The West is currently rife with conservatives using people’s fears to normalise bigotry and prop up the elite, so it hardly seems like the ideal time for a white nationalist whose idea of loving America means never holding it to account to lead a high-profile TV show. The Suicide Squad’s Peacemaker embodies this side of society because he, like too many others, is willing to let everything slide because he thinks that America is great and everywhere else is bad.
Spoilers for The Suicide Squad ahead
James Gunn’s DC debut The Suicide Squad is a wonderful jaunt with a colourful cast of characters that embody the cheesy side of the comics in the best ways imaginable. The costumes are silly, the action is over-the-top, the dialogue is cheesy, and the depths he’s pulled the characters themselves from is niche in the best of ways - Polka Dot Man and TDK? Really? I love it!
Even Peacemaker was enjoyable; at least, in the context of his role in the film. It’s John Cena’s best performance to date and this is coming from someone who struggled to get through Bumblebee exclusively because of his hammy turn as the dogged Agent. He stepped up his game and gave an entertaining take on the toilet-headed All-American, but he got his comeuppance after trying to kill several of his teammates just to ensure that they didn’t make ‘Murica look bad.
The phrase “in the context of his role in the film” is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there. A full series on HBO Max starring him is a little much. For one, I’m not entirely convinced Cena has the chops to headline a series but, more importantly, he didn’t even have a character arc in the movie. He remained the jackass patriot up until Bloodsport rightfully put him down.
He doesn’t change, so it feels like it’s going to be a whole series of a nationalist doing nationalist stuff. Now especially is not the time for that, even if it paints Peacemaker as a piece of shit. It’s giving a platform to the worst kind of person, and I can’t quite fathom how Gunn thought that, out of the entire cast, he was the one to pluck out for a show. Either he’ll be the villain in a series where he’s the titular character - hard to maintain with an actor as inexperienced as Cena - or it’ll poke fun at him as a comedy that serves… who, exactly? It’s hard to laugh at blundering nationalists when they’re leading our political parties.
The kicker is that there’s an incredibly intriguing story just sitting there that’s perfect for a limited series - Bloodsport putting Superman in the ICU. For one, Henry Cavill hasn’t returned properly since Justice League in 2017 - a criminal waste of his perfect casting. It would be exciting to see him under a new direction. Snyder’s take was a bit broody, but that arc was interesting. Now he’s resurrected and happy to be alive, so having Gunn exploring that new version of Clark Cent would make for compelling viewing. It’s not like Cavill is above television - he’s headlining The Witcher on Netflix, while Elba has a wealth of television experience including Luther, The Office, and the show of his own creation, Turn Up Charlie.
With Bloodsport still alive, Gunn could even play around with narration, having it being a story told in retrospect. Perhaps that could be used as the vehicle to highlight how his relationship is improving with his daughter. We’d also find out just why the hell Bloodsport wanted to put Superman in the ICU, to begin with. Was it for sport? Was it a job? While it made some corners of the internet mad, it was a fun little strand of connectivity that offered a great set-up for a show that Gunn would be remis not to dive further into. It’s not like comics and their movie cousins don’t often pick on obscure one-off lines of dialogue to build stories around.