James Gunn clears up any ‘Peacemaker’ canonical confusion

DCEU canon is pretty convoluted these days. With the SnyderVerse half-retired, the franchise has moved on from the Justice League director’s vision, and yet most of DC’s movies and TV shows remain set in the same continuity that began with Man of Steel. Although that might not be the case much longer, once The Flash film comes along and reboots the universe, reintroducing Michael Keaton as the new prime Batman and so forth. So what does that mean for fan-favorite series Peacemaker?

As a spinoff of The Suicide Squad, the standalone sequel to Suicide Squad (which featured Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne), it’s unclear how Peacemaker stands in DCEU continuity going forward. Creator James Gunn has assured fans, however, that his series is still part of the franchise’s main universe. One fan asked the filmmaker to clarify its canonical status on Twitter, with Gunn confidently proclaiming, “Yes, Peacemaker is still and will continue to be DCEU.”

Gunn’s reassurance may actually tell us something about how The Flash‘s restart of the timeline will affect the rest of the DCEU’s projects. It’s possible that the temporal alterations established in that movie will only be noticed by the Scarlet Speedster and perhaps a few select others with the rest of the universe continuing on unaware their reality has changed, thereby giving creatives like Gunn the freedom to do what they’re doing without being beholden to continuity changes.

This might just mean that when John Cena’s Chris Smith makes a joke at Batman’s expense in the future, he’ll actually be referencing Keaton’s Dark Knight not Affleck’s. Unless there will be two, or maybe even three, Batmen in the DCEU from now on. We’re still a little fuzzy on that point. Either way, fans can celebrate that Peacemaker will remain canon when it eventually returns to HBO Max for another wild and wonderful season.