[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Season 2 of Peacemaker.]

In Season 2 of the eight-episode HBO Max series Peacemaker, Christopher Smith (John Cena) discovered an alternate world where his father (Robert Patrick) and brother (David Denman) are alive and superheroes, forcing him to face his past and re-evaluate his own reality. At the same time, Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo), the new acting director of ARGUS, pursued Peacemaker as a threat after the death of his son, Rick Flag Jr. (Joel Kinnaman), at his hands, putting pressure on Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) to betray him.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, show creator James Gunn, who also wrote the entire season, discussed why Peacemaker should actually be titled Chris, how far ahead he thinks about the character’s journey, his 30 Seconds to Mars quip in the first episode this season, the fun of bringing Kinnaman into the mix, having John Cena face off with John Cena, just how big the finale will be, and how fans will react to the end of the season.

Collider: First of all, I want to say thank you for Season 2 of Christopher Smith. It’s much appreciated. It feels weird calling this season Peacemaker since it’s such an emotional deep dive this season.

JAMES GUNN: That’s right. I don’t know if you’ve heard me say it, but I think it should be called Chris.

Showrunner James Gunn Has Always Known How the Peacemaker and Harcourt Relationship Would Progress

“I always knew what he was dealing with.”

Image via HBO Max

When you were writing Season 2, how much did you also think about the next few years of the character?

GUNN: Some of it, I thought about, and some of it, I didn’t. I actually know where Peacemaker is going from here, so that was always a part of it. It was just, what’s the road from A to B, and figuring that out through Season 2. I always knew what he was dealing with, and I knew about the relationship between him and Emilia Harcourt and how that was going to progress, and where her character was going. Those were the basic things I knew.

Did you lay breadcrumbs that we should keep an eye out for?

GUNN: I think that by the time you get to the end of the season, you’re going to have a lot of answers. A lot of where we’re going with everything takes place in the last episode.

You wrote these episodes and you directed the first episode, so obviously you’re responsible for the 30 Seconds to Mars quip that’s in there with Harcourt saying “I’m not on good terms with 30 Seconds to Mars. How dare you.” How did that come about?

GUNN: Yep. I just felt mean about the Spin Doctors being thrown in there. I don’t think that was too fair for us to say Spin Doctors. Nothing wrong with the Spin Doctors.

You didn’t have to carry Joel Kinnaman or Rick Flag over from the original Suicide Squad film into yours, but you did, and then you brought him into this season of Peacemaker. Why did you want to keep telling his story?

GUNN: I always knew, from the beginning. Jen [Holland] and I knew that Harcourt and Flag had been having an affair when The Suicide Squad stuff happened. That was her reason for disliking Peacemaker so much, from the very beginning of episode one of Peacemaker. We knew that she had this relationship with him that was not only a sexual relationship, but that’s just the way that they deal with their stuff. It really was a friendship. And so, that was always a plan. And then, adding in geeky Joel Kinnaman was the most fun I had. Joel’s a good friend of mine. He’s an incredibly funny guy, and people don’t know it. He’s literally never been in a comedy. And so, just allowing him to go out there and be this ridiculous, namby-pamby character was so fun for me. When I was writing it, I was just laughing, knowing I would be making Joel do this. And then, Joel just did it perfectly. It’s so good.

Did you have to make sure he was actually able to do it before you wrote it?

GUNN: No, because I know him well enough that I knew he’d be able to do it. I think that he surprised me with how well he was able to do it. He completely just went for it. The scariest part was that I didn’t direct that episode. That was directed by Greg Mottola. Greg’s the one I trust the most out of the other directors, so I thought he would probably be good with it. It’s great. I loved it.

In Season 2, Peacemaker Wonders if He’s Living in the Wrong Reality

“I knew that was going to happen.”

A dimensional portal that leads to 99 other universes in your bedroom seems like both a great and really terrible idea because you might kill your other-dimensional self and have to chop him up and burn the pieces. Were you just looking for the right moment where John Cena would have to murder John Cena?

