Following Superman summer, this week’s Peacemaker brought James Gunn‘s DCU together for what he calls a “really important moment” in the franchise.
The DC Studios boss recently explained the significance of Lex Luthor’s (Nicholas Hoult) appearing in the Season 2 episode ‘Ignorance Is Chris’ and how it impacts “the entire DCU” going into the next Superman pic Man of Tomorrow.
“This was one of the first scenes we shot. I think we shot it in the middle of Superman, while we were shooting the pentagon sequences in Superman. It was cool, it was weird because tonally, it instantly felt different from Superman, which is so big and brash. And this show is so grounded and gritty. And then also hearing Nick curse,” said Gunn on Peacemaker: The Official Podcast.
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“But I felt like even Nick’s performance was different,” he said, as wife and star Jennifer Holland noted, “It felt a little darker, it was a little different.”
In the episode, Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) visits Lex at Belle Reve for help finding Peacemaker’s (John Cena) portal to the alternate dimension, after the villain was apprehended in Superman for operating his own pocket universe.
“So, we have a really important moment, for not only Peacemaker, but the entire DCU, in that Rick Flag, the head of ARGUS, strikes a deal basically with Lex Luthor,” explained Gunn. “In exchange for Lex Luthor finding where Peacemaker’s portal might be, he is going to move him from a prison with metahumans to a prison with no metahumans.”
Gunn noted that Flag has “teamed up with Lex Luthor, which is scary, a man with such power as Flag. He’s got an agenda, it’s scary for our boy Peacemaker.”
The Superman director previously revealed that Lex will team up with David Corenswet‘s Superman in Man of Tomorrow, “against a much, much bigger threat,” adding, “It’s more complicated than that. It’s as much a Lex movie as it is a Superman movie.”