Marvel Comics Exec Editor Baffled By James Gunn Following ‘Superman’ With ‘Peacemaker’ Orgy: “I’m Not Sure What Anybody Was Thinking”
In offering his own bit of cross-publisher criticism, Marvel Comics Executive Editor Tom Brevoort has admitted that not only was he less-than-onboard with Peacemaker‘s Season 2 premiere orgy scene, but also completely at a loss as to why DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn chose to have this specific scene serve as the immediate DCU follow-up to his more ‘general audience-friendly’ Superman.
[SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers for Peacemaker Season 2, Episode 1 ‘The Ties That Grind‘ follow below. If you’d like to avoid them, please refrain from reading any further.]
Picking up immediately in the aftermath of last season’s Butterfly Invasion, the Season 2 premiere of Peacemaker finds the titular anti-hero attempting to get his life back together and turn over a new, more superheroic leaf.
Unfortunately, things get off to particularly rocky start, particularly as he suffers back-to-back rejections from the Justice Gang, who turn him down for a spot on the team, and also former Task Force X agent Emilia Harcourt, who tells him that a drunken off-screen hook-up between the two was a mistake and that, despite his hopes, she does not wish to pursue anything further.
Left visibly shaken by Harcourt’s decision, Peacemaker returns home and immediately begins to try and numb the pain; First with marijuana, then with cocaine, and finally a full orgy, the actions and birthday suits of the many, many participants being completely and casually put on display for all to see.
(Seriously – It’s a lot of butts, boobs, and balls.)
As can be parsed by the many reviews left on the episode on multiple platforms, this scene came as a shock to practically every viewer who turned in expecting the show’s TV-MA rating to be earned with gratuitous violence and swear words rather than full frontal nudity.
Included among these viewers was the aforementioned Marvel Comics mainstay, who shared his surprise and subsequent bewilderment towards his rival publishing house’s latest live-action outing, especially in regards to the tonal whiplash it gives coming right on the heels of Superman, via the latest edition of his personal Man With A Hat Substack blog:
“I tell you, I had seen a mention of a full-frontal orgy being a thing that happened in the opening episode of Peacemaker Season 2, but I just thought it was hyperbole. But no, that happened, and it was as shocking and uncomfortable as you might expect—especially in a show that’s been advertised as following up directly on the more general audience Superman film.
“Seriously, I’m not sure what anybody was thinking here, the sequence felt gratuitous to me, something that got done to push the envelope solely for the sake of envelope-pushing. There were certainly ways you might have shot such a sequence that wouldn’t have been anywhere near as shocking. My kids are all grown now, and still my instinctive reaction to seeing it on screen was to be thankful that I was alone when I was watching the episode.
“It wasn’t entirely enough to spoil the rest of the episode, which I thought was a very strong outing that set up the conflicts for the new season and carried some unexpected emotional weight to them. But it definitely dominated the conversation about that episode, and not in a good way, I think.
“Still, if somebody was trying to prove that the new DCU would go to places that the MCU never would, case closed. Really, who thought that was a good idea?”
New episodes of Peacemaker are currently dropping on HBO Max every Thursday at 6 PM PST/9 PM EST.
Meanwhile, the next live-action Marvel project, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is currently planning to swing into theaters on July 31st, 2026.