GUNN: I really wasn’t. It just ended up that way. It’s just where it led to. I knew that was going to happen. I didn’t know it was going to happen so soon in the season when I was first planning it out, but it makes sense. It fuels Chris’ belief that he’s in the wrong world. He is, at his core, a pretty nice guy and that Peacemaker is not, and yet everyone around that Peacemaker is.

I loved that you roped Freddie Stroma into helping John Cena clean up pieces of his own body. He just wants to be the best friend that he can be.

GUNN: Yeah. And Freddie loves doing that. He’s also very excited about an alternate dimension in which he can meet himself. He’s stoked about that. We’ll see how that ends up going for him.

In episode 3, you have a shootout, you have bombs going off, and there’s a helicopter exploding. What is it like to pull all of that off in one episode? Is it easier to go all out and do a ton of wild stuff in one episode because this is a show that you can balance with other episodes that are more character and relationship-based?

GUNN: Totally, yeah. When you see episode 8, it seems like it’s as big as any other four episodes. So, yeah, you do have to balance out throughout the season what you’re spending your money on. Peacemaker is a wild beast to ride because at times it’s very intimate and very personal. It’s two people in a room talking. I think perhaps our best scene of the season is with Jen and John talking for 10 minutes. It’s the much more raw emotional version of the Lois and Clark scene in Superman. But then, at the same time, some of the big stuff is really wonderful too. You’ve just got to balance it out throughout the season.

We see a Hawkgirl, Green Lantern and Maxwell Lord at the beginning of the season, and we see Rick Flag. Will there be more appearances before the end of the season?

GUNN: You’ll see one more character from Superman. There’s also one really big appearance by somebody in the end of the season that I don’t think people will see coming.

Creator James Gunn Says the ‘Peacemaker’ Season 2 Finale Is “Bittersweet”

“Bittersweet doesn’t even begin to say how bittersweet it is.”

Image via HBO Max

You mentioned giving a lot of answers this season, but what do you think people will say with the last episode? How do you think fans will react to the season finale?

GUNN: Bittersweet doesn’t even begin to say how bittersweet it is.

Release Date

January 13, 2022

Network

HBO Max, Max

Peacemaker is available to stream on HBO Max. Check out the Season 2 trailer:

“Is the middle name Gary or something?”

Rebekah Harding

Posted on July 29 2025 3:00 pm CDT

Last week, internet personality Trisha Paytas announced the name of her newborn son to eager fans who spent months guessing. The name of her son, Aquaman Moses Paytas-Hacman, garnered mixed reactions on the internet—including from the namesake film’s director James Gunn.

Featured Video

Why did Trisha Paytas name her son Aquaman?

The Paytas-Hacman family’s newest addition joined older sisters Malibu Barbie Paytas-Hacman and Elvis Paytas-Hacman, whom Paytas also gave controversial names.

Paytas and her husband, Moses Hacman, an underwater photographer, revealed that they planned to name their son after a water-themed movie. Based on the unique names of her other children, fans guessed names such as “Jaws,” “Ponyo,” “Watersnake,” and “Free Willy.”

She later teased that the name would start with an “A,” leading fans to speculate “Ariel,” “Atlantis,” and “Aquamarine.”

In a livestream, Paytas revealed that they picked DC’s “Aquaman,” which was a no-brainer to fans who know the internet star’s love for the superhero and actor Jason Momoa.

How did James Gunn react to the announcement?

Gunn, the co-CEO of DC films who directed Aquaman, appeared supportive but cautious about Paytas’s announcement.

“I think that’s cool. I hope he does okay in school,” he tells an Entertainment Tonight reporter.

He continues on about his own childhood nicknames, saying, “I mean, I had a hard time with the last name ‘Gunn,’ like, ‘Tommy Gun,’ ‘BB Gun,’ ‘Raygun,’ I’m like, okay, we get it.”

James Gunn is mostly worried about Trisha Paytas’ new baby boy, Aquaman, getting bulled in school. pic.twitter.com/yShLYcziZO

— Entertainment Tonight (@etnow) July 28, 2025

He then asks, “Is the middle name Gary or something? I mean, are they going to call him AQ? What are they going to call him? Won’t he get made fun of in school? Do kids make fun of kids anymore?”

Viewers on X reacted to Gunn’s statement about Paytas’s baby name.

