With his medicine-ball biceps and chin worthy of an Easter Island moai, the wrestler turned actor John Cena can actually pull off wearing a daft comic book outfit, shiny silver helmet and all. That’s what makes Cena’s spandex-clad Chris Smith AKA Peacemaker so inherently funny: he looks the part but is a demonstrably terrible superhero. Being a hard-charging, self-sabotaging meathead with a propensity for violence and a hair-trigger temper will never make you as beloved as Superman. But it can be highly entertaining to watch.
To give Peacemaker his due, he is a survivor. He was first introduced in James Gunn’s 2021 movie The Suicide Squad, a film that bumped off cast members with glee, before getting his own small-screen spin-off overseen by Gunn in 2022. That brash and blackly comic first season shaded in some childhood trauma – Smith accidentally killed his older brother in a brawl instigated by their racist father – but also gave Peacemaker his first big win: saving the world from an alien invasion by sparkly butterfly creatures.
