Blog

The personalization space is real, between the dream of getting it right and the worry of it going wrong ( like when we encounter “persofails” similar to a company’s repeated pleas for more toilet seats from regular people ). It’s an particularly confusing place to be a modern professional without a map, a map, or a strategy.

There are no Lonely Planet and some tour guides for those of you who want to personalize because powerful customisation is so dependent on each group’s talent, technology, and market position.

But you can ensure that your group has packed its carriers reasonably.

There’s a DIY method to increase your chances for achievement. You’ll at least at least disarm your boss ‘ irrational exuberance. Before the group you’ll need to properly plan.

We refer to it as prepersonalization.

Behind the song

Take into account Spotify’s DJ feature, which was introduced last month.

We’re used to seeing the polished final outcome of a personalization function. A personal have had to be developed, budgeted, and given priority before the year-end prize, the making-of-backstory, or the behind-the-scenes success chest. Before any customisation have goes live in your product or service, it lives amid a delay of valuable ideas for expressing consumer experiences more automatically.

How do you decide where to position personalization wagers? How do you design regular interactions that hasn’t journey up users or—worse—breed mistrust? We’ve discovered that several budgeted programs second required one or more workshops to join key stakeholders and domestic customers of the technology in order to justify their continuous investments. Make it count.

We’ve closely observed the same evolution with our consumers, from major software to young companies. In our experience with working on small and large personalization work, a program’s best monitor record—and its capacity to weather tough questions, work steadily toward shared answers, and manage its design and engineering efforts—turns on how successfully these prepersonalization activities play out.

Effective workshops consistently separate successful future endeavors from unsuccessful ones, saving countless hours of time, resources, and overall well-being.

A personalization practice involves a multiyear effort of testing and feature development. It’s not a switch-flip in your tech stack. It’s best managed as a backlog that often evolves through three steps:

1. customer experience optimization ( CXO, also known as A/B testing or experimentation )
2. always-on automations ( whether rules-based or machine-generated )
3. mature features or standalone product development ( like Spotify’s DJ experience )?

This is why we created our progressive personalization framework and why we’re field-testing an accompanying deck of cards: we believe that there’s a base grammar, a set of “nouns and verbs” that your organization can use to design experiences that are customized, personalized, or automated. These cards won’t be necessary for you. But we strongly recommend that you create something similar, whether that might be digital or physical.

Set the timer for your kitchen.

How long does it take to cook up a prepersonalization workshop? The evaluation activities that we suggest include can last for a number of weeks ( and frequently do ). For the core workshop, we recommend aiming for two to three days. Details on the essential first-day activities are included in a summary of our broad approach.

The full arc of the wider workshop is threefold:

Kickstart: This specifies the terms of your engagement as you concentrate on both your team’s and your team’s readiness and drive.
1. Plan your work: This is the heart of the card-based workshop activities where you specify a plan of attack and the scope of work.
2. Work your plan: This stage consists of making it possible for team members to individually pitch their own pilots that each include a proof-of-concept project, business case, and operating model.

Give yourself at least a day, split into two large time blocks, to power through a concentrated version of those first two phases.

Kickstart: Apt your appetite

We call the first lesson the “landscape of connected experience“. It looks at the possibilities for personalization in your organization. A connected experience, in our parlance, is any UX requiring the orchestration of multiple systems of record on the backend. This might be a marketing-automation platform combined with a content-management system. It could be a digital-asset manager combined with a customer-data platform.

Give examples of connected experience interactions that you admire, find familiar, or even dislike, as examples of consumer and business-to-business examples. This should cover a representative range of personalization patterns, including automated app-based interactions ( such as onboarding sequences or wizards ), notifications, and recommenders. We have a list of these in the cards. Here’s a list of 142 different interactions to jog your thinking.

The table must be set up for this. What are the possible paths for the practice in your organization? Here’s a long-form primer and a strategic framework for a broader view.

Assess each example that you discuss for its complexity and the level of effort that you estimate that it would take for your team to deliver that feature ( or something similar ). In our cards, we break down connected experiences into five categories: functions, features, experiences, complete products, and portfolios. Size your own build here. This will help to draw attention to the benefits of ongoing investment as well as the difference between what you deliver right now and what you want to deliver in the future.

Next, have your team plot each idea on the following 2×2 grid, which lays out the four enduring arguments for a personalized experience. This is crucial because it emphasizes how personalization can affect your own methods of working as well as your external customers. It’s also a reminder ( which is why we used the word argument earlier ) of the broader effort beyond these tactical interventions.

Each team member should decide where their focus should be placed for your product or service. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. Here, the goal is to demonstrate how various departments may view their own advantages over the effort, which can be different from one department to the next. Documenting your desired outcomes lets you know how the team internally aligns across representatives from different departments or functional areas.

The third and final kickstart activity is about filling in the personalization gap. Is your customer journey well documented? Will compliance with data and privacy be a significant challenge? Do you have content metadata needs that you have to address? ( We’re pretty sure you do; it’s just a matter of recognizing the need’s magnitude and its solution. ) In our cards, we’ve noted a number of program risks, including common team dispositions. For instance, our Detractor card lists six intractable stakeholder attitudes that prevent progress.

Effectively collaborating and managing expectations is critical to your success. Consider the potential obstacles to your upcoming progress. Press the participants to name specific steps to overcome or mitigate those barriers in your organization. According to research, personalization initiatives face a number of common obstacles.

At this point, you’ve hopefully discussed sample interactions, emphasized a key area of benefit, and flagged key gaps? Good, you’re ready to go on.

Hit that test kitchen

Next, let’s take a look at what you’ll need to create personalization recipes. Personalization engines, which are robust software suites for automating and expressing dynamic content, can intimidate new customers. Their capabilities are broad and potent, and they give you a variety of ways to organize your company. This presents the question: Where do you begin when you’re configuring a connected experience?

What’s crucial here is to avoid treating the installed software like a dream kitchen from some imaginary remodeling project ( as one of our client executives memorably put it ). These software engines are more like test kitchens where your team can begin devising, tasting, and refining the snacks and meals that will become a part of your personalization program’s regularly evolving menu.

Over the course of the workshop, the ultimate menu of the prioritized backlog will come together. And creating “dishes” is the way that you’ll have individual team stakeholders construct personalized interactions that serve their needs or the needs of others.

The dishes will be made from recipes, which have predetermined ingredients.

Verify your ingredients

Like a good product manager, you’ll make sure you have everything you need to make your desired interaction ( or that you can figure out what needs to be added to your pantry ) and that you validate with the right stakeholders present. These ingredients include the audience that you’re targeting, content and design elements, the context for the interaction, and your measure for how it’ll come together.

Not just discovering requirements, it is. Documenting your personalizations as a series of if-then statements lets the team:

1. compare findings to a unified approach for developing features, similar to how artists paint with the same color palette,
2. specify a consistent set of interactions that users find uniform or familiar,
3. and establish parity between all important performance indicators and performance metrics.

