The Suicide Squad Spinoff Peacemaker Returns With Multiversal Drama

In an explosive debut this past weekend at San Diego Comic-Con, HBO Max unleashed the first official trailer for Season 2 of Peacemaker, the Emmy-nominated DC Comics spinoff series from James Gunn. Gunn, the director behind The Suicide Squad (2021), which the Peacemaker Season 1 finale references, helms Season 2 of Peacemaker. The official trailer, the first extensive look at the second season, teases the future of John Cena’s Christopher Smith. Spoiler: This season is going bigger, weirder, and more emotional.

Season 1 of Peacemaker opened five months after the events of The Suicide Squad’s (2021) Corto Maltese mission, with Smith recovering from a near-death gunshot to the chest. The U.S. government quickly places him on a top-secret new mission dubbed “Project Butterfly” alongside a new team, including Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji), A.R.G.U.S. agent John Economos (Steve Agee), NSA agent Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and Peacemaker Squad newbie Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks).

Project Butterfly, however, proved to be more than a standard government mission. The team of four assassins had to stop an alien species in the form of parasitic butterflies from Earth’s ecosystem by possessing human bodies. By the end of the season, Peacemaker and the crew downed the monster with a bloody gunfight at a ranch. They had survived, but not without serious wounds—physical and emotional.

Peacemaker returns to HBO Max in a newly reinvented DC Universe. Whereas Season 1 lived in the DCEU universe, Gunn has since killed that continuity brick-by-brick in The Suicide Squad and his DC Extended Universe “Gods and Monsters” slate, which debuts this November. Season 2 of Peacemaker, which Gunn executive-produced with Peter Safran, now unfolds in a newly established DCU proper. Gunn confirmed while speaking at Comic-Con that previous events in the series are still canon going forward, save for some special Justice League cameos.

Star John Cena returns in the second season, as do Brooks, Holland, Agee, and Freddie Stroma as the manic fan-favorite vigilante. Peacemaker also brings back Nhut Le as Judomaster and Eagly, the Peacemaker’s sidekick bald eagle. Robert Patrick returns to play the voice of Peacemaker’s dead father, Auggie Smith. The second season’s biggest new addition is Frank Grillo as Rick Flagg Sr., the father of the late Rick Flagg (Michael Irby), who Peacemaker gunned down in The Suicide Squad. Grillo’s Flag is now in charge of A.R.G.U.S. and is out for blood. Season 2 will also welcome Tim Meadows as agent Langston Fleury, Sol Rodriguez as Sasha Bordeaux, and Michael Rooker as Red St. Wild, described as Eagly’s “arch-nemesis.”

In the official description, Chris Smith continues to grapple with the emotional toll of his violent history and the desire to be a better person. Chris’s pursuit of peace at all costs remains, but he now wants to achieve it by being a hero, not a team player.

An earlier teaser released in May set the tone of lunacy and epic energy from Gunn and Co. while offering audiences a glimpse into Season 2. Set to the tune of Foxy Shazam’s “Oh Lord,” the cut features the next steps in Chris’s superhero journey in action—his failed attempt to join the Justice League, which included Green Lantern/Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl/Kendra Saunders (Isabela Merced), and Maxwell Lord (Sean Gunn), all reprising their roles from Superman. Naturally, his sales pitch falls flat. In the upcoming season, the Justice League is a crapshoot.

The teaser also gave fans some fun character updates, for better or for worse. Adebayo has risen to “the worst level of Grand Theft Auto,” according to Economos. Harcourt has been diagnosed with “a particularly severe case of toxic masculinity,” while Vigilante got beaten up, and now he’s flipping burgers at White Castle.”

The biggest surprise moment of the trailer? The dimensional gateway. Chris waltzes right into a portal to an alternate universe. On the other side, he encounters another version of himself, but this alternate Peacemaker is a different man, already celebrated and revered as an authentic hero. Chris, in this parallel world, has already been on the Justice League team, and his family has continued and is now intact. He questions whether he should stay here, as this other Chris is respected, while he has failed miserably in his world with friends and romance. But as things stand in Peacemaker’s world, Chris cannot outrun his past. The voice of Harcourt, weighed down by emotion, resounds, “No matter how green the grass is over there, you belong here. With us.”

Gunn, who addressed the audience in the Hall H panel at SDCC, expressed that Season 2 is the new evolution of the Peacemaker’s character development. “I like TV shows where the characters don’t just come back every season and they’re the same characters as they were before,” Gunn shared during SDCC. “I want to see them grow. I want to see them change—and sometimes regress. This is a different guy. He’s dealing with the demons he discovered at the end of the last season, and he’s trying to deal with them, a nd the world is not accepting him the way he is. They aren’t accepting him as a hero.”

More over-the-top action and cringeworthy humor will be the bread and butter of Gunn’s second season as the series has deepened in a way that allows Peacemaker to become emotionally complex, vulnerable, and ultimately heroic in an expansive new multiverse. The next question: Will Peacemaker ever come to terms with the man in the mirror or who he wants to be?

Peacemaker Season 2 is premiering August 21, 2025, exclusively on HBO Max.