John Cena Didn’t Expect to Reprise Peacemaker Role After The Suicide Squad

“You’re shot, and a building falls on you, and all you have to replace is a clavicle? You’re the luckiest man alive,” a doctor tells Peacemaker (John Cena) five months after his near-death experience in The Suicide Squad. When ARGUS Director Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) assembles a new squad of expendable supervillains to Task Force X, she conscripts weapons expert and born killer Christopher Smith (Cena). His mission: infiltrate Corto Maltese and destroy every trace of Project Starfish, even if it means killing Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). Bloodsport (Idris Elba) fires the bullet that critically injures Peacemaker, left to die in the rubble of a collapsing Jotunheim. 

A post-credits scene reveals Peacemaker survived, so he’s recruited by Waller agents Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) and Economos (Steve Agee) for a mission to “save the f*cking world.” The task force assembles to save the world from alien leeches called Butterflies in HBO Max spinoff Peacemaker, written and created by The Suicide Squad director James Gunn, but Cena’s character was a one-off: Peacemaker was supposed to die. 

“We saw a little bit of debut of a man who will keep peace at any cost in The Suicide Squad, and I guess James Gunn thought there was a story to be told around that ethos and around that character,” Cena said on HBO Max’s Podly: The Peacemaker Podcast. “I thought The Suicide Squad would be the last time we saw Peacemaker, but here he is in Peacemaker the series.” 

In The Suicide Squad, the WWE Superstar dons the helmet of the anti-hero who cherishes peace — no matter who he has to kill to get it. Created by Joe Gill and Pat Boyette for Charlton Comics, Peacemaker started as a pacifist user of non-lethal weaponry. After being acquired by DC Comics, later versions re-imagined Chris Smith as an ultra-lethal vigilante. 

“I did not read any comics before, or during, production,” Cena said. “Here is my why: because the very first thing I did when I got the job, I shook James Gunn’s hand and said, ‘Do you want me to get every comic or periodical or anything about Peacemaker and study up? He’s like, ‘No. The reason I’ve chosen Peacemaker is because many different artists have given different interpretations of Peacemaker. This is a great character, so it’s up to us to crack it.’”

Because Peacemaker didn’t change over the course of The Suicide Squad — and because Gunn enjoyed working with the “funny” Cena — Gunn added the post-credits scene sparing Smith’s life.   

“It got added because the TV show,” Gunn revealed in a previous interview. “I didn’t say I was going to do the TV show until after the movie was basically finished being cut. So then I got asked to do the TV show, and then I said I would do it. Then when we started shooting the TV show, I shot the post-credit scene.”  

The Suicide Squad and episodes of Peacemaker are streaming on HBO Max.