James Gunn Already Wishes He Could “Lucas the Sh*t” Out of 1 DCU Release

August 21, 2025, 10:01pm

James Gunn has explained that major retcon in Peacemaker Season 2, and addressed the possibility of permanently changing Season 1 retrospectively. Retcons and reboots are commonplace in DC comic books, which have typically used events like Crisis on Infinite Earths or Flashpoint to streamline the storied DC canon. But in Peacemaker season 2, set in the same continuity as Creature Commandos and Superman, series creator and showrunner James Gunn doesn’t use the multiverse to explain how the show — which originally spun out of 2021’s The Suicide Squad, entrenched in the old DC Extended Universe — has shifted into a new universe. He just changed it. SPOILERS for Peacemaker Season 2 follow.

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Peacemaker Season 2 willingly messes with canon by retaining most of the first season as DCU canon, but with one significant change: the controversial Justice League cameo in the finale didn’t happen. Instead, the Justice Gang, along with Superman and Supergirl, appeared in the aftermath of the battle with the butterflies instead of the Snyderverse’s superteam. And when asked whether he’d be going back to edit the first season for HBO Max to replace the scene (like George Lucas did with Star Wars, infamously), Gunn explained why he wanted to and also why he couldn’t:

“I wish I could do that. I wish I could Lucas the s–t out of this, but I can’t, because it’s too expensive,” Gunn told ComicBook and other outlets during a recent round table, referring to Lucas altering the Star Wars films with new special effects not present in the original versions, or changing scenes entirely. The DC Studios co-chief would rather “spend the money on a few more VFX shots” for next summer’s Supergirl movie.

James Gunn Says Normal DC Fans Don’t Care About Canon

THE JUSTICE LEAGUE IN PEACEMAKER SEASON 1 EPISODE 8

While Peacemaker Season 2 confirms another dimension accessed through the QUC — the Quantum Unfolding Chamber, not unlike the technology Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor used to operate his pocket universe in Superman — Gunn won’t be having Peacemaker literally step into this other world (the DCU) where the Justice Gang has formed before the Justice League.

“Could I make it so that [season 2] Peacemaker is the DCEU Peacemaker, even though he’s not really the DCEU Peacemaker, and he walks through that portal and that’s where the DCEU Peacemaker is? I could have,” Gunn said. “People are like, ‘How are normies gonna understand it?’ The answer is normies don’t give a s–t. Normies don’t care about all this canon stuff so intimately.”

“They’re like, ‘Oh, cool, Peacemaker and Superman team up?’ ‘Oh, cool, it’s Aliens and Predator together?’ It doesn’t matter if it’s not completely consistent with the past,” Gunn added. “So I thought the simple way was really the best, which is just saying, ‘This world is a little different.’ We know there’s universes, and this is the universe in which everything was exactly the same as season one — except for the Justice League and Batmite.”

Gunn Explained His DCU Canon Changes Recently

“One of the things people are most confused by as Peter Safran and I took over DC is [the question of], ‘What is part of the DCU?’ This is the world that Superman lives in, this is the world that Creature Commandos lives in,” Gunn explained during a recent appearance on Peacemaker: The Official Podcast. “Up until this point, those are the only two things that are fully, 100% canon, and the same thing is going to be true about Peacemaker season 2. It’s fully, 100% canon in the DCU.”

“We did have to go back and change a few things from season 1 that don’t quite match with that world,” Gunn added of the 2022 first season. “Because we were writing for the DCEU, which was kind of messy at the time.” That includes references to the heroes of the Justice League, who don’t yet exist in this continuity.

After Chris Smith (John Cena) spent the first season making disparaging remarks about DCEU superheroes Superman (Henry Cavill), Batman (Ben Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), and the Flash (Ezra Miller), the Justice League made a season-ending cameo appearance (with only an F-bomb-dropping Momoa and Miller reprising their roles). It’s no longer canon, but the scene will remain intact on HBO Max.

Peacemake r Season 2, episode 1 is available to watch now on HBO Max.