How Peter Safran Changed the ‘Peacemaker’ Season 2 Ending
[This story contains spoilers for the Peacemaker season two finale.]
Peacemaker season two reached its conclusion last night — actually, it reached beyond its original conclusion, James Gunn says.
Gunn, who created and writes the John Cena-superhero show for HBO Max, made a pretty big addition to his original ending for the second season’s finale episode. Perhaps a better adjective would have been otherworldly.
On the official Peacemaker companion podcast, Gunn said his original draft of Thursday night’s episode ended with the dramatic slow-motion walkout of the 11th Street Kids in their new digs — and with their new friends Judomaster (Nhut Le) and Langston Fleury (Tim Meadows).
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The good guys, all A.R.G.U.S. rejects at this point, started their own org to counter the black ops government agency. Checkmate, funded by Adrian Chase/Vigilante’s (Freddie Stroma) seized blood money, is officially formed.
“We see ‘Checkmate: Making the World Better,’” Gunn recaps the scene, “and we look up and we see Eagly — who last we saw hiding in a corner — flying happily around the sky.”
Gunn then reveals, ”The first draft ended there.”
Steve Agee, who plays tech guy/hacker John Economos on the series, was pretty blown away by that. “What?!? Wow! Wow. I can’t even …”
“Wild,” Jennifer Holland added, with quite a bit less emotion. To be fair, she may have been less shocked — Holland and Gunn are married.
Instead, the Peacemaker season two finale goes a few scenes further. Half the credit for the version we saw last night goes to Gunn, of course, as he wrote it. The other half goes to Peter Safran, and not just because he and Gunn are 50/50 partners in this whole revived-DCU thing.
“I gave [the first draft] to Peter Safran and I said, ‘I had another thing I wrote that I had put on the ending,’” Gunn told his colleagues. “And I told him, and he goes, ‘Oh you’ve got to put that in there.’”
The ”another thing” was Chris Smith aka Peacemaker (Cena) being abducted by A.R.G.U.S. and banished to Salvation, a planet the bad guys plan to use as an open-world prison for metahumans and criminals. Smith is being “volunteered” (read: punished) as a human test subject. Peacemaker killed Rick Flag Jr. (Joel Kinnaman) in 2021 film The Suicide Squad; Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) heads A.R.G.U.S.
Rick Flag Sr. is a bad enemy to have — especially when he’s being influenced by Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult).
Gunn said he and Safran “knew it was a part of the DCU plan” to get to Salvation, a peaceful-looking and scientifically inhabitable planet (so far as we know) that we find out is already inhabited by what Gunn describes as “some sort of beasts.” (We hear their squeals and roars, but don’t see anything — yet.) It wasn’t entirely clear if the DC Universe plan was to get there through Smith/Peacemaker, but sounds like the plan was not to get there on Peacemaker.
A spokesperson for DC Studios did not immediately respond to The Hollywood Reporter’s request for that clarification.
With no allies, no helmets and no way of getting home, Smith might need Superman himself (David Corenswet) to get back to Earth. Well, that might be the plan.
In the new DCU, which is fully revived at this point thanks to Gunn and Safran, it is the DC television series that are often used as setup fodder (or bridge material) for the films; Peacemaker is that role player right now. The next Superman movie, Man of Tomorrow, is slated for a July 9, 2027, theatrical release.