This helps you streamline your designs and your technical efforts while you deliver a shared palette of core motifs of your personalized or automated experience.

Create your recipe.

What ingredients are important to you? Consider the construct “what-what-when-why”

• Who are your key audience segments or groups?
• What kind of content will you offer them, what design elements, and under what circumstances?
• And for which business and user benefits?

Five years ago, we developed these cards and card categories for the first time. We regularly play-test their fit with conference audiences and clients. And there are still fresh possibilities. But they all follow an underlying who-what-when-why logic.

In the cards in the accompanying photo below, you can typically follow along with right to left in three examples of subscription-based reading apps.

1. Nurture personalization: When a guest or an unknown visitor interacts with a product title, a banner or alert bar appears that makes it easier for them to encounter a related title they may want to read, saving them time.
2. Welcome automation: An email is sent when a newly registered user is a subscriber and is able to highlight the breadth of the content catalog.
3. Winback automation: Before their subscription lapses or after a recent failed renewal, a user is sent an email that gives them a promotional offer to suggest that they reconsider renewing or to remind them to renew.

We’ve also found that cocreating the recipes themselves can sometimes be the most effective way to start brainstorming about what these cards might be for your organization. Start with a set of blank cards, and begin labeling and grouping them through the design process, eventually distilling them to a refined subset of highly useful candidate cards.

The workshop’s later stages, which shift from focusing on cookbooks to focusing on customers, might seem more nuanced. Individual” cooks” will pitch their recipes to the team, using a common jobs-to-be-done format so that measurability and results are baked in, and from there, the resulting collection will be prioritized for finished design and delivery to production.

Architecture must be improved to produce better kitchens.

Simplifying a customer experience is a complicated effort for those who are inside delivering it. Beware of anyone who contradicts your advice. With that being said,” Complicated problems can be hard to solve, but they are addressable with rules and recipes“.

When a team overfits: they aren’t designing with their best data, personalization turns into a laughing line. Like a sparse pantry, every organization has metadata debt to go along with its technical debt, and this creates a drag on personalization effectiveness. For instance, your AI’s output quality is in fact impacted by your IA. Spotify’s poster-child prowess today was unfathomable before they acquired a seemingly modest metadata startup that now powers its underlying information architecture.

You can’t stand the heat, unquestionably…

Personalization technology opens a doorway into a confounding ocean of possible designs. Only a disciplined and highly collaborative approach will produce the necessary concentration and intention for success. So banish the dream kitchen. Instead, head to the test kitchen to save time, preserve job security, and avoid imagining the creative concepts that come from your organization’s masters. There are meals to serve and mouths to feed.

This framework of the workshop gives you a strong chance at long-term success as well as solid ground. Wiring up your information layer isn’t an overnight affair. However, you’ll have solid ground for success if you use the same cookbook and the same recipes. We designed these activities to make your organization’s needs concrete and clear, long before the hazards pile up.

Although there are costs associated with purchasing this type of technology and product design, time well spent on sizing up and confronting your unique situation and digital skills. Don’t squander it. The pudding is the proof, as they say.

I’ve been fascinated by shows since I was a child. I loved the heroes and the excitement—but most of all the stories. I aspired to be an artist. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on fascinating experiences. Yet my friends and I had movie ideas to make and sun in. But they never went any farther. However, I did end up working in user experience ( UI). Today, I realize that there’s an element of drama to UX— I hadn’t actually considered it before, but consumer research is story. And to get the most out of customer studies, you must tell a compelling story that involves stakeholders, including the product team and decision-makers, and piques their interest in learning more.

Think of your favourite film. It probably follows a three-act narrative architecture: the installation, the conflict, and the resolution, which is prevalent in literature. The second act shows what exists now, and it helps you get to know the figures and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two sets the scene for the fight and introduces the action. Here, difficulties grow or get worse. The solution comes in the third and final work. This is where the issues are resolved and the figures learn and change. This structure, in my opinion, is also a fantastic way to think about consumer research, and it might be particularly useful for explaining user research to others.

Use story as a framework for conducting research

It’s sad to say, but many have come to see studies as being dispensable. Research is typically one of the first things to go when expenses or deadlines are tight. Instead of investing in study, some goods professionals rely on manufacturers or—worse—their personal judgment to make the “right” options for users based on their experience or accepted best practices. That may lead some groups, but that approach can so easily miss the chance to solve clients ‘ real issues. To be user-centered, this is something we really avoid. Design is enhanced by consumer study. It keeps it on record, pointing to problems and opportunities. Being aware of the problems with your goods and taking action can help you keep ahead of your competition.

In the three-act structure, each action corresponds to a part of the process, and each part is important to telling the whole story. Let’s examine the various functions and how they relate to consumer analysis.

Act one: layout

The setup consists entirely in comprehending the history, and that’s where basic research comes in. Basic research ( also called conceptual, discovery, or original research ) helps you understand people and identify their problems. You’re learning about the problems people face now, what options are available, and how those challenges impact them, just like in the films. To do basic research, you may conduct cultural inquiries or journal studies ( or both! ), which can assist you in identifying both prospects and problems. It doesn’t need to get a great investment in time or money.

Erika Hall writes about the most effective anthropology, which can be as straightforward as spending 15 hours with a customer and asking them to” Walk me through your morning yesterday.” That’s it. Current that one ask. Opened up and listen to them for 15 days. Do everything in your power to protect both your objectives and yourself. Bam, you’re doing ethnography”. According to Hall, “[This ] will definitely prove quite fascinating. In the very unlikely event that you didn’t learn anything new or helpful, carry on with increased confidence in your way”.

This makes perfect sense to me. And I love that this makes consumer studies so visible. You can simply attract participants and carry out the recruitment process without having to create a lot of paperwork! This can offer a wealth of knowledge about your customers, and it’ll help you better understand them and what’s going on in their life. That’s exactly what work one is all about: understanding where people are coming from.

Maybe Spool talks about the importance of basic research and how it really type the bulk of your research. If you can substitute what you’ve heard in the fundamental research by using more customer information that you can obtain, such as surveys or analytics, or to highlight areas that need more research. Together, all this information creates a clearer picture of the state of things and all its deficiencies. And that’s the start of a gripping tale. It’s the place in the story where you realize that the principal characters—or the people in this case—are facing issues that they need to conquer. This is where you begin to develop compassion for the characters and support their success, much like in films. And finally partners are now doing the same. Their concern may be with their company, which may be losing money because consumers are unable to complete specific tasks. Or probably they do connect with people ‘ problems. In either case, action one serves as your main strategy for piqueing interest and investment from the participants.

When stakeholders begin to understand the value of basic research, that is open doors to more opportunities that involve users in the decision-making approach. And that can influence product teams ‘ focus on improving. This benefits everyone—users, the product, and stakeholders. It’s similar to winning an Oscar for a film; it frequently results in a favorable reception and success for your product. And this can be an incentive for stakeholders to repeat this process with other products. The secret to this process is storytelling, and knowing how to tell a compelling story is the only way to entice stakeholders to do more research.

