If anyone was going to drop a Marvel Easter egg into the DCU it was going to be James Gunn. And he has not disappointed by slipping one of Marvel’s greatest and most profitable heroes into Peacemaker Season 2, making Spider-Man canon in the new DC universe he is building. However, it was not done in a way that means we are going to see Peter Parker rumble with DC’s best or worse.
Peacemaker Season 2 has opened up the DC multiverse in a way that took Marvel Studios more than a decade to do. John Cena’s Christopher Smith started the new season by discovering a door to a new world, where his brother and dad were alive, he hadn’t killed Rick Flag Jr, and Harcourt was ready to jump on him in a heartbeat. The perfect world. Well, that’s a misconception for another article.
In the latest episode of Peacemaker, which landed on HBO Max on Thursday night, one moment found Vigilante coming face to face with his own variant, which led to a lot of pointing very reminiscent of the classic Spider-Man meme. While this could have been a subtle hint that the characters are aware of Spider-Man existing in some form in their universe, James Gunn rarely does subtle, so the moment was followed by the like “We Spider-Man meme’d” being used to hammer home that, yes, even if it is just in the form of fiction, Spider-Man is a thing in the DCU.
James Gunn’s Take on Canon is Worth Its Own Dictionary Entry
If there is one thing that many diehard fans of any franchise hate more than anything, it is when someone plays around with canon. Yes, there are people who specialize in finding the tiniest discrepancies in character histories, timelines and appearance, and will call them out to the ends of the Earth, like it really matters in the grand scheme of life.
Those who watched the first season of Peacemaker found several changes being made to the series on its Season 2 return, notably the removal of the Justice League from their Season 1 cameo and the introduction of the Justice Gang from this summer’s Superman. There were several other smaller changes to help tie the new season in with the DCU world, but that is something Gunn made it clear he had no issues doing to make things line up. Back in 2024, around the time Creature Commandos kicked off the DCU, Gunn said of canon complaints:
“One of the weird things to me is none of this is real. It may be alarming to people, but none of it is real. It’s all just stories that we’re telling about characters. Hopefully there’s authenticity and truth to those stories because we care about those stories, the characters, the actors, the performers, the animators they all care about these stories, but it’s not real”
In the end, Gunn is right. A very brief look through the history of comic books will reveal dozens of origin stories and branching timelines for every major hero in both DC and Marvel universes. Authors have even revised some of their work to match future revelations in long-running franchises, because in the end it is all lies and lies don’t often hold up to too much scrutiny.
While the Spider-Man meme reference is clearly a happy throwaway comment in Peacemaker, James Gunn is well aware of Marvel/DC crossover events of the past. With that in mind, who is to say that with the DCU being more aesthetically in tune with the MCU than Zack Snyder’s creations ever were, we will not see Gunn attempting the ultimate crossover for the franchises somewhere in the future (if we forget for a moment how many people own the copyrights and the nightmare that would be to make happen).
- Release Date
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January 13, 2022
- Network
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HBO Max, Max
- Directors
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James Gunn, Brad Anderson, Rosemary Rodriguez
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Christopher Smith / Peacemaker
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Danielle Brooks
Leota Adebayo
