Peacemaker: DC’s James Gunn Clarifies the New DCU Timeline

James Gunn is clearing up confusion about the new DC Universe after fans noticed a minor discrepancy between Creature Commandos and Peacemaker. Ahead of the final episode of The Penguin, Max on Sunday debuted a sizzle reel revealing a look at the new Max and HBO shows set to premiere on the service in 2025, including season 2 of the DC Studios series Peacemaker. The footage offered a glimpse at Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr. (father of Joel Kinnaman’s Suicide Squad character Rick Flag Jr.), who will first appear in the adult animated series Creature Commandos before making his live-action debut in the Superman movie written and directed by Gunn.

Asked whether Grillo’s black hair indicates Peacemaker season 2 takes place before Creature Commandos — the animated version of Grillo’s character is silver-haired with matching beard — Gunn clarified that the inconsistency is due to Grillo’s role as Bill Bevilaqua on Tulsa King season 2. Both shows began filming in April 2024 in Georgia.

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“[Peacemaker 2] is after [Superman] which is after [Creature Commandos],” Gunn wrote on Threads. The three projects are set in order of release: Creature Commandos season 1 (Dec. 5 on Max), followed by Superman (July 11, 2025 in theaters) and Peacemaker season 2 (later in 2025 on Max).

In 2023, the DC Studios co-chief announced that actors cast in the DCU would play their characters in animation and live-action. Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. will be the first character to make the jump from animation when he shows up in Superman and then Peacemaker.

“He is a really cool character that Frank has been molding,” Gunn previously told EW of the character linking all three projects. “The character’s also in Superman, and he’s an incredibly important part in Peacemaker.”

“He is one of the primary characters in Peacemaker season 2. So we get to see this character from different angles, and he is not simple,” Gunn noted. “This isn’t just a good guy, not at all. We see all different sides of his character. He is morally a complex human being. Grillo is somebody who I’ve known for a little while, and I’ve wanted to work with him for a long time. He was one of the first people that I talked to when I took over the studio, like ‘we’re going to find something cool for you,’ and now he is everywhere.”

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As for any continuity concerns, Gunn has assured fans the new DCU canon “won’t be confusing.” While Creature Commandos is the first series set in the new universe, it’s Superman that marks the “true start” of the DCU. While some of the events depicted in The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker season 1 may be canon, the projects themselves are not.

“There are references to things that happened in the past, and those references then become canon in the DCU because we mention them,” Gunn explained at New York Comic Con.

Written and created by Gunn, the seven-episode Creature Commandos follows a secret team of incarcerated monsters recruited for missions deemed too dangerous for humans. In addition to Grillo as Flag Sr., the series features the voices of Zoe Chao (The Afterparty) as Nina Mazursky, David Harbour (Thunderbolts*) as Frankenstein, Indira Varma (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning) as The Bride, Alan Tudyk (Moana 2) as Dr. Phosphorus, and Sean Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) as Weasel and GI Robot.