Peacemaker: Patriot. Soldier. Superhero. Knockoff? James Gunn’s Peacemaker, a spinoff of The Suicide Squad, reintroduced jingoistic mercenary Chris Smith (John Cena) after he killed Colonel Rick Flag Jr. (Joel Kinnaman) to protect U.S. government secrets on a Task Force X mission to Corto Maltese. “His father was a soldier who trained his son how to kill from the moment he was born,” Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) said of the chrome-domed, peace-cherishing marksman imprisoned in Belle Reve, only to give Peacemaker his shot at redemption when Waller’s black ops team recruited him for contract work: kill parasitic aliens and save the world from invasion as part of Project Butterfly.
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It turns out that another helmeted hero inspired Peacemaker: the motorcycle-riding Steve Rogers (Reb Brown) from the 1979 made-for-TV movie Captain America.
“I think it was during The Suicide Squad that I first said something to [producer] Peter Safran like, ‘Remember that old Captain America TV show from the ‘70s? It would be cool if Peacemaker was in some f—ed up version of that TV show. Like this old ‘70s TV show with the Peacecycle and all this stuff,’” Gunn recalled on the first episode of Peacemaker: The Official Podcast with James Gunn. “So later on, when they asked me if I wanted to develop one of the [Suicide Squad] characters for television, they said, ‘Which character would you like to develop?’”
“And I remember Peter going, ‘It’s Peacemaker, right?’” Gunn continued. “And I was like, ‘Yes!’”
1979’s Captain America movie reimagined Marvel’s star-spangled superhero as Steve Rogers, motorcycle racer and motocross expert, whose father was nicknamed “Captain America.” Steve’s late father developed and perfected the “ultimate steroid” FLAG — “Full Latent Ability Gain” — a super hormone that transformed the former Marine into the wing-headed avenger. Brown’s Captain America wielded a transparent shield and rode the red, white, and blue motorcycle he called the Capcycle.
Gunn, who serves as co-chairman and co-CEO of DC Studios with Safran, hosts HBO Max’s Peacemaker podcast with series co-stars Jennifer Holland and Steve Agee.
In Peacemaker season 2, Cena’s Christopher Smith and the 11th Street Kids — handler Emilia Harcourt (Holland), tech and tactics expert John Economos (Agee), recent recruit Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), and costumed killer Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) — return just as “Peacemaker discovers an alternate world where life is everything he wishes it could be,” per the logline. “But this discovery also forces him to face his traumatic past and take the future into his own hands.”
Peacemaker returns with the season 2 premiere August 21 on HBO Max.
