‘Peacemaker’ Season 2 Retcons Explained: How the Show Swapped in the Justice Gang
Note: This story contains spoilers from “Peacemaker” Season 2, Episode 1.
“Peacemaker” had a bit of retconning to do before Season 2 got up and running.
In the three years since the first season of “Peacemaker,” series creator James Gunn was hired — alongside Peter Safran — to take the wheel of DC’s cinematic universe and essentially became the brand’s Kevin Feige. Doing that meant ending Zack Snyder’s time at the helm and starting fresh — sort of.
Gunn had not only put together “Peacemaker” for Warner Bros. but also directed “The Suicide Squad.” Instead of starting entirely fresh, Gunn incorporated swaths of what he’d done in his previous two projects and just worked to retcon things that did not make sense — mostly mentions of the Justice League and heroes that had either been recast like Superman or have not been introduced yet in the new continuity.
Unfortunately, the old Justice League made a cameo appearance at the end of “Peacemaker” Season 1, so the show had to make some tweaks to the recap before Season 2 kicked off. Gunn told TheWrap he’s hopeful that with “Peacemaker” Season 2 the questions of what is and isn’t canon will quiet down, but he understands it matters to certain fans.
“People are always going to quibble,” he said. “You know, the truth is it’s such a minority of people that care about that, but the people that care about it really care about, and so hopefully it helps.”
He continued: “Basically, what you saw last season was all accurate. But maybe there are a couple of things that are not so accurate and one of those is there’s no Justice League, obviously.”
Here is how the recap of “Peacemaker” Season 1 handled the changes.
How does the show address the changes?
Gunn had previously said that anything that was mentioned in the Season 1 recap for “Peacemaker,” and then obviously whatever happened in Season 2, would be considered canon for his new DCU. It seemed like an odd distinction at the time, but now it’s clear that nearly all of the retconning happens right in the recap.
What are the retcons?
The changes are slight and play slightly comical, but they get the job done. Most everything from Season 1 — which aired nearly three years ago, before Gunn and Peter Safran took the wheel of the DCU — was safe aside mentions of the Justice League and those big cameos in the finale.
To fix that the recap does some pretty obvious editing. In one moment Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) clearly is on a call asking for the Justice League to be sent in to help and a clever cut and dub has her asking for the Justice Gang — a small team that debuted in Gunn’s “Superman.” The Justice Gang consists of Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi) and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced).
At the end of the Season 1 finale, Peacemaker stops Project Butterfly and comes out to see that the Justice League assembled after all the fighting is over. Superman (Henry Cavill), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), The Flash (Ezra Miller) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) show up late and get yelled at by Peacemaker.
In the recap of Season 1, clever editing replaces the Justice League with silhouettes of the Justice Gang. Green Lantern, Mr. Terrific and Hawkgirl are all there and joined by two others — Superman (David Corenswet) and his cousin Supergirl (Milly Alcock).
“Peacemaker” Season 2 releases new episodes Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT on HBO Max.
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