The Season 2 finale of Peacemaker didn’t just end on a crazy cliffhanger. According to James Gunn, this episode set up the next major story arc for the DCU as a whole.
This revelation made me realize what Marvel has been doing wrong with their own TV shows and must fix if they hope to compete with DC. Marvel needs to start using its shows to set up its movies rather than using its movies to set up shows.
Disney Creates Distance Between Marvel Films And Shows
Even before the arrival of Disney+, Marvel always tried to create distance between its films and its TV shows. Netflix shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones would only obliquely reference events from the movies, while TV characters never (at least, until Charlie Cox popped up in Spider-Man: No Way Home) appeared on the big screen. That latter fact was even weirder when you consider that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had multiple cameos from movie characters like Nick Fury, but the TV show never had any impact on the films.
Eventually, the shows took on a kind of second-class status. After all, why would audiences care all that much about a series that would never impact the popular blockbuster movies?
Disney tried to fix this by filling its new streaming service with shows featuring Marvel movie stars, leading to a different fan complaint: the shows on Disney+ felt like homework needed to understand the movies. That’s never really been true, though, with the exception of WandaVision kindasorta explaining Scarlet Witch’s heel turn in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.
New Approach, Old Problem
Despite the new approach, fans eventually began to tune out the new Disney+ shows for mostly the same reason: that the shows never had much impact on the movies. Loki hasn’t impacted many films yet, for example, and Secret Invasion was completely superfluous.
Agatha All Along only tried to set up its own sequel series, and Falcon and the Winter Soldier had almost nothing to do with Captain America: Brave New World. Hawkeye, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk were all self-contained series, giving the average Marvel movie fan no real reason to tune in.
With the Season 2 finale of Peacemaker, James Gunn flipped this formula on its head. The show left Peacemaker in a new location (Sanctuary), crucial to future DCU film and TV projects. In the Peace By Peace featurette after, Gunn declared that the new location “is going to be an incredibly important thing in the future of the DCU.”
The Secret Superman 2 Prequel
Gunn later declared that this kicks off “our larger story in the DCU.” And while he didn’t mention exactly what would come next, Gunn previously declared that Peacemaker Season 2 was a prequel to The Man of Tomorrow, the upcoming Superman sequel.
Between this and Lex Luthor teaming up with the government, it seems clear that Salvation is going to feature in the Man of Steel’s next movie. Gunn basically said as much on Bluesky, telling a fan that the events of Peacemaker’s finale (including what the government is doing with Lex and metahumans and where Peacemaker ended up) “is all part of the future, [Man of Tomorrow], and more.”
In other words, Peacemaker just became mandatory viewing for DCU fans. In this way, Gunn is avoiding the Marvel TV show problem because nobody can afford to skip the shows if they want to be up to speed on the movies.
It’s a great short-term approach, one which made Peacemaker incredibly relevant while continuing to stoke fans’ collective hype for the next Superman movie. Time will tell whether this works in the long term or if the DCU will start having Marvel-style complaints about shows feeling like homework. But the homework factor may not matter if the show can keep up this level of entertaining momentum.
Marvel’s Downfall May Take Disney+ With It
Right now, Peacemaker is a show that works as both a self-contained adventure and one with crunchy connections to the DCU. That way, it can be enjoyed by casual audiences and DC superfans alike. The combination has given this show more buzz than any Marvel TV project since Loki.
It’s not too late for Marvel to adapt this approach and make its own TV shows integral to future movies, but that means using series to set up films rather than the other way around. At this point, they have very little to lose as Kevin Feige gets ready to reset the entire MCU. But if they keep making shows feel irrelevant compared to the blockbuster films, it could mean more than the death of Marvel television; it might just mean the downfall of Disney+ itself.
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