DC’s newest show Peacemaker follows the after-credit scenes that happened in James Gunns’s The Suicide Squad where it is revealed that Peacemaker (John Cena) survived being shot in the neck by Bloodsport (Idris Elba). Peacemaker tells the origin story of Chris Smith aka Peacemaker as he becomes a part of a black-ops task force in order to finish out his prison sentence, as well as following his journey change and trying to figure out if killing people for peace is what he actually wants to do.
After returning back to his hometown of Evergreen, Chris tries to rebuild his life and relearn how to be in the outside world after being in prison for four years. However, he’s sucked into another task force to stop an alien invasion in exchange for finishing his prison sentence. Although throughout the series we see that being a trained killer might not be something he wants to do anymore. In The Suicide Squad, Chris kills Rick Flag in order to keep information about the United States experimenting on a foreign countries citizens from being leaked out to the public, after he stabs Flag in the heart, Flags dying words are: “Peacemaker, what a joke.” These words haunt Chris throughout the series because he made a vow to bring peace no matter who or why he has to kill for it. But after the events in the movie, Chris now seems unsure if he should or is able to uphold his vow.
That’s not the only thing that Chris is trying to work through, he’s also trying to figure out how not to become like his father; a racist, homophobic, conspiracy theorist who used to dress up as a racist supervillain called the White Dragon, which he later reprises in order to kill his son. Before we even meet Chris’s father we hear people talking about how racist he is and he clearly has a bad reputation around Evergreen and everywhere else. Adrian Chase aka Vigilante, an antihero who has a questionable moral compass asks Chris why he doesn’t just kill his father if he’s racist, to which Chris says he can’t because he loves him. Another time, Adrian tells Chris that there are rumors going around that Chris is racist because of who his father is and because he works with him. Chris vehemently denies being racist. Although his opinions about race, masculinity, and just about everything, in general, isn’t always what a lot of people would consider the “right” opinion.
When the audience does meet Chris’s father, Auggie Smith, we really that Auggie not only is a racist and horrible person, but he’s also incredibly abusive to Chris. When Chris first gets out of prison, he goes to his father’s house. Upon seeing his son for the first time in four years, Auggie is disgusted to see him and berates Chris about letting himself get shot because he sees getting shot as something unmanly. He yells at Chris for being a part of the “deep state” and betraying America. He tells Chris over and over again how much he hates him, wants to kill him, and how he wishes he died instead of Chris’s brother. He even tries to kill him during the final battle of the show, where he also happens to call Chris homophobic slurs for sleeping with men while in prison. Auggie is an all-around terrible person; he’s racist, homophobic, and he hates anyone who doesn’t look or believe what he believes. The show doesn’t shy away from this.
While at the beginning of the series Chris does excuse and blow over his father’s abusiveness and racism, he starts to realize how bad his father is not only to him but to other people and his beliefs and actions are not right and need to be stopped. It takes a long time for Chris to realize that how he’s being treated by his father is in fact abuse and we see him have multiple breakdowns over this in the show. And he slowly starts to try and unlearn his homophobic, racist, and sexist tendencies that have been passed down to him by his father, and he does this through the help of the rest of the characters on the show. They don’t hold back and tell him exactly what he’s doing and why it’s wrong and through this, we can see that Chris isn’t actually a terrible person, but the environment that he was in and the way his father was made him have these beliefs. And while he doesn’t unlearn everything that he believes immediately and he still has a lot to figure out, we can see that he is willing to do the work and that he doesn’t want to be like his father.
Auggie and Chris’s relationship mirrors a lot of what many people go through with their parents, specifically Gen X and Millenials. Gen X and Millenials didn’t grow up in the world of instant information like the world my generation (Gen Z) does. A lot of Gen X and Millenials had to unlearn a lot of what their parents taught them and recognize the abuse that their parents may have put them through. It also reflects the emotional and mental toll that people who have abusive parents go through and how it affects other aspects of their lives. In the show, Chris cries about how he pushes everyone away by insulting them. In another instance, he has a breakdown about how his father blamed him for the death of his brother even though Chris was a child and Auggie made him and his brother fist fight each other for entertainment which caused the death of his brother.
The show does a great job of showing all aspects of having abusive and racist parents that taught you their beliefs and then having to unlearn them. It doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of it and doesn’t downplay it at all. James Gunn does a great job of developing Chris Smith into a well-rounded and multifaceted character that we all end up rooting for even though he has a lot of faults. Gunn takes the character that we saw in The Suicide Squad and turns him into a beloved character for everyone to love.
Chris’s journey of recognizing the abuse he went through as a child and trying to be different than his father is something that most if not all people go through at some point in their lives, and while we used to see superheroes as being indestructable and not having the problems we may have, that is drastically changing. Some superheroes have always had very dark origins stories, they’re becoming more prominent now. And I think dark realistic stories are important because many people can identify with them more. Not to say that all movies, superhero or otherwise, should be dark and depressing, but I’m saying that it’s good to have these types of stories told, so that people can relate to them.
Not only does Peacemaker highlight parental abuse and racism, but it also highlight personal growth. Chris’s growth throughout the series from a jerk who makes slightly sexist and unpolitically correct comments to someone whose still a jerk but is trying to change and grow into the good person that everyone knows he could be. And what Peacemaker shows us is that growing especially when you’ve only known one perspective of the world is hard and takes a lot of work but with the right people to help you a long the way, it’s worth it. And while at the end of the last episode, Auggie still continues to haunt Chris as either a figment of his imagination or as a ghost, that just shows the audience that your problems don’t just always go away and that healing isn’t linear.