The First ‘Peacemaker’ Footage From HBO Max’s Series Reveals That, Yup, He Is Still Completely Awful

As Mare of Easttown and Ted Lasso racked up Emmy wins, HBO Max dropped a new sizzle real for its upcoming slate, which offered the very first look at The Suicide Squad spinoff series Peacemaker.

Tucked between footage of Dune, The Matrix Resurrections, and the new Sex and the City revival series, John Cena’s character got his own little spot where he’s every bit the obnoxious super patriot he was in The Suicide Squad film. The footage shows him meeting up with friends at a restaurant while still wearing his Peacemaker costume, which he calls a “uniform.” Later, he can be seen blasting a peace sign into a target with a shotgun because, naturally, his character loves guns.

Here’s how James Gunn described the spinoff series when it was announced almost exactly one year ago today:

“Peacemaker is an opportunity to delve into current world issues through the lens of this superhero/supervillain/and world’s biggest douchebag,” Gunn said in a statement. “I’m excited to expand The Suicide Squad and bring this character from the DC film universe to the full breadth of a series. And of course, to be able to work again with John, Peter, and my friends at Warner Bros. is the icing on the cake.”

As Gunn would later reveal, he wrote Peacemaker while bored out of his mind during the early pandemic quarantines. He says the series will be character-driven but still have that sci-fi weirdness that was present in The Suicide Squad film. He also said the series will be connected to other DC Comics properties and is “really just trying to make everything fit together much better.”

Peacemaker starts streaming January 16, 2022.