The Peacemaker season 2 trailer that debuted at SDCC 2025 offered fans a glimpse of what to expect from the next chapter of the HBO series. Perhaps more importantly, it offered James Gunn a chance to better explain how the series’ second season fits into the DCU.
Since James Gunn and Peter Safran were named co-CEOs of DC Studios in 2022, there has been a lot of speculation about the line between the DC Extended Universe and Gunn’s DCU projects. For the most part, it was agreed that much of the DCEU (which began with 2013’s Man of Steel and ended with 2023’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom) was going to be retconned or simply ignored in the DCU (which began with the release of Gunn’s Superman film). Only a handful of characters, events, and plot points from those DCEU projects (many involving Gunn’s The Suicide Squad) will be carried over to the DCU.
However, Peacemaker‘s first season was technically part of the DCEU, which makes the prospect of continuing the series in the DCU much more confusing. Further complicating the matter was Peacemaker’s brief cameo in Gunn’s Superman film. Are we dealing with multiverse shenanigans, a reboot, or would James Gunn prefer you stopped asking all these questions and simply enjoy the show?
While all of those theories may prove to be at least partially true, James Gunn did recently offer a fairly straightforward explanation of exactly where Peacemaker season 2 fits into the DCU timeline.
“Superman leads almost directly into the show,” Gunn explained in a clip recorded at SDCC 2025 and shared via CinemaBlend’s Instagram account. “The show happens a month after the events in Superman…[Peacemaker] is definitely part of the DCU now.”
At the risk of muddying some suddenly clear waters, there are a few asterisks that should be applied to Gunn’s response. First off, Gunn has stated that there are parts of Peacemaker’s first season (specifically certain DCEU cameos) that will either be ignored or explained in Peacemaker season 2. Gunn also noted that “There are certain things from the old universe that we refer to in Peacemaker season 2, but until then, they’re not canon” and that “season 2 will explain everything that is or is not canon.”
There are also confirmed elements of Peacemaker season 2’s plot (specifically, pocket universes) which may indeed still come into play when the show is trying to explain why events and characters from the first season are going to be ignored or altered. Generally speaking, though, it sounds like Gunn will acknowledge most of the events of the first season and doesn’t mean to suggest that Peacemaker season 2 occurs in an entirely different universe. Then again, Gunn also previously suggested that we should remember that “none of this is real” before we get too lost in any discussions about what is and isn’t canon, so it’s hard to imagine that Peacemaker season 2 will spend too much time trying to make sense of this whole thing.
But if you spot something non-canonical and unexplainable as you’re watching Peacemaker season 2 when it debuts on HBO Max on August 21, just remember the immortal words of Lucy Lawless as Xena on The Simpsons. “Whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it.”
