The DCU is officially about to start with the release of Creature Commandos, but James Gunn has already confirmed that the first season of Peacemaker will be canon in the new universe. Well, most of it.
In an interview with IGN, Gunn explicitly spoke about the canon status of Peacemaker, confirming that John Cena’s antihero series will still have happened in the DCU’s continuity. That’s not exactly a surprise.
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First of all, Gunn is overseeing the production of Season 2 of Peacemaker as part of the DCU, so the first season had to fit into the universe somehow. Furthermore, the Creature Commandos trailer confirmed that Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) is using monsters as soldiers because she’s not allowed to use humans anymore. That’s a likely consequence of Waller’s secret becoming public domain after her daughter, Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), talked to the press at the end of Peacemaker Season 1.
Nevertheless, while Gunn’s comments officially brought Peacemaker into DCU canon, he opened a new can of worms. That’s because the DC Studios co-head revealed that the Justice League cameo will be scrapped from the timeline and that Season 2 will directly address the change.
How Can Season 2 of Peacemaker Erase the Justice League Cameo?
After Peacemaker and his team manage to end the Butterflies’ invasion, the Justice League arrives at the scene, too late to help. The joke is that Earth’s mightiest heroes were not called for backup fast enough, giving low-tier vigilantes the time to clean up the alien mess. It makes sense this scene is no longer canon, as Jason Momoa’s Aquaman and Ezra Miller’s Flash are not part of the DCU. This raises the question of how Season 2 can address this incongruity, erase the cameo, and still make sense.
The way we see it, Gunn has three potential paths to follow. The messy one is to introduce a multiversal change in Season 2 of Peacemaker, making its titular character move to a different timeline where everything but that scene happened. That would be problematic, as it can confuse people who don’t care about the change in command that happened when Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC Studios.
Another possibility is that Gunn will reshoot the scene with characters and actors already confirmed as part of the DCU. So, instead of Miller’s Scarlet Speedster, the new version of the cameo could feature David Corenswet’s Superman. Or maybe even some less important heroes, such as Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner and Anthony Carrigan’s Metamorpho.
The easiest way to deal with it is to have Peacemaker recap the events of Season 1 and have someone else interrupt him and explain that the cameo never happened. It’s just a lie John likes to tell to inflate his ego, as he wants people to believe he stood his moral ground against the mighty Justice League. That’s a simple solution that fits the humorous tone of the show while being enough to retcon a single scene.
More importantly, though, if the rest of Peacemaker is canon, Gunn inadvertently confirms the DCU existence of multiple heroes and villains mentioned during the show. That includes wacky characters such as Bat-Mite, Doll Man, Matter-Eater Lad, and Kite-Man (Hell yeah!). We can’t wait to see how it all comes together.
Creature Commandos will premiere on Max on December 5th. Season 2 of Peacemaker is scheduled for August 2025.
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