Frank Grillo Joins Peacemaker S2 as Rick Flagg Sr.

We’ve got a full-length trailer for Season 2 of Peacemaker, the Emmy-nominated DC Comics spinoff series from James Gunn (helmer of The Suicide Squad). San Diego Comic-Con saw the trailer debut this past weekend, and it has the requisite Peacemaker mayhem—blood, bullets, bodies, and a whole lot of insanity. What’s different? Well, Gunn’s director’s cut of The Suicide Squad is set to hit HBO Max the day before Peacemaker’s season premiere, so it’s more of a continuation of that particular film rather than its first season, Peacemaker: First Blood. Gunn explained during a Hall H SDCC panel earlier this weekend that his Marvel and DC work “are kind of living in their universes.” With a year between each season of Peacemaker, it’s like each season is a new movie anyway. Gunn says he has each character’s journey planned out, but the meat and potatoes for him is in how the characters change and develop throughout the series. In the meantime, all we can focus on is this upcoming new season and what will transpire for Peacemaker’s Chris Smith as he deals with his past and his newfound desire to be more than just a mass murderer-for-hire.

Peacemaker premiered in 2022 and quickly became an Emmy favorite for both best comedy series and acting nominations for star John Cena. Peacemaker was very much its own action-hero thing for Cena. Gunned up and wearing all kinds of ridiculous armor, the former wrestling champion, starved for both attention and acceptance, is taken under the wing of the Department of Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics (aka DHIL) to become a government-sanctioned antihero. If he does as he’s told, Chris Smith will have his badge, with strings attached. He is recruited for a top-secret mission codenamed “Project Butterfly” and teams up with Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji), an A.R.G.U.S. agent, John Economos (Steve Agee), Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and the new Peacemaker recruit, Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks).

Project Butterfly is very much what it sounds like—a secretive government operation—but as the mission plays out, it’s not just your typical government monster-slaying thing. Project Butterfly turns out to be a top-secret mission to stop an alien species invading the planet: parasitic butterflies that take over their human hosts. And just as the first season of Peacemaker came to an end, our heroes (sans Vigilante) managed to stop the otherworldly massacre in a nail-biting, action-packed battle that brought the team back from the dead…well, kind of, since Smith and Harcourt were killed early in the final episode. Murn saved their lives by blasting a gun turret out of the sky. They all lived, though several were killed along the way.

The Season 2 trailer from Peacemaker confirms Season 1’s ending: our heroes are still alive, thanks to a cameo from Rick Flagg Jr., whose dad, Rick Sr. (Frank Grillo, who fans know from Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films and as Standalone Complex on The Shield), is this season’s big bad. Rick Sr. is leading A.R.G.U.S. as we speak, and is also out for blood: Peacemaker’s. Season 1 took place in what has now been referred to as the DCEU of the first and second seasons of The Boys. Gunn’s future DC Universe, which the director unveiled during a separate panel over the weekend, is the new slate of movies, including DCU (DC Universe). Gunn confirmed during his panel that many events, outside of cameoing in a few appearances by the Justice League (namely Wonder Woman and Batman, played by Lynda Carter and Michael Kelly), will still be considered canon.

The whole cast of Peacemaker is back this season. The original characters include Cena, Brooks, Holland, Agee, and Freddie Stroma as the fan-favorite—and psycho—Vigilante. Returning characters also include Nhut Le as Judomaster. Eagly, Peacemaker’s loyal bald eagle sidekick, is also back. Peacemaker’s dead father, Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick), has a significant role in the new season. New faces in Season 2 include Frank Grillo as Rick Flagg Sr., father of the late Rick Flagg Jr., killed in The Suicide Squad. It’s a matter of course that Flagg Sr. is now leading A.R.G.U.S. and out for revenge. Others this season include Tim Meadows as A.R.G.U.S. agent Langston Fleury, Sol Rodriguez as Sasha Bordeaux, and Michael Rooker as Red St. Wild, described as Eagly’s nemesis in the official synopsis.

The season is also following through on the aftermath of the first season, as the official synopsis states: “Chris Smith is in the crosshairs. Coping with the carnage he created, Chris must come to grips with both the emotional weight of his bloody past and his newfound aspiration to be more.” In other words, he’s still after peace at any cost—but this time, he wants to be a hero for doing good deeds rather than mindlessly following orders. A Peacemaker teaser we saw in May offered some of the wackiest looks from the season to come.

Set to Foxy Shazam’s “Oh Lord,” the glimpse into Season 2 begins in what looks to be a montage from Chris’s past, failed attempts at joining the Justice League team. The teaser includes Justice League members Green Lantern/Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl/Kendra Saunders (Isabela Merced), and Maxwell Lord (Sean Gunn), all reprising their roles from Gunn’s Superman film. His uncomfortable sales pitch doesn’t go over too well as he awkwardly drones on before his future teammates mercifully end the presentation. Later, a badly bruised and battered Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) lands in a very expensive hospital. Economos (Steve Agee) uses a metaphor for the 23-year-old from Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA V), telling her, “You got to the worst level of GTA real quick.” Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) is experiencing “a particularly severe form of toxic masculinity,” and Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) has taken a gig in food service.

The most exciting bit of news (or what some might call bad news) at the end of the trailer for Season 2? A dimensional portal that Peacemaker falls into. A version of Chris, played by Cena, falls through a portal into what’s known to be an alternate universe where a different version of Peacemaker has been operating: a version of Peacemaker that’s well-loved and has a rep as a bona fide hero. Chris is dissatisfied with his status, so much so that he’s at least considering staying in this universe, let alone having had a serious relationship with Hawkgirl. Peacemaker is already one of the most difficult, hard-to-please people in existence, so a chance to start over with a better reputation and, for a change, a loving relationship is almost too good to be true. Gunn said that the multiverse as we know it in superhero universes is just different versions of Chris Smith “fighting different iterations of his father.” Harcourt warns him: “No matter how green the grass is over there, you belong here. With us.”

It’s all about the characters in Season 2 for Gunn. “I like TV shows where the characters don’t just return every season and they’re the same characters,” Gunn told us. “I like to see growth. I want to see change—and sometimes regression.” Gunn was quick to note that Peacemaker is a different character this season. He’s had to contend with “the demons he has unleashed” from last season, and now he’s dealing with these demons both on his own as well as getting pushed around by the larger world for his misdeeds in the past. They aren’t fully accepting him as a hero—or as Peacemaker, who’s their job title at this point.

All of Gunn’s superheroes and supervillains, so far, have been defined by what happens between the big set-pieces and fight scenes: a softer side, be it mental health problems, familial strife, or internalized turmoil and doubt. Gunn has managed to take what could have been stock-standard Marvel and DC characters and turn them into something recognizable and relatable, though often warped, given his penchant for the extra-demented. Peacemaker, in particular, will likely follow suit with his Season 2 journey; a different beast but a similarly bruised and broken one. Gunn left it to us to find out for sure.

Peacemaker Season 2 premieres August 21, 2025, exclusively on HBO Max.