Director James Gunn Confirms Peacemaker is Not Straight, Revealing That It Was John Cena's Idea

Director James Gunn has finally confirmed that Peacemaker isn’t straight and that the character's sexual orientation was directly suggested by John Cena. After Christopher Smith a.k.a Peacemaker’s appearance in 2021’s The Suicide Squad, it was quickly followed by a spin-off for Cena’s character. We all hated Peacemaker in The Suicide Squad and the spin-off’s purpose is to give Smith his redemption arc after killing Rick Flag and betraying the squad.

Gunn wrote and directed all eight episodes for Peacemaker delivering a comedy, violent, and a little bit sexual on the superhero genre. The show follows Peacemaker as joins a secret task force known as ‘Project Butterfly’ that hunts down alien parasitic species.

In an interview with Empire (Slashfilm), Gunn discussed Peacemaker’s connection to Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) and Cena’s improvisation to the character’s sexual orientation.

"She is his polar opposite in so many ways, politically. She's a Black, gay woman. He's a white, straight — nah, he's not straight [laughs] — white, whatever-he-is male. And yet they really like each other. They have a lot in common. [...] Peacemaker is an interesting character because he's so f*****-up in so many ways, and then in other ways, he is kind of weirdly forward-thinking. John does improv all the time, and he just turned Christopher Smith into this hyper-sexualized dude that is open to anything sexually. I was surprised by that. But I thought, 'I guess it makes sense that this guy isn't one-dimensional.”

Cena then shared about Smith’s openness and that his character is ‘willing to do almost anything,’ Cena explained, "We see in the show that he doesn't have any issues with sexuality. As long as you're not f****** animals — that he's not into. But besides that, he's pretty open. And yet other things he's completely close-minded on."

Following a redemption arc plotline for the show, we saw how the events of The Suicide Squad have changed Smith. We were able to assume how his toxic upbringing has changed his perspective and how he grew up to be an empathetic adult. One thing that Smith loves is his love of hair metal and glam rock, which Gunn explained as ‘an escape from toxic masculinity of his upbringing.’ Gunn explains,

"I think the hair metal is actually kind of a beautiful thing about Peacemaker. It does have that cocky male swagger that he has, but hair metal is also a way he rebelled against his father. There're the androgynous aspects of it, and his dad probably called him all sorts of homophobic slurs because he was listening to it. But he owned it. It was his. Something that was outside the realm of his father. He loves that music and he's able to just escape into it and rock out and be okay. I think he's grateful to the music for that."

Peacemaker has totally redeemed himself after the events of The Suicide Squad. Though he committed mistakes, we were able to understand the complexity of his character. In the series, we saw him grow as a real superhero, which he always claims.

Peacemaker is streaming in HBO Max.

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