This brings us to act two, where you iteratively evaluate a design or concept to see whether it addresses the issues.

Act two: conflict

Act two is all about digging deeper into the problems that you identified in act one. In order to evaluate a potential solution ( such as a design ), you typically conduct directional research, such as usability tests, to see if it addresses the issues you identified. The issues could include unmet needs or problems with a flow or process that’s tripping users up. More problems will come up in the process, much like in the second act of a film. It’s here that you learn more about the characters as they grow and develop through this act.

Usability tests should typically consist of five participants, according to Jakob Nielsen, who found that that number of users can typically identify the majority of the issues:” As you add more and more users, you learn less and less because you will keep seeing the same things again and again… After the fifth user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings repeatedly but not learning much new.”

There are parallels with storytelling here too, if you try to tell a story with too many characters, the plot may get lost. With fewer participants, each user’s struggles will be more memorable and accessible to other parties when presenting the research. This can help convey the issues that need to be addressed while also highlighting the value of doing the research in the first place.

Usability tests have been conducted in person for decades, but you can also do them remotely using software like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or other teleconferencing software. This approach has become increasingly popular since the beginning of the pandemic, and it works well. You might consider in-person usability tests like watching a movie as opposed to remote testing like attending a play. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Usability research in person is a much more valuable learning experience. Stakeholders can experience the sessions with other stakeholders. Additionally, you’ll also hear their reactions in real-time, including surprises, disagreements, and discussions of what they’re seeing. Much like going to a play, where audiences get to take in the stage, the costumes, the lighting, and the actors ‘ interactions, in-person research lets you see users up close, including their body language, how they interact with the moderator, and how the scene is set up.

If conducting usability testing in the field is like watching a play that is staged and controlled, where any two sessions may be very different from one another. You can take usability testing into the field by creating a replica of the space where users interact with the product and then conduct your research there. Or you can meet users at their location to conduct your research. With either option, you get to see how things work in context, things come up that wouldn’t have in a lab environment—and conversion can shift in entirely different directions. You have less control over how these sessions run as researchers, but this can occasionally improve your understanding of users. Meeting users where they are can provide clues to the external forces that could be affecting how they use your product. Usability tests in person offer a level of detail that is frequently absent from remote testing.

That’s not to say that the “movies” —remote sessions—aren’t a good option. Remote training sessions can reach a wider audience. They allow a lot more stakeholders to be involved in the research and to see what’s going on. Additionally, they make the doors accessible to a much wider range of users. But with any remote session there is the potential of time wasted if participants can’t log in or get their microphone working.

You can ask real users questions to understand their thoughts and understanding of the solution as a result of usability testing, whether it is conducted remotely or in person. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. Additionally, you can test your own hypotheses and determine whether your reasoning is correct. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are and whether they work for their intended purposes. The excitement centers on Act 2, but there are also potential surprises in that Act. This is equally true of usability tests. Unexpected things that participants say frequently alter the way you look at things, and these unexpected revelations can lead to unexpected turns in the narrative.

Unfortunately, user research is sometimes seen as expendable. Usability testing is frequently the only method of research that some stakeholders believe they ever need, and it’s too frequently the case. In fact, if the designs that you’re evaluating in the usability test aren’t grounded in a solid understanding of your users ( foundational research ), there’s not much to be gained by doing usability testing in the first place. Because you’re narrowing the scope of what you’re receiving feedback on without understanding the needs of the users. As a result, there’s no way of knowing whether the designs might solve a problem that users have. In the context of a usability test, it’s only feedback on a particular design.

On the other hand, if you only do foundational research, while you might have set out to solve the right problem, you won’t know whether the thing that you’re building will actually solve that. This demonstrates the value of conducting both directional and foundational research.

In act two, stakeholders will—hopefully—get to watch the story unfold in the user sessions, which creates the conflict and tension in the current design by surfacing their highs and lows. And in turn, this can encourage stakeholders to take action on the issues raised.

Act three: resolution

The third act is about resolving the issues from the first two acts, while the first two acts are about understanding the background and the tensions that can compel stakeholders to take action. While it’s important to have an audience for the first two acts, it’s crucial that they stick around for the final act. That includes all members of the product team, including developers, UX experts, business analysts, delivery managers, product managers, and any other parties who have a say in the coming development. It allows the whole team to hear users ‘ feedback together, ask questions, and discuss what’s possible within the project’s constraints. And it gives the UX design and research teams more time to clarify, suggest alternatives, or provide more context for their choices. So you can get everyone on the same page and get agreement on the way forward.

Voiceover narration of this act is typically used with audience input. The researcher is the narrator, who paints a picture of the issues and what the future of the product could look like given the things that the team has learned. They offer the stakeholders their suggestions and suggestions for how to create this vision.

Nancy Duarte in the Harvard Business Review offers an approach to structuring presentations that follow a persuasive story. The most effective presenters” set up a conflict that needs to be resolved” using the same methods as great storytellers, Duarte writes. ” That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently”.

This type of structure aligns well with research results, and particularly results from usability tests. It provides proof for “what is “—the issues you’ve identified. And “what could be “—your recommendations on how to address them. And so forth and forth.

You can reinforce your recommendations with examples of things that competitors are doing that could address these issues or with examples where competitors are gaining an edge. Or they can be as visual as quick sketches of a potential solution to a problem. These can help generate conversation and momentum. And this continues until the session is over, when you’ve concluded by bridging the gaps and offering suggestions for improvement. This is the part where you reiterate the main themes or problems and what they mean for the product—the denouement of the story. This stage provides stakeholders with the next steps, and hopefully, the motivation to take those steps as well!

While we are nearly at the end of this story, let’s reflect on the idea that user research is storytelling. The three-act structure of user research contains all the components of a good story:

Act one: You meet the protagonists ( the users ) and the antagonists ( the problems affecting users ). The plot begins here. In act one, researchers might use methods including contextual inquiry, ethnography, diary studies, surveys, and analytics. These techniques can produce personas, empathy maps, user journeys, and analytics dashboards as output.

Act two: Next, there’s character development. The protagonists encounter problems and challenges, which they must overcome, and there is conflict and tension. In act two, researchers might use methods including usability testing, competitive benchmarking, and heuristics evaluation. Usability findings reports, UX strategy documents, usability guidelines, and best practices can be included in the output of these.

Act three: The protagonists triumph and you see what a better future looks like. Researchers may use techniques like storytelling, presentation decks, and digital media in act three. The output of these can be: presentation decks, video clips, audio clips, and pictures.

The researcher plays a variety of roles, including producer, director, and storyteller. The participants have a small role, but they are significant characters ( in the research ). And the audience is one of the stakeholders. But the most important thing is to get the story right and to use storytelling to tell users ‘ stories through research. In the end, the parties should leave with a goal and an eagerness to fix the product’s flaws.

