It began with Creature Commandos and got deeper with Superman, but it was the finale of Peacemaker where James Gunn really began to pull the curtain back on his plans for the DC Universe. Since the very beginning of this journey, Gunn has made it clear that he has a plan for a big, overarching story in the DC Universe. One that you don’t have to watch every single piece of content to understand, but that will connect.
And while there have been teases before, the ending of Peacemaker season two is the first and best time we’ve had an idea of where this is all going.
So at the end of Peacemaker season two, Peacemaker himself (John Cena) is relegated to Salvation, a dimension where the government has begun to place metahumans it does not want to deal with. And, speaking with Rolling Stone, Gunn confirmed that the idea of Salvation is at the root of not just Peacemaker’s future, but the DC Universe at large.
“People should expect that the way that the military and Rick [Flag] and everybody are working together and they’ve created a probably illegal prison for metahumans on another dimension is gonna be a part of DCU stories going forward,” Gunn said. “And not just a tertiary, ‘Oh, this is Arkham’—it’s a part of the stories. There’s an escalating war, obviously, that’s going on between the government and metahumans. And this is a part of it.”
That “escalating war” will also be a part of the next two big pieces to the puzzle: Lanterns on HBO Max and Supergirl, in theaters June 2026. “Both those things are worked in,” Gunn said. “We knew both of those stories were a part of what we originally put together, so they’re part of the overall tapestry, but they’re also their own thing. Supergirl especially is a space adventure. It’s like Guardians [of the Galaxy]. Lanterns is its own thing. There’s just a longer, sort of a bigger world we’re building with all these different pieces and they do all come together and intersect sometimes in a story fashion and sometimes just in a, you know, ‘Here’s another piece of the world’ fashion.”
Of course, you begin to see that when you remember Peacemaker saw Rick Flag Sr. and Lex Luthor, star of the next Superman movie, Man of Tomorrow, in cahoots during this time. But, Gunn has teased, the big threat of that 2027 movie will be something new entirely.
“There is one big story,” Gunn said in a separate interview, as reported by Screen Brief. “On the one hand, everything is going to be okay to watch by itself, but there is still a bigger story that is being told that involves, for example, Salvation. And that story involves Rick Flag, it involves Lex and Superman, so those movies I’m going to be directing.”
” I’m not expecting people to go into Man of Tomorrow and know what Salvation is,” Gunn added. “We will say it in the movie. You’ll find out anything you need to know about, such [as] metahuman’s disappearing, through that movie.”
What do you think this story about metahumans disappearing thanks to the government will lead to? Let us know below.
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