The DC Universe latest season of “Peacemaker” is coming to a close, and some wonder what the future will look like for DC’s beloved heroes, villains and everything in between. Back in late 2022 James Gunn and Peter Safran became the Co-CEOs of DC Studios and since then they have done an amazing job, rehauling the DC Extended Universe and making the DCU.
The DCEU had a lot of issues, they had few projects that were great, but they couldn’t save DCEU from failing, movies like the the Justice League were just bad, most of their shows and movies before Gunn started to work as a director at DC were either mediocre or complete garbage. When Gunn took over he didn’t wipe the slate clean, he kept the parts that worked and scrapped what didn’t. Most of “Peacemaker” season one and a few events from “The Suicide Squad” managed to survive the transition over to the new universe.
“The Suicide Squad” has been described as by Gunn as “an imperfect memory,” but in the case of “Peacemaker” all of season two is canon, while some scenes in season one had to be changed. Gunn cleared the air in the first episode of the second season by showing flashbacks that had alternate dialogue and different characters. The biggest change was replacing the Justice League cameo with one from the Justice Gang from “Superman.”
Compared to their competitors in the MCU, the future of the DCU looks so much brighter. It is a breath of fresh air since, while connections are formed between the handful of projects you don’t need to watch one project to understand and enjoy another. For example a character like Rick Flag Sr. appears in “Creature Commandos,” “Superman” and “Peacemaker,” and while he is played by Frank Grillo in every version you can watch these in whatever order you see fit and it still works.
While with Marvel, audiences may feel that they have to watch hours of movies and shows to understand what’s going on in the current projects, I remember watching “Avengers: Infinity” and “Avengers: Endgame” then watching “Spiderman: Far From Home” and thinking that movie would suck for people who didn’t watch the movies that came before.
The vision that Gunn has for the future seems bright, next year alone fans are getting a Supergirl movie, a Clayface one as well. They are also making a show focused on Green Lanterns John Stewart and Hal Jordan. This may lead some to question why focus on these instead of more of their heavy hitters, but honestly this just shows that the people at DC want to focus on telling a good story and setting up future narratives, instead of what can make the most money.
