John Cena has a quick cameo on this summer season’s Superman as Peacemaker, the foul-mouthed mercenary the wrestler-turned-actor has performed since 2021’s The Suicide Squad. That film was a part of the outdated DC Comics shared universe (DCEU), so it appeared odd that Cena’s character would seem in James Gunn’s new tackle Superman, contemplating he was, ostensibly, a part of a special multiverse. Properly, Peacemaker’s second season premiered final night time, and thru a reshot scene, has plucked the antihero from one universe into one other with out making an enormous stink about it.
In Peacemaker’s first season finale, Cena’s character met up with the Justice League from the earlier movie universe, together with Jason Momoa’s Aquaman and Ezra Miller’s Flash. The remainder of the staff was largely obscured in shadows and solely seen as silhouettes, however Momoa and Miller’s presence makes it clear they’re doubtless accompanied by Henry Cavill’s model of Superman, who portrayed the superhero from 2013 to 2023. This ties Peacemaker to the outdated continuity, which once more complicates Cena’s look in Superman.
Season two’s premiere episode, “The Ties That Grind,” addresses this with a gap sequence known as “Beforehand within the DCU,” which recaps the earlier season with one main change. Fairly than calling the Justice League for assist as he did within the finale, this part is reshot and redubbed to as a substitute present the Justice Gang featured in Superman arriving on the scene. Nathan Fillion and Isabela Merced reprise their roles as Man Gardner and Hawkgirl, whereas silhouettes of Superman, Supergirl, and Mister Terrific are additionally proven however obscured in shadow, like within the authentic scene.
In a roundtable interview with retailers like IGN, Gunn stated that whereas followers may need anticipated a extra convoluted multiversal rationalization that pulled Peacemaker from one continuity to a different, the director stated he’d slightly go together with a easy strategy.
“May I make it in order that Peacemaker is the DCEU Peacemaker, regardless that he’s not likely the DCEU Peacemaker, and he walks via that portal, and that’s the place the DCEU Peacemaker is?” Gunn stated. “I may have, however persons are like, ‘How are normies going to know it?’ And no, the reply is, normies don’t give a shit. Normies don’t care about all this canon stuff so intimately.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s not fully constant up to now. So I assumed the straightforward means was actually one of the best, which is simply saying, yeah, this world is slightly totally different. We all know there’s universes, and that is the universe by which all the pieces was precisely the identical as Season 1, apart from the Justice League.”
Some followers could be aggravated on the handwavey nature of this transformation, nevertheless it’s in all probability factor Peacemaker didn’t should spend a complete episode throwing its hero via the multiverse to justify him exhibiting up in future initiatives. Now it could simply get again to what it truly needs to do slightly than losing all these valuable, expensive minutes of runtime, to not point out the valuable time of us viewers. New episodes of Peacemaker premiere on HBO Max on Thursday nights at 9 p.m. Jap.