“James just politely said, ‘Good luck, little dude,’” one writes.

“James Gunn knows that baby gonna have lore,” another jokes.

“That was the most polite ‘yikes’ I’ve ever read,” a third says.

However, Paytas didn’t seem to mind Gunn’s remarks, reposting the clip on her Instagram story on July 28.

The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s newsletter here.

TikTok often does this cool thing where its users take older songs and give them entirely new life by pairing them with trending dances or even just random posts, making them go viral enough to make them real-world hits as well.

This often corresponds with songs’ use in movies or TV shows, such as Stranger Things revitalizing Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.” That’s exactly what’s happening now with “Punkrocker,” a 2006 song by Swedish alt band Teddybears that features punk rock pioneer Iggy Pop.

The song owes its resurgence to James Gunn‘s Superman, which is flying high at the box office, and similarly restoring its titular hero to his former glory at the same time. And with its supercharged popularity, it was only a matter of time until “Punkrocker” made its way into Iggy’s setlist proper — which it did at Portland’s Project Pabst festival. Best of all, Gunn himself brought attention to the performance, posting the above YouTube and noting that it’s the first time Iggy Pop has performed the song — ever.

Over the past decade, Gunn’s earned a reputation for his pitch-perfect needle drops. In the case of “Punkrocker,” it appears in the closing credits of Superman, summarizing this version’s pop-punk ethos in a call-back to one of the film’s most resonant emotional beats, which arguably contains the film’s entire thesis. It’s a beautifully shot moment, and it’s very cool to see it already having some real-world impact.

You can watch the performance above.

James Gunn’s spent the past few weeks talking about why he agreed to do Superman, and he’s also taking time to address the awkward part: agreeing to do it at the apparent expense of Henry Cavill’s superhero comeback.

In 2022, the mid-credits scene for Black Adam none too subtly declared Cavill’s return and his team up (or fight) with Dwayne Johnson’s thunderous antihero. Nothing came of that, however, because as Gunn explained in a recent Happy Sad Confused episode, it was “never part of the equation.” As he told podcast host Josh Horowitz, Cavill’s announcement that he was coming back came the same day Gunn and co-DC Studios head Peter Safran closed their deal. Gunn “diplomatically” said someone at the time (read: Johnson) was making a play to lead DC’s movie slate, and we all know how that shook out.

The entire situation was “really unfortunate” to Cavill, said Gunn, who added he and Gunn later spoke with the actor to explain things, and they let him announce the bad news through his own channels as he requested. Despite how things shook out, Gunn stressed he’d be more than happy to bring Cavill into his DC universe as another character in “something”—but if there’s anything specific he thinks Cavill is perfect for, Gunn is keeping his mouth shut.

Likewise, he remains cagey on the next DC project he’s writing, which he promises will once again involve David Corenswet’s Superman. When pressed, Gunn stressed the hero is “very important” to the story, but it’s not a sequel or a teamup with Batman. Said project will be revealed “sooner rather than later,” so that’s something! Just don’t expect it in the next immediate week, since DC’s not bringing any movies with them to San Diego Comic-Con.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

Steve Granitz via Getty Images

Films have always brought attention to social issues and political themes.

Critics and fans are buzzing over James Gunn’s Superman starring David Corenswet. Jewish journalists and popular authors have expressed a particular interest in the upcoming film because Corenswet is half-Jewish. Gunn’s casting choice sparked celebration of Corenswet as a “Jewish superhero” and reenergized the widespread belief that Superman is secretly Jewish, but is he?

This perspective distorts the past and overlooks the evidence that Superman is a WASP—white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. Historical analysis of the character’s makeup, the words of the industry’s Jewish craftsmen, and the media’s treatment of his creators shows that Superman was never intended to be understood as Jewish; in fact, the opposite. Marketplace expectations and cultural norms around race and the body in America explain why Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster made the Man of Steel this way.

Superman’s alter ego glorifies this identity. Clark Kent celebrates WASP etymology with two British surnames. Superman may be an alien refugee from the planet Krypton, but upon arrival, he instantly transforms into an earthling with Anglo-Saxon ancestry.

