Can Chris Smith Redeem Himself in Peacemaker S2?

Update: HBO Max dropped the full trailer for Season 2 of Peacemaker at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, officially announced for August 21, 2025.

James Gunn’s Emmy-nominated DC series Peacemaker is back for a second round of multiversal madness, mano-a-moth armageddon, and learning the value of a single human life.

HBO Max screened the first trailer for Season 2 of Peacemaker at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, giving fans the first taste of where things will go for star John Cena’s Christopher Smith after a blistering eight-episode first season. Spoilers ahead for Peacemaker Season 1.

The first trailer for the DC spinoff series officially announces Peacemaker Season 2, and you can bet it won’t hold back. Peacemaker Season 1, which followed The Suicide Squad (2021) blockbuster, saw Smith five months removed from surviving the Corto Maltese mission and living in the aftermath of a near-fatal gunshot wound. Shot as part of a covert government operation named “Project Butterfly,” Smith was hired to lead a team of masked misfits, including Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji), A.R.G.U.S. agent John Economos (Steve Agee), NSA agent Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and new team member Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks).

Project Butterfly quickly became more than the average government black ops contract. The team was secretly working to track down and eliminate an alien species that had invaded Earth as parasitic butterflies able to take over the bodies of human hosts, and managed to beat the evil swarm after a bloody showdown on a ranch and a massive explosion that nearly killed them all. They walked away with their lives, but only barely.

Season 2 of Peacemaker is premiering in a brand-new DC Universe. Season 1 was set in the now-defunct DCEU, whereas this new season is said to take place in the brand-new DCU that James Gunn has now established with his “Gods and Monsters” slate of upcoming films. Gunn confirmed that Season 2 will still play off events from Season 1 and his DCEU film work, minus any extended cameo appearances from the rest of the Justice League or storylines that directly involve Superman, but that most of what you saw in Peacemaker Season 1 is still canon.

Returning for Season 2 of Peacemaker are Cena, Brooks, Holland, Agee, Freddie Stroma as the unhinged Vigilante, Nhut Le as Judomaster, Eagly, and Robert Patrick as Peacemaker’s dead father, Auggie Smith. Frank Grillo will join the main cast this season as Rick Flagg Sr., the father of The Suicide Squad’s late Rick Flagg, who was gunned down by Peacemaker and killed by Bloodsport (Wagner Moura). Grillo’s Flagg is out for revenge now that his son is dead, and is now running A.R.G.U.S. Season 2 also stars new cast members Tim Meadows as agent Langston Fleury, Sol Rodriguez as Sasha Bordeaux, and Michael Rooker as Red St. Wild, described as “Eagly’s nemesis.”

An official synopsis was also released with the trailer’s debut, which describes Peacemaker Season 2 as: “Chris Smith has to deal with the fallout of his violent past as well as the consequences of his desire to do and be better. He wants to be a hero, to earn peace instead of having it forced upon him, but he is still after peace at any cost.”

A brief teaser was also released in May, giving the first look at Season 2’s tone and promise of over-the-top action. Set to Foxy Shazam’s “Oh Lord,” the one-minute clip opened with an attempted breakout by Chris to join the Justice League, an opportunity that quickly goes south thanks to Chris’s charmless pitch. Green Lantern/Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl/Kendra Saunders (Isabela Merced), and Maxwell Lord (Sean Gunn) all appear, reprising their roles from Gunn’s Superman film.

In new footage, we see a glimpse at where Peacemaker finds himself after the first season’s emotional finish, per the Hall H panel on SDCC. During the panel, James Gunn described Season 2 as a leap into a more in-depth look at his characters: “I like TV shows where the characters don’t just return every season and they’re the same characters,” Gunn said. “I want to see growth. I want to see change—and sometimes regression. Peacemaker is a different guy this year. He’s dealing with the demons he uncovered from the first season and trying to deal with them, and the world is not accepting him the way he is. They aren’t accepting him as a hero.”

Highlights from the trailer:

In the first half of the trailer, we get Peacemaker Season 2’s most shocking revelation: Chris has been jumping through a dimensional portal, and stumbling onto a parallel universe where another version of himself already exists—and is a hero. A close-up of Peacemaker’s costume, and his dead father’s telling, is seen on screen from The Suicide Squad movie. Chris did not join the Justice League in this timeline. Jealous of the love he’s not receiving in his world from the Justice League and a woman named Ashley, he tries to convince the League that he deserves to be in the club. Predictably, he’s rejected.

The League was a tease in the trailer, but the other new glimpses for characters at the end are a delight, with multiple cameos and call-backs to the first season. We see that Adebayo has been “living in the worst level of Grand Theft Auto,” per Economos. Meanwhile, Harcourt is dealing with “a particularly severe form of toxic masculinity,” and Vigilante ended up working at Denny’s.”

In Season 2, Peacemaker will be back on the job for a new mission—whatever that may be. This time around, he may be leading a larger team to take down unknown new threats and possibly dealing with an extraterrestrial menace. Still to be revealed is where these new missions will be set, in DC continuity and more specifically in the multiverse—but one detail is certain. Peacemaker’s hunt for peace at any cost is coming back in Season 2—and not even a world-saving, alien-beating good deed might be enough to stop him. Gunn confirmed as much, teasing that this season might be even wilder than the first.

Peacemaker Season 2 premieres August 21, 2025, on HBO Max.