John Cena and Steve Agee Improvise Celebrity Names in Peacemaker Episode 5 Outtakes

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Peacemaker Episode 5, “Chapter 5: Monkey Dory.” John Cena and Steve Agee improvise celebrity names in outtakes from Episode 5 of HBO Max’s Peacemaker. In Thursday’s “Monkey Dory,” Peacemaker (Cena) confronts John Economos (Agee) for fingering his dad — that is, inadvertently framing Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick) for killing Annie Sturphausen (Crystal Mudry) and kidnapping her neighbors (Alison Araya and Lenny Jacobson). Using digital trickery to falsify Auggie’s fingerprints at the scene of Peacemaker’s crimes, Economos gets the elder Smith — the leader of the Aryan Empire and the racist supervillain The White Dragon — arrested and imprisoned.

“Dude, I didn’t mean to put your father in prison,” Economos tells a pissed Peacemaker in “Monkey Dory,” explaining he used Smith’s prints because he “couldn’t think of anybody else.” Peacemaker retorts with a list of celebrity names and pop culture references, suggesting everyone from Ariana Grande and Drake to Bill Cosby and the Red Tiger from Voltron. 

In the outtakes post-credits scene trailing Peacemaker Episode 5, now released online by HBO Max, Peacemaker prattles off even more names — including characters from Super Mario, McDonald’s and Burger King mascots, the muppets from Sesame Street, “any one of the Beatles,” and a who’s who of celebrity actors and musicians. 

“[Cena] was improvising all of that,” Agee said on HBO Max’s Podly: The Peacemaker Podcast. “I think the original line was like, ‘What didn’t you frame Miley Cyrus?’ It was like two people. And then James [Gunn, writer and series creator] was like, ‘Just keep going, John.’ And so he started, and it was like a half an hour of us sitting there while James was like, ‘Keep going, do it again, another, more celebrities, faster!’”

“It was really impressive,” Agee said. “I really wish they would post that whole roll of him naming celebrities as a bonus feature or something. It was amazing, he was great.”

Starring John Cena, Danielle Brooks, Freddie Stroma, Jennifer Holland, Chukwudi Iwuji, Steve Agee, and Robert Patrick, new episodes of DC’s Peacemaker premiere Thursdays on HBO Max.