Image: HBO Max
The HBO Max series makes no bones about its continuity
With this week’s finale of Peacemaker, the The Suicide Squad spinoff has wrapped it’s story of one group of misfits standing up against white supremacists and mind control butterflies — and show creator James Gunn couldn’t resist going out with a DC Extended Universe bang.
[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for Peacemaker season 1.]
Photo: HBO Max
Whether Peacemaker existed in the same continuity as any other of the current crop of Warner Bros.’ DC Comics movies has never really been in question. Its title character spun out of 2021’s The Suicide Squad, which in turn was a sequel to 2016’s Suicide Squad, in which Ben Affleck’s Batman, fresh off of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, had a rather large cameo.
But if there ever was any confusion, the season finale “It’s Cow or Never”, cleared it up with an appearance from four members of Zach Snyder’s Justice League: Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Aquaman. Cyborg and Batman apparently couldn’t be bothered, but that’s … honestly very much in character for Batman.
Earlier in the episode, Danielle Brooks’ Leota Adebayo made a tense phone call to her terrifying mom, Amanda Waller, to appraise the creator of Task Force X of the whole fate-of-the-world situation. “The whole team is injured, so I was thinking, like, maybe you could call in the Justice League … No, I’m not kidding!”
Pressed for time, the team went it alone, but it seems like Waller did get through to … wherever the Justice League is headquartered in the DC Films universe these days. But, as Peacemaker put it: “You’re late, you fuckin’ dickheads!”
And while two of the heroes were played by doubles in silhouette, we got a brief cameo from the actual Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller, joking around about a rumor that Aquaman has sex with fish. Gunn told Rolling Stone that he was somewhat nervous about asking the actors to reprise their roles for the series.
“I was a little afraid [Momoa] was going to be upset. I also thought [Aquaman director] James Wan was going to be upset over Peacemaker saying that [Aquaman] fucks fish all the time. I explained that Peacemaker’s an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and Jason laughed his head off and was game from the beginning. I didn’t know Ezra. Ezra came in later. I found out through some friends that Ezra likes my movies a lot, and so I asked if he would come in and do it, and he did.”
And for fans worried that this’ll be the last they see of the chrome-domed superhero known as the Peacemaker, they can put themselves at ease. Peacemaker was recently greenlit for a second season on HBO Max.