The fantasy also embraces the myth of the frontier and the myth of the garden. Superman leaps like a grasshopper and lifts “tremendous weights” like an ant in the early comics. He is originally faster, and later, as the Max Fleischer animated cartoons declare, “More powerful than a locomotive,” the technology that conquered the West.

The 1950s television program narration repeats this phrase and proclaims that Superman “can change the course of mighty rivers.” Themed moccasins and the Krypto-Raygun solidified his pioneer spirit to consumers. George Lowther’s 1942 Superman novel canonized the Kents as heartland farmers.

His body exemplifies Anglo-Saxon manhood. Superman is a broad-shouldered, sleek-nosed, steel-jawed hunk with sapphire eyes. Apart from his blue-black hair, the Man of Steel displays the Aryan or Nordic ideal. Superman’s slim body and picturesque face are not Jewish, but Gentile.

When Siegel and Shuster conceived Superman in the 1930s, antisemitism was so prevalent that Jewish heroes were essentially unthinkable. How Writers Perpetuate Stereotypes, a pamphlet from 1945, secretly funded by the American Jewish Committee, documented the financial incentive and expectation of an Anglo-Saxon hero. “‘We are interested in circulation primarily,’” an unnamed representative of the comic book industry told Columbia University researchers. “‘Can you imagine a hero named Cohen?’”

New York Daily News reporter Pete Hamill realized the disconnect between Superman’s Jewish inventors and their handiwork in 1977. He referred to Christopher Reeve’s upcoming portrayal of Superman in Richard Donner’s 1978 film as “Supergoy”, and identified the character as Protestant. “And when I looked at Reeve again it all came clear to me,” he wrote. “Metropolis was Protestant. The city was invented by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster almost 40 years ago, but it was Protestant. And Superman/Clark Kent was a terminal Protestant.”

Hamill even grumbled at Superman’s “perfection” without making the racial connection: “He had pounds of muscle. He had a straight nose, a good chin, blue hair.”

Jewish cartoonist Will Eisner also communicated this uncomfortable truth. In 1989, Eisner told The Jewish News that he and his contemporaries created “‘Aryan characters … with non-Jewish names like Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent and … Denny Colt’” and “‘were trying to ‘pass’” with their fiction. Eisner again admitted to Comic Book Marketplace in 2004 that “the characters we made were Gentile.” Amending his initial description of racial identity, he declared, “All the characters that were created by Jewish cartoonists were WASPs.”

Journalist Jeff Salamon boasted that “the world’s most famous muscle Jew” has “blue eyes and the cutest little nose.” The caped wonder, he announced, is “a Greco-Aryan icon.” Salamon may have claimed Superman as Jewish, but his 1992 description in The Village Voice hinted at the deeper and more interesting but fraught history of Jewish comic book creators portraying the Anglo ideal.

The revered straight nose and square chin that Superman and virtually all other superheroes flaunt can be called WASPface.

Siegel and Shuster controlled their Cleveland art studio tightly to ensure Superman had this countenance. “Nobody but Shuster … is allowed to draw Superman’s facial expressions,” The Saturday Evening Post reported in 1941. Paul Henry Cassidy, one of their ghost artists, corroborated this rule the following year in his University of Wisconsin at Madison master’s thesis on the cartooning profession. He explains that his “work included inking everything except the faces of the principal characters of the SUPERMAN strip.”

Race science regarded the square jaw as the “manly look” and the embodiment of Anglo-Saxon power. It displayed the opposite image of the antisemitic stereotype of a hooked nose. In the 1940s and 1950s, psychologist and physician William H. Sheldon found proof for his pseudoscience in the heads and faces of comic strip heroes, even mentioning Superman by name. Sheldon associates their physiognomy with “the Viking kings and Greek gods.”

WASPs constituted the racial standard, and Superman’s Jewish creators projected the prototypical image of the “all-American” hero, who is not a “universal” everyman figure.

The popular press deemed the Man of Steel’s architects unfit to design and represent such a specimen. The Saturday Evening Post smeared Siegel as a “plump” young man with a candy bar addiction while his “pitcher-eared” creative partner looked “like an undernourished, bewildered schoolboy of sixteen.”

