Peacemaker Season 2 Makes The DCU's Justice Gang More Powerful Than Ever

This article contains spoilers for "Peacemaker" season 2, episode 1, "The Ties That Grind."

Following up on an acclaimed superhero show's first season is one thing, but "Peacemaker" season 2 also has to tackle a move to a new cinematic universe. "Peacemaker" season 1 stood on the outskirts of Zack Snyder's DC Extended Universe (DCEU), while season 2 takes the action to James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Universe (DCU). This means that Gunn had to find a way to both recapture the magic of the first season and connect the show to his grand vision.

Season 2 wastes no time. Immediately, its first episode, "The Ties That Grind," hoists the viewer into the DCU version of season 1's events by keeping everything else intact but replacing all traces of the DCEU's Justice League with the Justice Gang, Maxwell Lord's (Sean Gunn) comparatively amoral superhero group from "Superman." The show takes this so far that it replaces the "Peacemaker" season 1 finale's big Justice League cameo scene with a near-identical one featuring the Justice Gang instead. This rebooted reproduction is so faithful that it replaces the fish banter between Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and The Flash (Ezra Miller) with a similar interaction between Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), who has the time of her life learning about Peacemaker's (John Cena) insistence that Guy is an emetophile.

Though Hawkgirl and Guy are the only characters whose faces we actually see, there are actually five superheroes in the big cameo shot. Apart from the third official Justice Gang member, Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), this version of the team features two powerhouse additions: Superman and Supergirl. This makes the team so absurdly powerful that it's not exactly shocking to see that Peacemaker's own audition later in the episode is a solid failure.

"Peacemaker" season 1's original big cameo scene was a huge thing that Marvel actually helped Gunn pull off while the director was still making "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3." There, only four members of the Justice League were present — Aquaman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, and Superman, with the latter two played by body doubles instead of their DCEU actors, Gal Gadot and Henry Cavill.

Because of how prominent Superman's silhouette is in the season 1 group shot, it's understandable that Gunn chose to include the DCU version of the character. Still, since both Superman and Supergirl (played in "Superman" by David Corenswet and Milly Alcock, respectively) are here, it's not just a case of "stick four heroes there to replicate the shot." Instead, the scene is heavily coded like both Kryptonians are actual members of the Justice Gang. Admittedly, we already know that Superman's not a card-carrying member, courtesy of Gunn answering fan questions on Threads:

"You'd have to ask how comfortable Superman would be in a team financed by one of the world's biggest corporations — a team that also promotes that corporation.

Things aren't quite as simple as that, however. In another Threads reply, Gunn noted that Superman hangs around with the Justice Gang enough to count as a de facto member ... which also seems to be the case with Alcock's Supergirl, based on the "Peacemaker" scene. Because of this, they might not be official members, but they appear to be close-knit enough that the Justice Gang can generally rely on their assistance. As Gunn put it:

"Yeah, he is like a team member. But he's an independent guy, our Clark."

New episodes of "Peacemaker" season 2 premiere Thursdays on HBO Max.