New Peacemaker trailer gives us a redeemable villain we might learn to like

HBO Max has dropped the official full trailer for Peacemaker, the spinoff series based on John Cena’s murderously entertaining character from The Suicide Squad.

As we’ve reported previously, director James Gunn wrote the series last summer during the COVID-19 lockdown, just for fun, but then DC Films approached him about a possible spinoff series for one of the characters in The Suicide Squad. He picked Cena’s Peacemaker, since he felt audiences never got the chance to get to know the character in the film—where, it must be said, he does some Very Bad Things, even for a member of the Suicide Squad. Gunn wanted to make Peacemaker less irredeemable. HBO Max was sufficiently impressed with Gunn’s take that it ordered Peacemaker straight to series.

The eight-episode series is set after the events of The Suicide Squad, specifically after the post-credits scene, in which we learned that Peacemaker had survived what had appeared to be a fatal shooting. The first teaser dropped in October, showing Peacemaker (aka Christopher Smith) being recruited by Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) for another mission in order to avoid going back to prison.

Once again, he’s basically an assassin, but at least he’s only killing bad people (maybe). He gets assistance from warden John Economos (Steve Agee) of the Belle Reve penitentiary, NSA agent and former Waller aide Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and new team member Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks). The cast also includes Robert Patrick (Terminator 2) as Peacemaker’s crusty father, Auggie Smith, who thinks his son is a “nancy-boy”; Freddie Stroma as Adrian Chase (aka Vigilante), a district attorney who fights crime and has rapid-healing abilities; and Nhut Le as Judomaster.

The teaser was heavy on the cheesy, off-color bro-humor, but it showcased Cena’s gift for physical comedy, and the irreverent, over-the-top tone was note-perfect—very much in line with the character. The full trailer opens with Detective Sophie Song (Annie Chang) telling her partner about Peacemaker. “He is a trained killer,” she says, and correctly predicts there will be trouble with “that maniac.” The very next scene is Peacemaker dodging gunfire to get to Harcourt’s getaway car, along with his trusty bald eagle sidekick, Eagley. (“That thing better not crap back there.”)

There’s certainly plenty of violence and explosions—this is Peacemaker, after all—but until now, the Peacemaker we’ve seen would kill pretty much anyone for his country. And he’d still find the time to do some vain macho posturing while he was at it. But the Very Bad events of The Suicide Squad have clearly affected him. (“I’m having… feelings about things.”) Suddenly he has qualms when ordered to kill women and children. And his Daddy Issues start kicking in when he goes to visit Auggie.

Harcourt dismisses Peacemaker as a clown, but Leota thinks “there’s something about him that’s kinda sad.” Even Vigilante warns him about the dangers of too much introspection: “The mind is a den of scorpions better left running from, not toward.” Will his sudden lapse of confidence threaten a vital mission? “Right now the world needs a son of a bitch,” Murn tells him. “And you’re the only one I got.”

The first three episodes of Peacemaker premiere on HBO Max on January 17, 2022. New episodes will air weekly every Thursday after that through February 17, 2022.

Listing image by YouTube/HBO Max