So the next time that you’re planning research with clients or you’re speaking to stakeholders about research that you’ve done, think about how you can weave in some storytelling. User research is ultimately a win-win situation for everyone, and all you need to do is pique stakeholders ‘ interest in how the story ends.

As a solution builder for too many times, I can’t recall how many times I’ve seen promising ideas go from being heroes in a few weeks to being useless within months.

Financial goods, which is my area of expertise, are no exception. It’s tempting to put as many features at the ceiling as possible and expect something sticks because people’s true, hard-earned money is on the line, user expectations are high, and crowded market. However, this strategy will lead to disaster. Why, you see this:

The fatalities of feature-first growth

It’s simple to get swept up in the enthusiasm of developing innovative features when you start developing a financial product from scratch or are migrating existing client journeys from paper or phone channels to online bank or mobile apps. They may believe,” If I may only add one more thing that solves this particular person problem, they’ll enjoy me”! What happens, however, when you eventually encounter a roadblock caused by your security team? not like it? When a difficult-fought film fails to win over viewers or fails owing to unanticipated difficulty?

The concept of Minimum Viable Product ( MVP ) comes into play in this area. Even though Jason Fried doesn’t usually refer to it that way, his podcast Rework and his guide Getting Real frequently address this concept. An MVP is a product that offers only enough value to your users to keep them interested, but not so much that it becomes difficult to keep up. Although the idea seems simple, it requires a razor-sharp eye, a brutal edge, and the courage to stand up for your position because” the Columbo Effect” makes it easy to fall for something when one always says” just one more thing …” to include.

The issue with most fund apps is that they frequently turn out to be reflections of the company’s internal politics rather than an knowledge created specifically for the customer. Instead of offering a distinct value statement that is focused on what people in the real world want, the focus should be on delivering as some features and functionalities as possible to satisfy the needs and wants of competing inside sections. These products may therefore quickly become a muddled mess of confusing, related, and finally unlovable client experiences—a feature salad, you might say.

The significance of the foundation

What’s a better course of action then? How may we create products that are user-friendly, firm, and, most importantly, stick?

The concept of “bedrock” comes into play in this context. The mainstay of your product is really important to people, and Bedrock is that. It serves as the foundation for the fundamental building block that creates price and maintains relevance over time.

The rock has to be in and around the standard servicing journeys in the world of retail bank, which is where I work. People only look at their existing accounts once every blue sky, but they do so daily. They purchase a credit card every year or two, but they at least once a month assess their stability and pay their bills.

The key is in identifying the main jobs that people want to complete and working relentlessly to render them simple, reliable, and trustworthy.

But how do you reach the foundation? By focusing on the” MVP” strategy, giving clarity the top priority, and working toward a distinct value proposition. This means avoiding unnecessary characteristics and putting your customers first, and adding real value.

It also requires having some fortitude, as your coworkers might not always agree with you immediately. And in some cases, it might even mean making it clear to consumers that you won’t be coming over to their home and prepare their meal. Sometimes you need to use “opinionated user interface design” ( i .e., clumsy workaround for edge cases ) to test a concept or to give yourself some more time to work on something else.

Functional methods for creating stick-like financial goods

What are the main learnings I’ve made from my own research and practice, then?

1. What trouble are you trying to solve first and foremost with a distinct “why”? Whom? Make sure your goal is unmistakable before beginning any work. Make certain it also aligns with the goals of your business.
2. Avoid putting too many features on the list at after; instead, focus on getting that right first. Choose one that actually adds price, and work from that.
3. When it comes to financial goods, clarity is often over difficulty. Eliminate unwanted details and concentrate solely on what matters most.
4. Accept constant iteration: Bedrock is not a fixed destination; it is a dynamic process. Continuously collect customer comments, make improvements to your product, and move toward that foundation.
5. Stop, appearance, and talk: You must test your product frequently in the field rather than just as part of the shipping process. Use it for yourself. Work A/B tests. User opinions on Gear. Talk to those who use it, and change things up correctly.

The “bedrock conundrum”

Building towards core implies sacrificing some short-term expansion potential in favor of long-term balance, which is an interesting paradox at play here. But the reward is worthwhile because products created with a concentrate on core will outlive and outperform their competitors and provide people with ongoing value over time.

How do you begin your quest to rock, then? Take it slowly. Start by identifying the essential components that your customers actually care about. Focus on developing and improving a second, potent function that delivers real value. And most importantly, make an obsessive effort because, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker ( whew! The best way to foretell the future is to make it, he said.

This article contains spoilers for year three of The Gilded Age. The Gilded Age year 3 has seen several figures experience some passionate ups and downs. Aurora Fane ( KelliO’Hara ) learns that her husband dumped her for his mistress. Gladys ( Taissa Farmiga ) is married off to the Duke ( Ben Lamb ) after only meeting ]… ]

The article The Gilded Age Cast Break Down Season 3’s Football Game appeared second on Den of Geek.

This content appears in the magazine’s fresh topic, DEN OF GEEK. You can read all of our newspaper stories&nbsp, around.

In the three decades since John Cena next wore a ridiculous gold hat in the role of Peacemaker, a lot has changed. That includes the rise of James Gunn to co-head of DC Studios, from which he’s given the world a new reset, perfect with an all-new taking on Superman.

Like any large change, the relaunch of the DC Universe raises a lot of concerns about what is and isn’t lore. However, in 2022’s Black Adam and 2023’s Shazam, Peacemaker co-stars Steve Agee and Jennifer Holland reprised their jobs as officials Emilia Harcourt and John Economos. Fury of the Gods, so those videos count, right?

No but, James Gunn tells Den of Geek in no uncertain terms. They are not a cannon, they are! I hate it”! he pollutants.

When recreating an entire visual world, for migraine are expected. What’s less expected, however, is the man who Gunn’s calculating on to sort it out. Gunn instead seeks the assistance of the Man of Steel, whose television show has its second season launch just before Superman enters cinemas.

That person is Peacemaker, a man who loves harmony so much, he’s willing to fight for it.

” There are certain items from the ancient world that we refer to in Peacemaker time 2, but until then, they’re never canon”, Gunn explains. ” Second year will explain everything that is or is not canon, but essentially everything from year one is.”

That’s a lot of significance to put on a persistent Z-lister. Christopher Smith, aka Peacemaker, made his comeback in 1966’s Fightin’ 5# 40, a battle cartoon that was published by the now-defunct Charlton Comics. He was co-written by Joe Gill and Pat Boyette. When DC Comics acquired the Charlton figures in 1983, they gave Peacemaker another picture with a 1988 guitar set and a handful of visitor looks before killing him off-panel in 1993. A revived and reconstructed Chris Smith recently popped up in 2009 and subsequently disappeared again.

