The Peacemaker Season 2 Trailer Reveals A Surprise Appearance From A Green Lantern

The 11th Street Kids are back, baby, and it feels so good. The trailer for season 2 of James Gunn's Max series "Peacemaker" is finally here, and it's great to see the gang back in action after they managed to stop both extraterrestrial body snatchers and a white supremacist supervillain at the end of "Peacemaker" season 1. John Cena's Christopher Smith, A.K.A. the titular Peacemaker, still had plenty to figure out about the world when last we saw him, though he had learned that friendship and his found family could help him become a better man. Now, in season 2, it looks like he's going to have to deal with an entirely different kind of daddy issues when he's confronted by Rick Flag, Sr. (Frank Grillo), the father of Peacemaker's hero Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), who Chris killed during the events of "The Suicide Squad" before his big change of heart. Seeing Grillo in live-action as Flag, Sr. is really fantastic stuff (his work on "Creature Commandos" is a blast) and shows off the potential for Gunn's plans to cross over animated and live-action DC stories within the larger DC Universe.

Can season 2 of "Peacemaker" be as great as the first? It's a pretty high bar (our review deemed season 1 Gunn's "vulgar, violent masterpiece"), but if the trailer above is an indicator of what's to come, it's time to blast the hair metal and get ready for another season of incredible television. Also: it looks like the new season will have a direct connection to James Gunn's "Superman," as Nathan Fillion's Green Lantern/Guy Gardner puts in an appearance. 

While we definitely expected to see Frank Grillo's elder Rick Flag in the trailer, it was a pretty big surprise to see Fillion's Guy Gardner and Isabela Merced's Hawkgirl, who are both in James Gunn's upcoming "Superman" film. It looks like Peacemaker is interviewing to try and be a part of a superhero team with the two of them (maybe even the Justice League) and they are just not having it, which is pretty funny. It's unlikely that either character will play a large role in season 2 of "Peacemaker," but given Gunn's long-standing friendship and working relationship with Fillion, who starred in the director's debut feature film, "Slither," it's guaranteed that the two of them had a lot of fun hamming it up on the "Peacemaker" set. (Fillion also isn't the only Gunn regular to make a surprise appearance in the season 2 trailer, either, as younger brother and actor Sean Gunn, who played Kraglin in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" films and Weasel in "The Suicide Squad" and "Creature Commandos," appears as villain Maxwell Lord alongside Gardner and Hawkgirl.) 

The very end of the trailer also shows Peacemaker confronting a version of himself, which means we could be getting into multiverse territory, although hopefully that doesn't go too far, because we have enough multiverse stories already, thanks? As exciting as it is to see "Peacemaker" getting connected to the greater DC Universe, here's hoping that it still maintains its special flavor, because at the end of the day, we do really wanna taste it. 

"Peacemaker" season 2 premieres on Max on Thursday, August 21, 2025.