Peacemaker shouldn’t work. The character is basically a MAGA Captain America in a shiny toilet bowl helmet, spouting about peace while mowing down anyone who looks at him sideways. It’s a one-joke gag stretched across decades of DC obscurity. And yet – under James Gunn’s now trademark freakshow stewardship – this thing rocks.

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When Gunn first dropped Peacemaker into The Suicide Squad back in 2021, the joke was simple: John Cena, a big slab of beef in bright red spandex, kills people in the name of peace. He’s a punchline, a meme, a casualty of irony culture. But Gunn has always had a knack for taking those kinds of cosmic weirdos, losers, and gutter punks and making them matter to audiences. If Guardians was the mixtape, Peacemaker is the bootleg live show where the band plays sloppy, bleeds a lot onstage, and still makes you fist pump during the encore.

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Season one was a surprise high-wire act, complete with a hair-metal theme song, an all-time-great opening dance number, and a story that somehow cracked open Cena’s man-child assassin and found a human being inside. Now, with season two, Gunn’s back at the helm and still playing three different games at once: action spectacle, raunchy comedy, and therapy session for a gang of broken weirdos.

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The setup this time: Peacemaker, still haunted from killing his Nazi dad (Robert Patrick) and the death of his older brother, stumbles into an interdimensional “storage closet.” On the other side is a fantasy world where dad’s not a racist supervillain, his brother’s still alive, and they’re all part of a heroic family unit that’s beloved by the general public. For a guy who spent his entire life being the butt of the joke, it’s like crack. 

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Meanwhile, Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo doing his best Nick Fury) is running an investigation into our bedpanned antihero, flanked by John Economos (Steve Agee, weaponizing grumpiness) and Tim Meadows having the time of his life chewing scenery until there’s nothing left.

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If Marvel’s multiverse has become a bit bloated, Gunn’s DC answer is a kickass garage band: loud, lean, messy, and way more fun – so far. Pocket dimensions here aren’t just wonky plot setups; they’re made for pratfalls, gore delivery devices, and meta-gags about the DC continuity. (Yes, the Justice League cameo gag from season one gets revisited. Yes, Gunn is basically trolling the entire franchise he now runs. Yes, it’s incredible.)

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But under all the neon spray of blood and dick jokes is the same beating heart Gunn always sneaks into the chaos. Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) is in free fall, blacklisted from every agency and picking bar fights just to feel something. Peacemaker keeps chasing her, like a high-school crush that never grew up, while still drowning in his own guilt and grief. They’re both funny, sad, and violent wrecks – but this show actually gives a damn about what that actually means.

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And then there’s Cena. If you didn’t buy him as a comedy actor after Trainwreck or Blockers, you should by now. He’s fearless here, bouncing between one-liners and gut-punch emotions in a way few actors today can pull off. One minute he’s a cartoon, the next he’s a man bleeding out on the inside, and somehow both feel real and earned. 

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Holland finally gets more to chew on, especially in her alternate-universe arc, and the supporting cast – especially Meadows, Grillo, and Agee – keeps things moving.

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Make no mistake: this is still the most gleefully violent superhero show on TV. Heads pop, limbs are torn off, and Gunn stages kill scenes like they’re slapstick routines scored by a college radio playlist. Also, um, there’s full-frontal nudity. Like, a lot of it. 

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At its core, though, Peacemaker is Gunn’s eternal jam: it’s all about family. The one that broke you, the one you invent, the one you keep crawling back to even when it hurts. And that’s the real trick – under all the bloody entrails and raunch, this is a story about sad, broken people desperately trying to matter to each other.

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In short, Peacemaker season two is bloody, horny, stupid, smart, and sneakily tender. It’s the superhero show that laughs at the genre while still making you give a shit. And, with Superman and Creature Commandos, it's a heck of an answer to the MCU – and one hell of a start for this new comic book cinematic universe.