james gunn officially confirmed that the second season from the Serie Peacemaker was on his way. The HBO series will be able to build on elements from its first season, and could also introduce one of the worst villain teams of the DC Universe.
the return of the nazis
The first season of Peacemaker followed the events of the film The Suicide Squad (2021), where we found John Cena in the role of Christopher Smith, better known as the anti-hero Peacemaker. The season then focused on the character’s struggles to come to terms with some of the tough decisions made at the end of the 2021 film.
And in this first season, we also find Chris Smith’s father, Auggie Smith, who played an important role in the protagonist’s quest for self-acceptance. Auggie Smith is a white supremacist, also known as White Dragon, a notable criminal at the head of a group of neo-Nazis. The first season of Peacemaker therefore focuses on Chris’ attempts to confront his father’s twisted beliefs, and the consequences of his influence on his upbringing and those around him, such as his brother Keith.
But at DC Comics, several different characters have used the White Dragon alias., and the most notable was surely William Heller (aka William Hell). The latter founded the Aryan Empire and later joined the Fourth Reich. Gunn’s version of the White Dragon, however, seems to take a slightly different direction.
Gunn chose to cast Auggie as an amalgamation of Wolfgang SchmidtPeacemaker’s Nazi father in the comics, and William Heller, creating a new version of White Dragon for the HBO series. In the DC Comics universe, the Fourth Reich is a neo-Nazi organization that dreams of a new Nazi regime within the United States. The first season of Peacemaker didn’t explicitly reveal Auggie’s past, but we may later learn that Auggie is directly involved in a version of the Fourth Reich in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU).
good bad news?
The introduction of such a team of villains would not only impact the universe of Peacemaker, but could also have ramifications on the DCEU as a whole. Much of the first season of Peacemaker focused on the White Dragon and his accomplices and how they affected Chris. The revelation of a possibly even larger Nazi group, which is more closely linked to his father, could then prove to be an extremely gripping arc for Chris in the future.
The introduction of the Fourth Reich would not only deepen the character development of Peacemaker, but could also introduce a new hurdle to overcome. In the comics, the Fourth Reich is an organization led by Captain Nazi, a German super-soldier considered the “perfect specimen” by Hitler himself. James Gunn originally asked John Cena to play an emotionally complex and silly Captain Americait would be interesting to see a confrontation between the two.
Season 1 of the series ended with Peacemaker hallucinating about his father, affecting him to the core of his being. The sequel could then not only explore the importance of the impact of the father’s legacy on the characterthen haunted by his death, but also showed the impact of these hallucinations on his relationship with the Fourth Reich.
