Peacemaker Season 2: New Trailer, New Universe, Same Mission

Following James Gunn’s Peacemaker at SDCC, HBO Max just dropped the first official trailer for Season 2 of its Emmy-nominated DC spinoff series from the director of The Suicide Squad. Season 2 will pick up from the high-flying, multiversal carnage of The Suicide Squad, with the new trailer debuting as a highlight at the San Diego Comic-Con presentation on Saturday, July 23.

Director James Gunn has said the second season will pick up directly from where we left off in The Suicide Squad, and the new trailer for Season 2 of Peacemaker—where he debuts as DC’s youngest-ever showrunner and storyteller across the multiverse—confirms it. The new Season 2 trailer provides a first look at the changes to expect across the DC landscape, set against an explosive, all-new musical soundtrack by Gunn’s all-star Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 team (while the teaser, released in May, gave us a first taste of a funnier and bloodier season to come, Season 2 of Peacemaker marks the first time we’ve seen Christopher Smith, aka Peacemaker, since Gunn debuted in the title role opposite Michael Rooker’s fan-favorite hitman and Joker family killer Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke, in 2021).

The Season 2 trailer first aired at Hall H on July 23 at San Diego Comic-Con, ahead of the series’ official debut on HBO Max on August 21. (Peacemaker’s first season was released in its entirety on July 13, 2022.)

In Season 2 of Peacemaker, Christopher Smith will once again sport his signature cone hat and jacket combo and be accompanied by his ultra-loyal bald eagle sidekick Eagly. He’ll also reunite with his old team of the Justice League’s mysterious Clemson Murn, played by Chukwudi Iwuji, along with the A.R.G.U.S. agent and statistician John Economos (Steve Agee), the National Security Agency agent Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and Danielle Brooks, who was just introduced as a former Florida Highway Patrol trooper named Leota Adebayo in Season 1. New for Season 2, Peacemaker is said to come face-to-face with new characters as well. Robert Patrick is on board to reprise his role from The Suicide Squad as the deceased Auggie Smith, Peacemaker’s father and man in a white hat. Frank Grillo will star as Rick Flagg Sr., father of the deceased Rick Flagg—who was killed by Peacemaker in The Suicide Squad —and a former CIA agent. Grillo’s new character will be A.R.G.U.S. director and reportedly has it in for Peacemaker. Tim Meadows will be Agent Langston Fleury, Sol Rodriguez will be Sasha Bordeaux, and Michael Rooker will be Red St. Wild, the “birdseed to Eagly’s nemesis.” Additional details of the new cast, along with a list of returning characters and their actors, are expected to be revealed in the coming months.

The official synopsis for Season 2 of Peacemaker is as follows:

Returning hero Christopher Smith is still grappling with the traumatic events he survived last season as he’s confronted with a new mission that forces him to contend with his burgeoning capacity for heroism and reevaluate what “peace” truly means to him. Determined to atone for his past sins and forge a path to redemption, Chris has been given a new mission by the U.S. government. This time, he’s got a new squad, a new objective, and he may have a new partner as he’s still out to make peace, but now he’s on the path to becoming a hero.

At the time of its initial premiere, Peacemaker Season 1 is set five months after the events of the DCEU film The Suicide Squad, following Smith in the aftermath of his nearly fatal shooting on Corto Maltese, which finds the U.S. government recruiting him to a secretive, black-ops task force referred to as Project Butterfly and led by former Justice League member Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji), with the support of A.R.G.U.S. agent John Economos (Steve Agee) and National Security Agency agent Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), along with their new team member Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), a former FHP trooper.

Project Butterfly will soon reveal itself to be anything but a regular covert op mission and instead a battle for the world—and Earth’s very existence—against an invasive alien species that look like a cross between Transformer and piranha: parasitic, mind-controlling butterflies that have invaded the planet from another dimension and can only be killed by extracting their heads.

In the end, Peacemaker and his team manage to kill off all the butterfly parasites in a bloody siege in the middle of the Amazon that leaves them all (literally and emotionally) scarred and more or less dead, but triumphant at last. However, he’ll still need to be dragged through some major waterboarding trauma in the process. Although he and Leota got together at the end of Season 1—spoiler alert—they’ll still have their emotional work cut out for them.

After premiering at the Hall H SDCC 2022 presentation, this is the first time the Season 2 trailer for Peacemaker is being shared. Season 1 is currently streaming on HBO Max. As to be expected, it’s still bloody, goofy, and quite sweet. Peacemaker Season 2 premieres August 21, 2022, exclusively on HBO Max.