Peacemaker Season 2 Finale Features a DC Universe Location With Major Implications

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This article contains spoilers for “Peacemaker” season 2, episode 8 – “Full Nelson”

Since his DC Universe debut in “Creature Commandos”, Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) has been associated with metahumans and their prison system. However, after effectively taking over Amanda Waller’s (Viola Davis) role in the grand scheme of things, he seems to have become much more proactive in their containment. “Full Nelson” reveals the true extent of his endgame: He was looking for a more effective way to contain the DCU’s cavalcade of metahuman prisoners, and Peacemaker’s (John Cena) dimensional portal technology gives him just that.

After several false starts – including a visit to the imp-infested Candy Dimension that Earth-X Auggie (Robert Patrick) and Keith Smith (David Denman) discuss earlier in the season – the Flag team finally finds what they’re looking for. Dubbing the planet Salvation, Flag reveals his plan to use it as an off-world metahuman prison, and even throws Peacemaker there as a guinea pig.

For comic book fans, this is both bad news (for Peacemaker) and a great development (for the DCU as a whole). It turns out that Salvation is an important location in the comics, serving as the central location for the excellent 2008 miniseries “Salvation Run.” This story features Flag, Waller, and a group called Checkmate (whom “Full Nelson” also features) abandoning a number of extremely important supervillains on the planet, who unfortunately also turn out to be very dangerous behind their idyllic facade.

Given that “Salvation Run” features a long list of DC’s most important villains and James Gunn clearly intends to adapt the story in some way, Salvation could become the DCU’s go-to place to easily introduce just about any supervillain the universe’s various stories might need.

The “Salvation Run” comic features a massive collection of metahuman villains, from Flash’s rogues gallery to the Joker and even Lex Luthor (played in the DCU by Nicholas Hoult, and already connected to the story thanks to his important appearance in “Peacemaker” season 2). These characters struggle to coexist, form factions, and sometimes kill each other while struggling to survive on the planet — all of which is bread and butter for Gunn, whose superhero resume consists almost entirely of teams of villains and outcasts doing such things.

What’s more, the planet Salvation is even connected to the infamous planet Apokolips, in case Gunn wants to bring the New Gods and DC supervillain Darkseid into play at some point. In other words, “Salvation Run” offers endless storytelling possibilities and it’s pretty smart to introduce the prison planet so early in the DCU game.

However, I’m not sure Gunn will adapt “Salvation Run” in its entirety. The Joker certainly won’t be introduced that way, and Lex Luthor has his hands full with Gunn’s “Superman” sequel, “The Man of Tomorrow.” Furthermore, the end of season 2 of “Peacemaker” seems to make the planet a key location for season 3.

At the very least, the DCU’s “Salvation Run” seems destined to send Peacemaker on another messy “The Suicide Squad”-style adventure, accompanied by some of comics’ most expendable villains (Here, Psimon), and some of DC’s wackiest villains such as Mister Mallah’s gorilla/brain-in-a-jar team-up and The Brain. Who knows? It could even reunite Peacemaker with old foe Bloodsport (Idris Elba), who is part of Luthor’s team in the comics.

The entire season 2 of “Peacemaker” is now streaming on HBO Max.