James Gunn Hints at John Cena’s DCU Fate as Peacemaker Season 3 Gears Up
As Peacemaker season 2 barrels toward its finale, buzz over John Cena’s DC future is spiking — and DC boss James Gunn just stoked it with a cryptic tease that has season 3 talk in overdrive.
Peacemaker is barreling into its Season 2 finale, and the big question is the obvious one: is John Cena coming back for more? Short answer: maybe, but not in the straightforward way you expect. Full spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2 ahead.
So... is Season 3 actually happening?
James Gunn is doing that thing where he answers the question without really answering the question. In a recent chat with Deadline, the Peacemaker creator and DC Studios co-CEO teased that the finale itself holds the real clue.
"You're gonna find out more in episode 8 because it's not necessarily that. Some of these characters will continue, but also, it's not exactly Peacemaker 3. I'm not ruling it out. You'll see (episode) 8 and maybe you'll find out a little bit more."
Translation: Gunn is keeping the door open, but if there is a next chapter, it might be a shape-shifted version of the show with familiar faces rather than a straight Season 3.
The Season 2 detour that set fans spiraling
Early this season, Chris Smith dove into a parallel universe hoping for a better life with his other-verse family. Instead he met a more successful version of himself, they threw down in the Quantum Unfolding Chamber, and Chris accidentally impaled his counterpart on a spiked ceiling fixture. He and Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) quietly disposed of the body, and the whole thing has been rattling around Chris's brain ever since.
That incident kicked up a theory storm: did Chris actually kill some kind of Auggie Smith clone at the end of Season 1, and is the real Auggie (Robert Patrick) alive in that other universe? Gunn's answer to that one was blunt: no. He did add that we'd learn more about Auggie in the next episode, which leads to...
Episode 7: the Auggie twist, then the gut punch
We finally met an alternate Auggie Smith (aka Blue Dragon) who, unlike the violent racist we knew, is a resistance fighter pushing back against a fascist regime. He even lays out his philosophy to Chris and Harcourt, basically saying he fights the killers and monsters right in front of him because that's what he can control.
It is a sharp, fascinating flip on a character the show trained us to hate. And then, in classic Peacemaker fashion, it turns tragic. While trying to save his new allies, this Auggie is killed by Vigilante. So for anyone still holding out hope: the original Auggie is still dead, and the kinder other-verse version is now gone too.
The Murn comeback that almost happened
Remember Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) from Season 1? He was Chris's handler who turned out to be hosting the butterfly Ik Nobe Llok, a rebel who didn't want to join the alien takeover. Murn's body was shot by Detective Song late in the season (Episode 8, 'A Whole New Way to Die'), killing the butterfly after Harcourt and Adebayo were ambushed at his apartment.
Gunn revealed on the Peacemaker podcast that he actually considered bringing Murn back this season — not resurrected, but as another version of him on Earth-2 (also referred to as Earth-X here). That Murn would have been part of the Sons of Liberty alongside Vigilante, trying to liberate a world under a Nazi-like regime. In Gunn's words, that Murn would have been an all-out action hero, a freedom-fighter spin rather than the morally gray operative we met in Season 1. The storyline was cut, but the idea is still on the board, and that parallel world is very much still out there.
Where things stand heading into the finale
- No official Season 3, but Gunn hints the next step may not be a traditional 'Peacemaker 3.' He does say some characters will continue in the DCU.
- The doppelganger Chris killed in Episode 1 is exactly that — a Chris from a parallel world. The Auggie clone/lost-in-the-other-verse theory is dead.
- Alternate-world Auggie turned out to be a resistance hero... and then Vigilante killed him while he was saving allies.
- Clemson Murn almost returned as an Earth-2 freedom fighter in a cut subplot. Gunn left the door open to revisit that concept later.
- The Peacemaker Season 2 finale drops October 9 on Max.