All of that changed when James Gunn made Peacemaker a significant component of his album DC film, The Suicide Squad, in 2021. Even more amazingly, Gunn cast wrestling singer and actor John Cena in the role. Despite the fact that Chris was put at the death’s door in The Suicide Squad after betraying his team and killing leader Rick Flag ( Joel Kinnaman ), Gunn then spun Peacemaker off into his own eight-episode HBO Max series in 2022.

Today things are changing again, as Gunn has ascended to co-head of DC Studios and rebooted the DC Universe, a new world that began with the 2024 animated set Creature Commandos and effectively kicked off with the much-anticipated Superman.

Unlikely, Peacemaker is at the core of these changes with time 2 of his line arriving on HBO Max on Aug. 21, 2025. Chris Smith is firmly immersed in the new world in Peacemaker season 2, carrying over Superman‘s tales and providing some clarifications about the celestial reboot.

How does a low-ranking odd like Christopher Smith handle the pressure? &nbsp,

A Large Name for a Super-Nobody

By 2021, John Cena had built a historic wrestling job, scored various blockbuster movie appearances, and even split a couple of singles. Why would a person of this caliber sign up to play a character that is unfamiliar to the majority of comic book fans? &nbsp,

According to Cena,” I wanted to work in the DC universe.” ” The charm, truly, was working with James Gunn. He has a well-documented’ no jerk ‘ legislation, so I knew I’d been working with people who are polite and kind and make me better. That is true, regardless of the source material, so there is a “yes” for me.

At first glance, Cena’s desire to work with the right type of people seems to set him at odds with Christopher Smith, whom the actor describes as” starving to have real human companionship”.

In The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker plays a mindless killer who becomes a secondary antagonist when his teammates rebel against Amanda Waller ( Viola Davis ), the duplicitous head of the intelligence agency A. R. G. U. S.

However, Gunn got no opposition when he offered Cena the piece. ” I have found that —uniformly — people dream of being a superhero”, Gunn says. There has never been a man I’ve dealt with who wasn’t particularly excited about their costume.

It even helps that Gunn tells sophisticated narratives about apparently crazy characters. What if this figure were genuine, whether it was Rocket Raccoon, Superman, or Peacemaker? What may take them to the place where they are nowadays?’” These questions remind everyone from individual motivations to wardrobe choices.

” Superman is an alien from storage who wants kids and fans,” he says. That’s why he wears the coat”, Gunn observes. Peacemaker wants to be nice and make people afraid, but he’s kind of an idiot. Because he looks like John Cena, Peacemaker may make people afraid, but I don’t believe that the costume is.

Whatever Gunn’s information may advise, Chris Smith does acquire some self-awareness throughout Peacemaker“. When he eliminates his friend and mentor Rick Flag in a search for peace, Chris realizes that his explanation of’ serenity’ has been obscure and scattered and weak,” Cena acknowledges.

Chris is assigned to Project Butterfly, a small project that becomes significant as Chris ‘ investigation progresses into Earth. In its first year, the mysterious insects he finds there. Along the way, Peacemaker confronts his father, Auggie ( Robert Patrick ), who leads a white supremacist terror cell as the armored White Dragon and blames Chris for the death of beloved older son Keith ( Liam Hughes ).

Chris Smith appears to be more like a person suffering from toxic manhood than a criminal, according to these revelations. Although reluctant to attach one particular meaning to his character’s situation —”audiences may take away whatever they want, “he insists—Cena sees these disclosures as the writer’s major appeal. &nbsp,

” Chris has a lot of trouble at home and regrets what he did to Rick Flag.” An owl is his best friend, I think that says a bit, “he smiles”. Although Eagly is a singer and the CGI-rendered aquatic sidekick of Peacemaker, Chris actually has very few human companions. The people who want to be his friend, like Vigilante] Freddie Stroma], he pushes away or acts like he’s better than.”

And still, by the end of winter 1, Peacemaker has stopped the war and faced down his parents. More crucially, Christopher Smith has now established authentic human friends. And they’re simply as messed up as he is.

11th Street Reshuffle

In the first trailer for Peacemaker time 2, Chris Smith arrives at a key area for an appointment. Across from him sits billionaire benefactor Maxwell Lord ( Sean Gunn ), flanked by two members of the Justice Gang, Hawkgirl ( Isabela Merced ) and the Green Lantern Guy Gardner ( Nathan Fillion ). The Justice Gang are the most significant hero team in the world, as seen in Superman. And, having really saved the world from mysterious moths, Peacemaker is ready to join their ranks.

However, when a technical problem allows Smith to discover all of their disparaging responses, including Lord’s analysis that” this man sucks,” Chris storms out of the building with his dignity in disarray.

Nobody’s surprised that Peacemaker wouldn’t be welcomed by those who rub shoulders with the Man of Steel, not even Cena”. He was put on the Suicide Squad, and they’re not necessarily our best and brightest, “he points out”, but now he wants to make it to the big leagues.”

What is surprising, however, is that Chris finds solace in Leota Adebayo, the daughter of Amanda Waller. &nbsp,

Adebayo’s mother pressured her into service and told to betray Chris throughout Peacemaker‘s first season, and she remained a reluctant participant. But in season 2, Adebayo and Chris have a very different relationship.

” These two definitely love each other,” says Danielle Brooks, Adebayo’s Oscar and Tony-nominated performer”. They are both fighting for their parents ‘ love, the people who raised them and made them feel awkward.

It might be that awkwardness that helps Chris and Adebayo bond not only with one another, but also with the other weirdos in the show, which include not just Vigilante, but also fellow A. R. G. U. S. agents Emilia Harcourt and John Economos. After a few initial snags, Chris and his friends eventually connected over their passion for hard rock music and their battle with the butterflies, and they named themselves” the 11th Street Kids,” in honor of the 1984 song by Finnish band Hanoi Rocks.

At the start of Peacemaker‘s second season, the Kids have fragmented, due in part to Adebayo’s decision to reveal her mother’s actions to the rest of the world at the end of the season. &nbsp,

John Economos is back on the ground and employed by Waller. I’m back at A. R. G. U. S., back on computers doing my usual shit,” chuckles comedian Steve Agee, who has been playing Economos since The Suicide Squad. However, being well-known does not mean life is better for the sad-sack nerd, as last seen in Creature Commandos. I don&#8217, t think Economos has ever been comfortable. He’s kind of been beaten down by life. He’s worked a lot of jobs that haven’t been particularly pleasant, and he’s dealt with a lot of people who haven’t been particularly pleasant.

According to co-star Jennifer Holland, things aren’t too much better for her character, the capable but cold Emilia Harcourt”. She’s in a worse situation than she was in season 1. She lost her job after Adebayo’s leaks, and she’s desperate. Her whole life has been spent as a soldier, so she doesn’t have a whole lot of close personal relationships.”

The 11th Street Kids ‘ ethos, of course, is one of a lack of personal connections, and it is that desire for connection that holds the group together. Even Adebayo&#8217, s decision to reveal Waller to the world was an attempt to bond with them.