Liberty blasted their frames the same year: “Neither of this heaven-joined pair could be said to be models of their dream man’s magnificent physical perfection.” The feature pummeled Superman’s author as “stubby” and “spindly” and his artist as “a magnificently unmuscled runt.” The New Yorker described Shuster’s height and visage as the antithesis of his hero. “He’s a short, round-faced man,” the magazine said in 1948. The body-shaming language in these articles emasculated Superman’s creators and expressed an underlying antisemitism.

Clayton “Bud” Collyer, a WASP and Sunday school teacher, received more favorable treatment. The Saturday Evening Post proclaimed that Superman’s radio actor was the only employee “who approaches the physical and spiritual ideal” of the fictional champion.

When stationed at Fort Meade in 1943, Siegel insinuated Superman’s racial composition. He told a fellow soldier that his “brainchild” was his physical opposite: “I tried to do a strip on someone as unlike myself as possible—the result, Superman.”

Superman’s writer desired Anglo-Saxon features, which symbolized not just beauty but manhood and authority in the cultural imagination. Siegel writes in his unpublished 1978 memoir, “I hadn’t asked for the face or physique I was born with. I had not sculpted my nose, or fashioned my chin, or decided how broad my shoulders would be, or how tall I would become.”

Jewish cartoonists may have invented the superhero genre, but they did not resemble their creations. Selling superheroes to mainstream America required venerating Anglo-Saxonism. To carve out a good living, Siegel and Shuster reinforced a racial hierarchy that marginalized themselves.

Claiming Superman as Jewish is more about the present than the past. This perennial impulse expresses a hunger to overturn the conventional representation of Jewish men as brainy, quirky, and unmanly. It is time to demand that popular entertainment produce distinctly heroic Jewish characters. Otherwise, people will continue to seek out Jewishness where it does not exist, as with Superman.

It took a really long time for us to get a big screen take on Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman. And with the newly appointed DCU taking over, we wondered what would happen to our beloved goddess from Themyscira.

James Gunn and Peter Safran are reinventing the DC universe for Warner Bros. and while we’ve seen Gunn’s take on DC with Peacemaker and The Suicide Squad, his version of Superman is kicking things off for the DCU. One question remains for fans though: When are we going to see Diana again? Who will play our Wonder Woman?

According to Gunn, there is something in the works. He says that it is “being written right now.” That’s all the information that was given in a large spread for Superman in Entertainment Weekly. But it was enough information for fans of Diana to get excited about the potential of having a new take on the Amazon.

There are some other questions about the DCU as well. Including when Gunn’s universe will get their own version of Batman. The Batman and Robert Pattinson’s take on Bruce Wayne is its own separate thing in Matt Reeves’ world. So there is going to be a Batman as well and according to Gunn, it is “slow moving, but it’s moving.”

Let’s get a warrior Diana movie

We haven’t really had the chance to see a real warrior version of Diana Prince. Both Lynda Carter and Gal Gadot’s takes on Diana led with her compassion but Diana Prince is also a force to be reckoned with. She is powerful, forceful, and can hold her own against Superman. That’s impressive and I really want to be able to see that come to life.

In the comics, Diana Prince snaps Max Lord’s neck. In Wonder Woman 1984, she gave him a chance to change himself and while it was nice to not see Pedro Pascal die in something, it wasn’t really the Wonder Woman that people know and love. So it’d be nice with this new movie to have the chance to show Diana’s more brutal side.

Until we know more, there are fan casts. People have been talking about Katy O’Brian, Melissa Barrera, and Adria Arjona taking on the gauntlets.

Whatever happens with Diana, I’m just happy that she is on the table early in the DCU and we will have our Amazon yet again.

(featured image: DC Comics)

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Rachel Leishman

Assistant Editor

Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She’s been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff’s biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she’s your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh. She has multiple podcasts, normally has opinions on any bit of pop culture, and can tell you can actors entire filmography off the top of her head. Her current obsession is Glen Powell’s dog, Brisket.

Her work at the Mary Sue often includes Star Wars, Marvel, DC, movie reviews, and interviews.