In 2022, James Gunn asked audiences if they wanted a taste of John Cena in Peacemaker. The HBO Max show proved to be a hit, will be integrated with the director’s new connected DC Universe, and, now, fans have a dorky theory for how it will be folded in.
As of this story’s filing, the above thread discussing the possibility on the official Reddit section for DC Comics media adaptations is burning up with votes and comments. As the original poster notes, Smith’s father in the show (August Smith/White Dragon as played by Robert Patrick) has access to an impressive array of advanced technology and, as one can do anything in a comic story and with some people like Ezra Miller in The Flash being the same across multiple realities, it would totally sync up.
For those unfamiliar, pocket universes used to maintain older stories adjusted by publishing resets happen all the time in comics. The one in DC Comics history is literally just called the pocket universe and became the home for a version of Superboy after the company’s Crisis On Infinite Earths event resulted in a different version of Superman who never had this moniker in his youth. Elsewhere in the discussion, different franchise fans do not love this idea and say it will just confuse casual viewers or those who are wanting to get into the franchise as a newcomer after the repeated failures of work influenced by Zack Snyder even more so.
What will actually happen to bring the characters from the Cena-led series over into a new frontier remains to be seen. For now, a second season has no definitive release date set given Gunn’s preoccupation with work like Superman: Legacy while a spin-off featuring Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller (titled Waller) is on deck for next year. It has no guarantee of surviving if folks at HBO feel it is not up to snuff, and, for Cena, he does not know what his DC future is, or even his past, as the entertainer recently said in a report he had never worked with Margot Robbie before Barbie in spite of, you know, their turn in The Suicide Squad back in 2021.