Meet the New Faces Joining Peacemaker S2 on HBO Max

HBO Max set San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) ablaze over the weekend when it premiered the first-ever full-length trailer for James Gunn’s Emmy-nominated DC spinoff series Peacemaker’s sophomore season. The promo offers the first extended look at where DC’s Christopher Smith, aka Peacemaker, is headed next, and what is coming at him in new ways in Season 2, and it is every bit as big, bizarre, and boisterous as expected…with a few more feels thrown in.

Peacemaker: Season 2 Trailer

It’s been five months since Peacemaker’s first season, which followed on the heels of The Suicide Squad (2021), with Christopher Smith recovering from a near-death experience that left him severely weakened after narrowly surviving a gunshot to the head. Recruited to return to active duty by the U.S. government for a secret mission called “Project Butterfly,” Peacemaker joins a new team of heroes led by Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) and aided by veteran A.R.G.U.S. agent John Economos (Steve Agee), NSA agent Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and new member Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks).

Their new operation, Project Butterfly, quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary covert U.S. mission: its goal is to stop an alien species known as parasitic butterflies that swarm Earth by taking over human hosts. A bloody and bizarre showdown at a ranch on the outskirts of Santa Clarita, Calif., ends with the unlikely team victorious against seemingly overwhelming odds, though not without casualties and a serious dose of post-traumatic stress disorder from what they’ve been through.

Peacemaker Season 2 continues in the newly rebranded DCU, the universe James Gunn himself teased this spring as the “Gods and Monsters” storyworld that serves as home base for his upcoming slate of movies and shows for DC and would include projects like The Suicide Squad 2 and Peacemaker Season 2, among others. Gunn also confirmed during SDCC that the Season 1 events are still canon, albeit with some non-canonical cameos from Justice League heroes who will appear in the Season 2 trailer.

Season 2 is back in action with Cena, Brooks, Holland, Agee, Freddie Stroma (the cult-favorite psycho Vigilante), Nhut Le as Judomaster, Eagly the bald eagle, and Robert Patrick as Peacemaker’s deceased father, Auggie Smith. The returning cast also welcomes new faces, including Frank Grillo as Rick Flagg Sr., the father of the late Rick Flagg (played by Paul Walter Hauser in The Suicide Squad), who had been killed by Peacemaker. Grillo’s Flagg has been promoted to the head of A.R.G.U.S. and has revenge on his mind. Peacemaker also has new supporting players in the form of Tim Meadows as agent Langston Fleury, Sol Rodriguez as Sasha Bordeaux, and Michael Rooker as Red St. Wild, the mysterious “nemesis” of Eagly the bald eagle.

Season 2 finds Chris Smith “coming to terms with the emotional toll of his violent past and his growing desire to be a better person,” per the official synopsis. He’s still dead set on finding peace no matter the cost—but this season, he wants it to come not from his loyalty to the cause but from heroics.

The series’s first teaser from May dropped the first hint at the season’s wackier direction, an extended pitch Peacemaker makes to join the Justice League…after failing to do so. The montage set to the band Foxy Shazam’s “Oh Lord” features cameos from the Green Lantern/Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl/Kendra Saunders (Isabela Merced), and Maxwell Lord (Sean Gunn), reprising their roles from Gunn’s previous DCU effort, Superman. Peacemaker’s meet-and-greet with the team, in which he pitches the League to join up with him against the deadly all-terrain tracks that were pursuing them, is not a success, naturally.

The short also dropped some amusing updates on Peacemaker’s supporting cast. Adebayo is now “living in the worst level of Grand Theft Auto,” per Economos. Harcourt, on the other hand, is “experiencing a particularly severe form of toxic masculinity,” while Vigilante seems to have ended up taking a job in food service.

The trailer’s biggest shocker? Peacemaker is in a different dimension. He blunders into an alternate universe inhabited by other DCU characters, where his alter ego has found a way to get the hero recognition and adoration he’s seeking in his universe. Green Lantern/Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl/Kendra Saunders (Isabela Merced), and Maxwell Lord (Sean Gunn) all show up in a bizarre scene that’s made more confusing by Peacemaker’s alternate celebrity status. Frustrated by his own life and romantic failings, he briefly entertains the idea of staying in this new multiverse. But as we know, he can never quite leave his mistakes behind. “No matter how green the grass is over there, you belong here. With us,” Harcourt sagely advises him.

James Gunn, who introduced the trailer at SDCC’s Hall H panel, has confirmed that Season 2 is very much about character development. “I like TV shows where the characters don’t just return every season and they’re the same characters. They change. I want to see growth. I want to see change—and sometimes regression,” Gunn said. “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.”

Peacemaker Season 2 is back bigger, wilder, and weirder than ever on August 21, 2025, exclusively on HBO Max.