DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran may have announced a slate of DCU projects at the start of 2023, but it's become apparent that they did so without a firm plan in place.
In fairness, that's not too different from Marvel Studios and the MCU, as Iron Man arrived in 2008 with only the vaguest hope of eventually releasing The Avengers (which followed four years later). Still, nearly three years after "Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters" was unveiled, Gunn still doesn't appear sure about which characters are active in the DCU.
Addressing what is and isn't canon from Peacemaker season 1, Gunn was asked whether Wonder Woman and The Flash (presumably not the Gal Gadot and Ezra Miller versions) are currently part of this shared world.
"Yeah, are they canon? I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see," the Superman director stated. "I mean, they’ll exist eventually. Whether they exist now, I don’t know."
While the Scarlet Speedster will likely be sidelined for the next few years after the largely negative response to 2023's The Flash, Supergirl writer Ana Nogueira is currently penning a screenplay for Wonder Woman.
"I’ve always had Wonder Woman as a priority," Gunn said last month. "But we got the first few things started, and there’s some other things that are really close to green-lighting — like there’s a television show that I hope that we’re gonna be green-lighting in the next few days. So now a little time has passed, and we really need Wonder Woman and we really need Batman, because they’re so important to us."
He added, "And so it’s become a little bit more like going to everybody at DC and being like, we need to figure this out. We have good writers on Wonder Woman and we just have to make sure it’s working and they have to not be somebody who’s gonna take two years to write a script."
Next year will see the release of Supergirl and Clayface, but beyond that, DC Studios' plans are a mystery to us. The Batman Part II is scheduled for a 2027 release, but it's an "Elseworlds" story, meaning it won't do anything to expand the DCU franchise as we near the halfway point of Gunn and Safran's 10-year plan.
Peacemaker season 2 follows Christopher 'Chris' Smith, aka Peacemaker, the vigilante superhero, as he struggles to reconcile his past with his newfound sense of purpose while continuing to kick righteous evildoer butt in his misguided quest for peace at any cost.
He discovers an alternate world where life is everything he wishes it could be. But this discovery also forces him to face his traumatic past and take the future into his own hands.
Peacemaker season 2 premieres on HBO on August 21. Check back here later this week for our review of the first five episodes.