Fly, Eagly! This article contains spoilers for “Peacemaker” season 2, episode 1, “The Ties That Grind.”
Fans had many reasons to anticipate “Peacemaker” season 2 and its mysteries. The first season established the irreverent series as one of the best superhero shows out there, and seeing how James Gunn pilots the sophomore season into his new DC Universe was always going to be an interesting undertaking. There’s also the matter of the show’s incredible opening credits. “Peacemaker” season 1 is famous for its amazing, stone-faced dance choreography title sequence, set to the tone of Norwegian glam metal group Wig Wam’s “Do Ya Wanna Taste It.” Of course, this put a lot of pressure on the sophomore season to deliver a similar experience … and, fortunately, it succeeds.
We already knew in advance that the safe but boring route of using the same intro with a few added bells and whistles wasn’t on the cards. At the 2025 San Diego Comic-Con, Gunn revealed that the “Peacemaker” season 2 theme song is Foxy Shazam’s 2010 single “Oh Lord.” Foxy Shazam already made an appearance on the “Peacemaker” season 1 hair metal soundtrack, and now, this alt-glam rock band from Cincinnati steps front and center.
The theatrical, energetic “Oh Lord” is a more complex beast than the straightforward singalong barrage of “Do Ya Wanna Taste It,” but it’s still a certified dance-friendly banger. In fact, the song’s official music video features synchronized choreography that looks a whole lot like some of the moves the “Peacemaker” opening credits have made famous. The visuals of the “Peacemaker” season 2 dance follow the “more is more” ethos of the song, taking everything fans loved from season 1 and turning it all up to 11.
The choreography offers clues of things to come
As with season 1, the “Peacemaker” season 2 opening credits offer clues about the characters and their relationship with each other. Primarily, the choreography shows that the 11th Street Kids, who bonded over the course of season 1, are now a tightly-knit group, as opposed to a bunch of losers who got thrown together. Notably, the credits feature elaborate and tender partner dance moments between Peacemaker (John Cena) and Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), highlighting the pair’s evolving but volatile relationship — which, of course, “The Ties That Grind” later hones in on. Meanwhile, Rick Flag (Frank Grillo) leads the group of Sasha Bordeaux (Sol Rodriguez), Judomaster (Nhut Le), Langston Fleury (Tim Meadows), and Red St. Wild (Michael Rooker). They get a dynamic and heavily antagonist-coded group introduction that resembles the one eventual Butterfly hosts Sophie Song (Annie Chang), Larry Fitzgibbon (Lochlyn Munro), and Caspar Locke (Christopher Heyerdahl) had in season 1.
Things get truly interesting roughly halfway through the credits. Here, Peacemaker and Harcourt are suddenly whisked away from each other, and the stage is taken over by three surprising figures: A limber and very much alive Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick) in a blue and white version of his White Dragon armor, a very different-looking Harcourt, and a large man in power armor. We find out later in the episode that both Auggie and the big guy — Peacemaker’s older brother Keith (David Denman) — are alternate-universe versions of these two dead characters, making the Harcourt who dances with them from there as well. In fact, if you pay careful attention to the opening credits, numerous characters change their look off-camera, which may suggest that the show’s multiversal antics will affect a great many of them.
Peacemaker season 2 isn’t afraid to go big, but don’t trust everything in the opening credits
The sheer size of the “Peacemaker” season 2 opening credits — grander stage, more elaborate moves, slicker but still adorably clumsy production — suggests that the show is about to go all out, and the expectations it creates aren’t unfounded. “The Ties That Grind” is both a grounded look at the 11th Street Kids’ current activities and a laundry list of massive moments. The episode happily rewrites season 1 history, introduces new universes, and throws in liberal Justice Gang cameo scenes … and all of that happens before the season 2 opener rolls out the most gleefully graphic superhero show orgy scene this side of “The Boys” and forces Peacemaker to fight and kill a version of himself.
Not everything in the opening credits is to be trusted at face value, though. The season 1 dance featured both incredibly prominent characters and ones with very small roles, such as Jamil the janitor (Rizwan Manji) and Auggie’s nosy neighbor (Mel Tuck). This helped “Peacemaker” to keep the audience guessing, since there was no way to know which dancers were truly important and which were basically just there for a laugh.
Now that we’re familiar with the trick, it’s easy to start looking at the season 2 opening credits and wondering how many red herrings they feature. Right now, my personal guess is that Dorian Kingi’s “Kyphotic alien” (the four-eyed creature with its own access door to Peacemaker’s extra-dimensional quantum unfolding storage area) is one … if only because it would be just like Gunn to take the show’s most elaborately-designed character so far and use it as a throwaway joke.
New episodes of “Peacemaker” begin streaming on HBO Max every Thursday.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.slashfilm.com ’
