Episode 6 of DC Studio’s Peacemaker season 2 features a key cameo that also acts as a bridge between James Gunn’s 2025 movie Superman and the direct sequel, 2027’s Man of Tomorrow. On episode 6 of Peacemaker: The Official Podcast, writer-director James Gunn confirmed it’s meant as “a really important moment for not only Peacemaker, but the entire DCU.” Shot while Gunn was still in production on Superman, the scene is the latest Peacemaker moment to touch on Superman‘s aftermath. It also catches up with a key character and starts putting pieces in place for the next movie.
[Ed. note: Major spoilers ahead for Peacemaker season 2, episode 6, “Ignorance is Chris.”]
Episode 6 brings back Nicholas Hoult in his role as Lex Luthor, now being held in the infamous metahuman carceral facility Belle Reve Prison, the base of operations for the Suicide Squad. After Superman‘s unsung true hero, investigative journalism, reveals Luthor as the mastermind behind the Boravia/Jarhanpur war (and a fraud who made the internet a whole lot more unpleasant than it needed to be in an attempt to smear Superman’s name), he gets carted off to prison in disgrace to serve what he describes as a 265-year sentence.
But Peacemaker sets Lex up for the next phase of his career, as revenge-driven ARGUS head Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) cuts a deal with him, promising him “an opportunity for redemption” in exchange for technology that will let Flag pursue his vendetta against Chris Smith (John Cena), aka Peacemaker. The first step is moving Lex out of Belle Reve and away from the metahumans he despises so much, and over to the Van Kull maximum security prison, previously seen in DC’s Arrowverse. That seems like a minor concession, but the acknowledgment that the government needs Luthor’s genius and his technology seems like a major nudge toward his planned team-up with Superman in Man of Tomorrow.
Gunn and his co-hosts and guests have astonishingly little to say about this scene and its implications in episode 6 of the podcast. Gunn does note that it was supposed to be part of episode 7, but that he moved it up because he needed more of a tonal transition between the comparatively goofy sequence where Peacemaker’s sidekick Eagly trashes the Top Trio’s kitchen and eats lunch meat, and Chris’ emotional confrontation with Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) about their relationship.
And the podcast crew mentions that Hoult couldn’t swear in Superman (which would have been necessary to help preserve the film’s PG-13 rating), but that he can say anything in Peacemaker — which explains Luthor’s line grousing about “the Justice Gang and Superman determining international politics” while he’s stuck in Belle Reve, “listening to a bear-sized man with dragon skin butt-fucking a glowing twink with cartoon eyes in a cell beside me every night.” Gunn and company don’t address which DC characters are being referenced there (though “a bear-sized man with dragon skin” confined to Belle Reve certainly sounds like Killer Croc), which is a little surprising, given the podcast’s previous excursions into which deep-cut DC characters Peacemaker has suggested are canon somewhere.
But even though they let the scene go by with minimal discussion, Gunn makes it clear that Luthor’s appearance on the show isn’t just a fan-service moment. It’s meant as a turning point, the beginning of Luthor’s move back into the public eye — or at least a move into working for Flag and ARGUS — in a capacity meant to set up Man of Tomorrow and the next phase of his career as a Superman-hating supervillain.
