Spoilers ahead for Peacemaker: Season 2, Episode 6 (“Ignorance is Chris”).
The latest episode of Peacemaker paid off that big DCU cameo that James Gunn has been hinting at for awhile now. A.R.G.U.S. boss Rick Flag, Sr. (Frank Grillo) is desperate to locate both Peacemaker (John Cena) and his interdimensional portal-opening device in an attempt to prevent any more dimensional rifts like the one that befell Metropolis in Superman.
So Flag seeks out a man who knows a thing or two about them … Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult).
Flag visits Belle Reve prison where the fallen tech genius is currently doing a 265-year sentence for nearly destroying Metropolis (and also, presumably, for the treacherous warmongering shenanigans he was up to overseas).
“We have a really important moment for not only Peacemaker but the entire DCU in that Rick Flag, the head of A.R.G.U.S., strikes a deal basically with Lex Luthor in exchange for Lex Luthor finding where Peacemaker’s portal might be,” Gunn explains in the latest episode of Peacemaker The Official Podcast with James Gunn.
“He is going to move him from a prison with metahumans to a prison with no metahumans, from Belle Reve, where they are now, to Van Kull, both prisons from the comics. And then he leaves and tells Sol– tells Sasha Bordeaux that he’s teamed up with Lex Luthor, which is scary. A man with such power as Flag, who obviously, you know, has some. He’s got an agenda. It’s scary for our boy Peacemaker.”
Luthor has a scanning device that will allow Flag to track down Peacemaker and his portal-opening box, and although he wants his freedom, he accepts Flag’s offer for a shot at “redemption.” Lex, who is using a cane and limping, also really wants to get away from metahumans, and this change of venues will allow for that.
Given that Gunn recently confirmed that Peacemaker Season 2 leads directly into his Superman follow-up film Man of Tomorrow, Flag’s deal with Luthor suggests that it’s just the first step in a journey that will eventually see Superman having to work with Luthor to confront a bigger threat.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Gunn revealed that Luthor’s cameo was shot during the filming of Flag’s Pentagon scenes in Superman. Gunn, who wrote and directed Episode 6, also said Luthor’s cameo was originally going to appear in Episode 7.
“That is the other thing that I moved besides the openings of [Episodes] 2 and 4, which I switched around. And the reason being that the next scene was so serious and heavy that I needed an in-between scene,” Gunn said. “And luckily, I had shot both of them, so it wasn’t a weird directing thing for me to just steal a scene from the next episode.”
For more, be sure to read our Peacemaker: Season 2, Episode 6 review.
What did you think of the Lex Luthor cameo and Flag’s deal with him? Sound off in the comments.
