clear he’s interested in using PeacemakerChris Smith continues to explore the depths of his emotions. He decides not to betray his friends, but instead to side with the Butterfly aliens in the final. What’s more, he waits in the hospital for days to make sure Harcourt was OK.

While Holland says Gunn isn’t “in a stage where he’s sharing” details about what season 2 holds for Chris Smith, he’s clearly built out meaningful friendships with his teammates that make him reconsider his own blind self-hatred. It’s also the sort of thing Gunn feels he can only do on TV.

“I couldn’t have Peacemaker and Harcourt’s relationship in a movie, because you would have to explain what it is within two hours,” Gunn tells Polygon. “And that’s not what the relationship is. It’s much more complex than that.”

For Holland, Harcourt’s injuries set her up to have a much more complicated relationship with her role on the team, especially since she’ll probably be the one stepping up to be the leader.

“Seeing her go through that, that period of recovery and learning to walk again, I think she really just is stripped down to like her most human vulnerable state,” says Holland, who thinks it perfectly sets up a new chapter where Harcourt lets her walls down even more. “I’d like to see Harcourt have to face herself a little bit more, because I think that she privately learns some things throughout this series, and she sort of privately goes through a bit of a journey.”

Agee, meanwhile, is hoping to get a new beard (“I’ll be happy with whatever he chooses. I just don’t want to have that ugly dyed beard when I’m walking around town by myself anymore.”) At the very least, he notes, it might be time for a new opening dance routine: “There’s so many people in that dance that are not in the show anymore.”

Can Amanda Waller get her way with the DCEU?

Photo: Katie Yu/HBO Max

All three of the missions led by Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller have led to Waller losing control of the team. Whether she’d return in season 2, after her daughter Leota went public to clear Peacemaker’s name and the full details of Operation Butterfly, remains to be seen. But after losing a Suicide Squad and (probably) facing a public inquisition, it seems safe to say that she’ll come back either harsher than ever, or with much scarier higher-ups to back her up.

Agee claims that Davis was too busy working on other projects, so her scenes were shot in separate locations. He would like to see Davis or Waller in DCEU, however.

“I know she keeps getting the short end of the stick at the end of everything she’s doing lately, but I think there’s a world where she can kind of triumph.”

Peacemaker is seeing his father, who died years ago.

Photo: Katie Yu/HBO Max

That’s likely playing off the original Christopher Smith/Peacemaker’s psychosis (or, at least, one of the original Peacemakers). He is akin to the AuggieSmith of PeacemakerHe was, however, a Nazi.

Most of his motivation stemmed from trying to make up for his father’s Nazi history. And in the mid-’80s reboot of the character, Christopher Smith believed that his father’s spirit (as well as the ghosts of those he killed) gathered inside his helmet and criticized him. Given the season 1 finale has Peacemaker shoot a poison dart at a hallucination of his dad only to find a lost helmet buried beneath the leaves, it seems Robert Patrick will get to hang around doing the same as Peacemaker’s dad in season 2.

What is Eagly going to do next?

This is a great opportunity to continue being an integral part of the team.