How Peacemaker Blurs The Line Between Hero And Villain

gamerant.com:

This article contains spoilers for the first three episodes of Peacemaker.After making waves with last year’s The Suicide Squad, director James Gunn — the architect behind the Guardians of the Galaxy movies — continues his journey through the DC Universe with the new PeacemakerTV series on HBO Max. John Cena reprises his role as the title character, who seems to be a great deal more complex than he initially appeared.

Back in The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker certainly stood out from the rest of his teammates, but not in a good way. Unlike most of the Squad, he refused to disobey Amanda Waller’s orders to cover up Project Starfish, and ended up killing Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) in the ensuing battle. But while the movie portrayed Peacemaker as little more than a ruthless killer, his new spin-off series delves deeper into his characterization, showing that things aren’t quite that clear-cut.

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Peacemaker’s introduction in The Suicide Squad offered a brief hint at his backstory — namely, that he was trained since childhood to be a perfect killer by his father. In the film, this serves as little more than another trait that Peacemaker shares with Idris Elba’s Bloodsport. But in the spin-offseries, this throwaway line proves to be a crucial part of Peacemaker’s characterization.

Peacemaker’s father August Ransom Smith (“Auggie” for short) is introduced in the first episode, played by Robert Patrick — better known as the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. And as unpleasant as Peacemaker is, Auggie is even worse: he’s a cruel, spiteful bigot who derides his son for failing to live up to his lofty expectations. The end of Episode 2 even