According to Brooks,” Leaking information about Waller was Adebayo being a team player.” She finally understood what it was to be part of something and to be loyal. Adebayo wanted to do the right thing and stand with the team that’s been standing with her. She revealed to her mother and the team who were truly with her.

Such declarations of loyalty may be enough to get Harcourt to forgive Adebayo, but it’s not going to make things any easier for the one-time agent.

” A lot of the characters have shifted in different ways,” Holland observes. At first, Adebayo was the new girl and Harcourt was capable professional and Peacemaker was the emotionally fucked-up buffoon. Peacemaker has grown since season 1, and Harcourt has regressed in a lot of ways.”

Whatever evolution the characters have gone through, they are unable to turn away from their past demons. In Chris’s case, those demons include the new head of A. R. G. U. S., Rick Flag Sr., who uses his position to get revenge against the man who killed his son.

” I’m the heavy,” says action veteran Frank Grillo, who reprises his role as Rick Flag Sr. from Creature Commandos and Superman. Flag sees metahumans as aliens. They’re beings who need to be controlled because it &#8217, s easy for them to get out of control. Regardless of how he acts, Cena’s character is the hero, but as far as Rick Flag is concerned, Peacemaker is a bad guy.

As if cutting a wrestling promo, Grillo starts to laugh”. Peacemaker must leave and must feel the wrath.

Four-Color Heroes in Shades of Gray

So is Peacemaker the hero and Flag the villain? Or is it the opposite? Moral compasses aren’t so clear in Peacemaker, and that’s all part of Gunn’s design.

We’re finding shades of gray in people’s morality in the DCU in general, says Gunn. That’s even with Superman, who’s as good as you can get, or the Justice Gang, who are heroes, but they’re corporate tools. It’s never a black and white thing.

” And then there’s Peacemaker, a incredibly complicated and conflicted individual who has committed a lot of incredibly bad things. But even he has a sensitivity that &#8217, s been bashed down by his father and society”.

Cena’s adaptation of what he calls” a hardened shell,” developed over years in the ring, is undoubtedly beneficial. ” The live wrestling audience is enthusiastic and at points relentless. The crowd will sing my theme song at the top of their lungs and will scream that I suck”, he says. His on-screen nemesis Grillo, who allows,” My hat’s off to John Cena because his play Chris, you can’t help but love him,” impresses with his devotion to the part.

The respect that Cena and Grillo can show one another comes in part from their long history working in action entertainment. The actors ‘ background also helps them prepare for the second season of Peacemaker‘s intense fight scenes.

” I’m mostly contained, but I have one big fight scene with Cena. It’s fun and brutal”, teases Grillo, before pointing to another castmate whose physical prowess impressed him. Jennifer Holland’s fight action is incredible! he enthuses.

While she’s content with Harcourt’s massive rumble from episode one, she quickly points out that it wasn’t something she was expecting. ” I couldn’t have done it without my stunt double, C. C. Ice. She tirelessly trained with me”, Holland admits. ” All the stunt actors in that scene with me were training in the gym for weeks to get it right.”

In fact, all of the 11th Street Kids get their big moments in season 2… whether they want to or not.

Agee makes fun of John Economos, who is a reluctant hero. ” Pretty much everything he does is against his better judgment. He’s very much like me. Sincerely, though, I would be extremely excited if I killed a monster gorilla in the first season to save some people’s lives. ” I would be so jazzed”.

Do You Want to Try It, Really?

As a show about superheroes and alien invaders, Peacemaker has to nail the action scenes. But the cast found another, very different physical aspect of the show even more challenging. And perhaps more significant. ” We really had to get the opening dance number dialed in”, reveals Grillo. James took it very seriously.

Every episode of Peacemaker season 1 opened with the entire cast, in costume, dancing to” Do You Wanna Taste It” by Norwegian glam metal band Wig Wam. The song turned out to be a viral hit, inspiring hundreds of imitators on social media. Peacemaker‘s dialing up things up for season 2 with a new song, new moves, and a much bigger cast.

” There are so many more people in the cast. David Denman, Sol Rodrguez, and Tim Meadows. There are so many people”, says Agee with some awe. ” It&#8217, s a huge dance number, oh my god”.

Even Brooks found the sequence challenging because she comes to the show with a theater degree from Juilliard ( which she credits with putting into perspective by noting that” Juilliard really can’t prepare you for falling out of a giant alien cow.” ” You know when you have to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time? She makes fun of how it felt like that,”. ” But once it clicks in the body and everybody is doing it all together, it really, really works”.

” You’ve got this crazy cast of people who are totally one hundred percent in on this journey, and we’re doing this weird dance, and everyone is just ego aside”, adds Holland. It’s a truly special experience to witness someone like Tim Meadows really wanting it to get it right.

” The first time I saw the dance number, I was smiling ear to ear”, Agee concludes. ” It’s going to pique people’s hearts,”

Clearly, the change in the opening credits is a big deal, one that’s sure to draw a lot of attention to Peacemaker season 2. But there’s another change that Peacemaker needs to deal with in season 2: a reboot of the entire DC Universe.

A New Universe

On one hand, Gunn has a simple explanation for those who don’t understand the status of past stories in the new universe. Nothing canon exists prior to Creature Commandos, but those other things can be considered hazy memories of events that date back as far as the first Suicide Squad.

On the other hand, Gunn also knows that these issues come with the territory. ” There are going to be mistakes when you &#8217, re building a world as large as these ones are, whether it’s Game of Thrones, Star Wars, DC or Marvel. It will be challenging, you will know”?

That’s certainly true of the DC Universe, which has already been rebooted in the world of comics multiple times since 1985. Gunn can roll with the changes as a long-time comic book enthusiast himself.

” I&#8217, m a balanced canon guy”, he observes. ” On the one hand, people take it a little too far. These are obviously fictional stories, so we don’t have to pretend that they’re true. But at the same time, these stories are supposed to be in the same world, and you need to pay attention to the connection between things”.

Even if he can’t get them all on the screen yet, the difficulties are worth it, especially for someone like Gunn, who fills the universe with strangeballs from the comics. ” The Legion of Super-Heroes is a difficult thing to bring to life”, he says of DC’s long-running series about 31st-century teenagers, and he hasn’t yet figured out how to adapt his personal favorite, the magical imp known as Bat-Mite.

” I would love to be able to figure out a way to do Bat-Mite, or at least Peace-Mite, because I’m sure there’s an imp somewhere in the Ninth Dimension who worships Peacemaker. In Season 2 of Peacemaker, we actually see some imps.

Clearly, Gunn isn’t done with the weirdos of the DC Universe, and that’s good news for Chris Smith. Nothing, not even Gunn’s own rules, can stop Peacemaker, as Cena has it to say.

