Is “Peacemaker”Actually Gay? What Season 2 Tells Us Before The Finale
What the show is and where to watch.
James Gunn’s Peacemaker is a DCU series starring John Cena as Chris Smith, a helmeted anti-hero trying to be better and failing loudly along the way. Season 2 streams on Max, with new episodes landing weekly and the finale due this Thursday, 9 October (US). If you see “HBO Max” in some listings, that’s the same service in certain regions.
What season 2 is actually about.
Chris finds a door to “the perfect life” via a dimensional device and keeps slipping into a parallel Earth where his family are celebrated. The punchline lands hard in episode 6: it is Earth X, a reality where Nazis won, which reframes the “perfect” world as a moral trap. Gunn has spoken about handling the twist carefully with Danielle Brooks, who plays Leota Adebayo.
So… is Peacemaker gay?
Short answer: he is not straight. Gunn confirmed in season 1 press that Chris is bisexual, crediting Cena’s improv for leaning into a character who is “open to anything sexually”. That through-line continues in season 2, including a much-discussed group-sex sequence used to show Chris spiralling rather than strutting. At DNA, we read it as messy, human, and very on brand for a man who wants love but keeps grabbing distractions.
Who else is queer in this story.
Leota Adebayo is a lesbian, a fact established from the start and still part of her arc as she tries to be the team’s moral centre. Judomaster reveals he is gay in season 2, which tracks with actor Nhut Le’s own identity, adding another thread of representation amid the chaos. Vigilante remains the wildcard; his lines about sex and “bonding with my best friend” fuel ongoing debate about whether he reads as asexual. We won’t label him without a clear on-screen statement, but the conversation is happening.
The Rick Flag Sr. problem.
Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. now leads A.R.G.U.S. and is hunting Chris over Rick Flag Jr.’s death. A.R.G.U.S. is the government outfit that wrangles metahuman problems; in earlier DC continuity it stood for Advanced Research Group Uniting Super-Humans, while Gunn has recently said the DCU version reads Advanced Research Group of the United States. The point is the same: Flag has the keys to the black-ops machine, and he is using them.
Where the finale heads next.
Expect the Earth X fallout to collide with Flag’s vendetta and Chris’ guilt. Gunn has teased a longer-than-usual closer, with the finale clocking in at over 57 minutes. Question is, will Chris choose the hard, honest world over the comfortable lie, and what does that mean for his found family?