” James Gunn made a sacred oath that he’s not bringing characters back from the dead, and he already broke that by bringing Peacemaker back after he died in The Suicide Squad“, teases Cena. ” So I can confidently say that the future of Peacemaker is one that will defy the odds”.

That’s perfectly true, because the word “odd” is definitely used when talking about men like Christopher Smith.

Peacemaker season 2 premieres Thursday, August 21, 2025 on HBO Max.

On Den of Geek, the first post Peacemaker Season 2: An Exclusive Look at James Gunn’s Next Step in the DCU Following Superman appeared second.

You probably think of Waterworld right away when you think of the Kevin Costner-starring futuristic activity film that turned 30 this summer. There are few movies in Hollywood story that carry the odor of disappointment as powerfully as the film where they gave Wyatt Earp lungs behind the ears. In fact, Waterworld might [ …]]…

The post You Are Wrong About Kevin Costner’s Waterworld ( Probably ) appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article appears in the new problem of&nbsp, DEN OF GEEK&nbsp, publication. You can read every article in our magazine below.

A lot has changed in the three decades since John Cena next donned a foolish gold hat to enjoy the hapless hero Peacemaker. That includes James Gunn‘s elevation as co-head of DC Studios, where he has given the world a new reboot with an all-new interpretation of Superman.

Like any large change, the relaunch of the DC Universe raises a lot of concerns about what is and isn’t lore. But Peacemaker co-stars Steve Agee and Jennifer Holland reprised their responsibilities as agents John Economos and Emilia Harcourt in 2022’s Black Adam and 2023’s Shazam! That makes those videos count, since Fury of the Gods, right?

James Gunn clarifies this to Den of Geek in no uncertain terms. ” They’re not cannon! I detest it”! he pollutants.

For problems are to be expected when recreating an overall visual world. The man Gunn is counting on to solve the situation is what’s less expected, though. Gunn doesn’t enlist the help of the Man of Steel, but rather the man whose line has its second season debut just days after Superman flies into the venues.

That person is Peacemaker, a person who but devoted himself to promoting peace.

” There are certain items from the old world that we refer to in Peacemaker time 2, but until then, they’re never canon”, Gunn explains. ” Virtually everything from time 1 is cannon, but season 2 will explain all that is or is not lore”.

That’s a lot of value for a seasoned Z-lister. Created by Joe Gill and Pat Boyette, Christopher Smith a. k. a. Peacemaker made his debut in 1966’s Fightin ‘ 5# 40, a combat comics published by the now defunct Charlton Comics. Before killing him off-screen in 1993, DC Comics gave Peacemaker another picture with a 1988 guitar set and a few guest appearances when the characters were acquired in 1983. A revived and recreated Chris Smith recently popped up in 2009 and next disappeared again.

All of that changed in 2021, when James Gunn made Peacemaker a major part of his album DC drama, The Suicide Squad. Unsurprisingly, Gunn chose wrestler-turned-actor John Cena for the part, which is even more surprising. Gunn then spun Peacemaker off into his own eight-episode HBO Max series in 2022, despite the fact that The Suicide Squad ended with Chris at death’s door after betraying his team and killing leader Rick Flag ( Joel Kinnaman ).

As Gunn ascends to co-head of DC Studios and reboots the DC Universe, a brand-new earth that began with the highly anticipated Superman in the 2024 animated line Creature Commandos, things are beginning to change once more.

Unlikely, Peacemaker is at the core of these changes with time 2 of his line arriving on HBO Max on Aug. 21, 2025. Peacemaker winter 2 puts Chris Smith deep into the new world, carrying over reports from Superman and yet clarifying some information about the celestial reset.

How does a low-ranking jerk like Christopher Smith deal with the pressure? &nbsp,

A Great Title for a Super-Nobody

By 2021, John Cena had built a historic wrestling job, scored various blockbuster movie appearances, and even split a couple of singles. Why would someone of his appearance sign up to perform a figure unknown perhaps to most humorous fans? &nbsp,

” I wanted to work in the DC universe”, Cena asserts. Truly, the charm was working with James Gunn. He has a well-documented’ no jerk ‘ legislation, so I knew I’d been working with people who are polite and kind and make me better. That straight there is a’ yes’ for me, regardless of the material”.

Cena appears to be at odds with Christopher Smith, whom the actor describes as” starving to have real human companionship,” at first because of his desire to work with the right kind of people.

Peacemaker is a jingoistic meathead in The Suicide Squad, a mindless killer who becomes a secondary antagonist when his teammates turn against their handler, Amanda Waller ( Viola Davis ), the duplicitous head of the intelligence agency A. R. G. U. S.

However, when Gunn offered Cena the role, she didn’t respond. ” I have found that —uniformly — people dream of being a superhero”, Gunn says. ” There&#8217, s never been a person that I&#8217, d dealt with who was not incredibly excited about their costume”.

Gunn’s ability to tell difficult stories about apparently silly characters is also a plus. ” Whether dealing with Rocket Raccoon or Superman or Peacemaker, I start with the problem,’ What if this character were true? What did lead them to the present-day location? These questions tell everything from individual motivations to wardrobe choices.

” Superman is an alien from outer space who wants kids and people to like him. Gunn explains that’s the reason he wears the match. ” Peacemaker wants to become cool and instill fear in people, but he’s kind of an idiot”.Peacemaker may put anxiety because he looks like John Cena, but I don’t believe that picture’s establishing worry in anyone.”

Chris Smith does experience some self-awareness throughout Peacemaker, regardless of Gunn’s information. When he eliminates his friend and mentor Rick Flag in a search for peace, Chris realizes that his explanation of’ serenity’ has been obscure and scattered and weak,” Cena acknowledges.

Peacemaker‘s first season puts Chris on Project Butterfly, a minor assignment that gains importance when the alien butterflies he investigates invade Earth. Peacemaker confronts his father, Auggie ( Robert Patrick ), who controls a white supremacist terror cell as the armored White Dragon, and accuses Chris of killing his beloved older son Keith ( Liam Hughes ) along the way.

From these revelations, Chris Smith seems less like a thug and more like a man suffering from toxic masculinity. Cena sees these revelations as the main appeal of his character, despite his resistance to assigning one particular meaning to the condition of his character ( he asserts that “audiences can take away whatever they want ) ). &nbsp,

” Chris has regrets about what he did to Rick Flag and has a lot of troubles at home. He chuckles, as I believe the eagle is his best friend. Eagly]Peacemaker’s CGI-rendered avian sidekick ] is awesome, he&#8217, s a superstar, but Chris really has very few human companions. Like Vigilante [ Freddie Stroma], he rejects or acts like he’s better than those who want to be his friends.

And yet, by the end of season 1, Peacemaker has stopped the invasion and faced down his father. More importantly, Christopher Smith has finally made friends, real human friends. They are just as flawed as him, too.

Shakeup on 11th Street

Chris Smith arrives at a secret location for an interview in the first teaser for Peacemaker season 2. Across from him sits billionaire benefactor Maxwell Lord ( Sean Gunn ), flanked by two members of the Justice Gang, Hawkgirl ( Isabela Merced ) and the Green Lantern Guy Gardner ( Nathan Fillion ). As seen in Superman, the Justice Gang are the most important superhero team in the universe. And Peacemaker is prepared to join their ranks after just saving the world from alien butterflies.

But when a tech error allows Smith to hear all of their snide comments, including Lord’s assessment that” this guy sucks,” Chris storms out of the building, his dignity in shambles.

Nobody is surprised that Peacemaker wouldn’t be greeted by those who interact with the Man of Steel, not even Cena. He was put on the Suicide Squad, and they’re not necessarily our best and brightest, “he points out”, but now he wants to make it to the big leagues.”

What is surprising, however, is that Chris finds comfort from Leota Adebayo, daughter of Amanda Waller. &nbsp,

Throughout the first season of Peacemaker, Adebayo was a reluctant participant in Project Butterfly, pushed into service by her mother and told to betray Chris. However, Adebayo and Chris have a very different relationship in season 2.

” These two definitely love each other,” says Danielle Brooks, Adebayo’s Oscar and Tony-nominated performer”. They’re both fighting for the love of their parents, the people who raised them and left them kind of awkward.”

It might be that awkwardness that makes Chris and Adebayo bonded more with each other than just Vigilante, who are also joined by other eccentric characters from the show, such as Emilia Harcourt and John Economos. After some initial bumps, Chris and his friends finally connected over their mission against the butterflies and their love of hard rock music, calling themselves” the 11th Street Kids,” after the 1984 track by Finnish band Hanoi Rocks.

The Kids have splintered at the start of Peacemaker‘s second season as a result of Adebayo’s decision to let the rest of the world know about her mother’s actions at the end of the season. &nbsp,

John Economos is back on familiar ground, working for Waller”. Steve Agee, who has been playing Economos since The Suicide Squad, jokes,” I’m back at A. R. G. U. S., back on computers, doing my usual shit.” But familiarity does not mean life is better for the sad-sack nerd, last seen in Creature Commandos“. Economos never seemed comfortable to me, in my opinion. He’s kind of been beaten down by life. He’s had a lot of jobs that haven’t been super pleasant, dealing with a lot of people who have n&#8217, t been super pleasant.”

Co-star Jennifer Holland claims that things aren’t all that much better for her character, the talented but cold Emilia Harcourt. She’s in a worse place than she was in season 1. She lost her job following Adebayo’s leaks, and she is desperate. Her whole life has been spent as a soldier, so she doesn’t have a whole lot of close personal relationships.”

Of course, a lack of personal relationships is the founding ethos of the 11th Street Kids, and it &#8217, s that desire for connection that binds the group together. Even Adebayo&#8217’s choice to reveal Waller to the world was an attempt to form a friendship with them.

” Leaking information about Waller was Adebayo being a team player, “explains Brooks”. She came to terms with what it meant to be a part of something and to be loyal. Adebayo wanted to do the right thing and stand with the team that’s been standing with her. She showed her mother and the team whose side she was really on.”

Such loyalty declarations may be enough to convince Harcourt to forgive Adebayo, but they won’t make things any easier for the once-award agent.

” A lot of the characters have shifted in different ways,” Holland points out”. Adebayo was the new girl, Harcourt was a capable professional, and Peacemaker was the emotionally stumbling buffoon at first. Peacemaker has grown since season 1, and Harcourt has regressed in a lot of ways.”

Whatever growth the characters have experienced, they can’t escape their past demons. In Chris ‘ case, Rick Flag Sr., the new head of A. R. G. U. S., uses his position to exact revenge on the father who murdered his son.

” I’m the heavy,” says action veteran Frank Grillo, who reprises his role as Rick Flag Sr. from Creature Commandos and Superman“. Falg portrays metahumans as aliens. They’re beings who need to be controlled because it &#8217, s easy for them to get out of control. Cena’s character is the hero, regardless of his behavior, but as far as Rick Flag is concerned, Peacemaker’s a bad guy.”

Grillo begins to laugh as if cutting a wrestling promo. Peacemaker’s gotta go, he’s gotta feel the wrath.”

Four-Color Heroes in Gray Shades

So is Peacemaker the hero and Flag the villain? Or is it the other way around? In Peacemaker, the lens isn’t as clear as it appears, and that’s all part of Gunn’s design.

” In the DCU in general, we’re finding shades of gray in people’s morality,” says Gunn”. That applies even to the Justice Gang and Superman, who are both as good as you can get, but they’re corporate tools. It’s never a black and white thing.

” And then there’s Peacemaker, an incredibly complex and conflicted individual who has done a lot of incredibly bad things. But he does have a sensibility that has been downplayed by his father and society.

It certainly helps that Cena comes to the role with what he calls” a hardened shell”, developed through years in the ring. The live wrestling audience is “enthralling and at times relentless.” The crowd will sing my theme song at the top of their lungs and will scream that I suck”, he says. That devotion to the part impresses his on-screen nemesis Grillo, who allows,” My hat’s off to John Cena because the way he plays Chris, you can&#8217, t help but love him”.

Cena and Grillo can show one another respect in part because of their long history of working in action entertainment. That background also prepares the actors for some intense fight sequences for Peacemaker‘s second season.

” I’m mostly self-assured, but I do have one significant fight scene with Cena.” It’s fun and brutal”, teases Grillo, before pointing to another castmate whose physical prowess impressed him. ” Jennifer Holland’s fight stuff is phenomenal”! he enthuses.

While thrilled with the end result of Harcourt’s massive episode one rumble, she’s quick to point out that it didn’t come to her easily. Without my stunt double, C. C. Ice, I couldn’t have done it. She tirelessly trained with me”, Holland admits. ” All the stunt actors in that scene with me were training in the gym for weeks to get it right”.

In season 2, all of the 11th Street Kids are given their big moments, whether they want them or not.

” John Economos is a reluctant hero”, laughs Agee. ” Practically everything he does is against his better judgment. He’s very much like me. Honestly, though, I would be super stoked if I saved some people&#8217, s lives by killing a monster gorilla”, referring to Economos’s moment of gory heroism in the first season. ” I would be so excited,”

Do You Really Wanna Taste It?

Peacemaker has to nail the action scenes as a show about superheroes and alien invaders. But the cast found another, very different physical aspect of the show even more challenging. And, in a way, more important. The opening dance number was “absolutely dialed in,” Grillo explains. ” James was very serious about it”.

The entire cast of Peacemaker season 1 danced to” Do You Wanna Taste It” by Norwegian glam metal band Wig Wam in costume throughout every episode of the season opener. The song turned out to be a viral hit, inspiring hundreds of imitators on social media. For season 2, Peacemaker‘s dialing things up with a new song, new moves, and a much bigger cast.

” The cast has a lot more people than the cast,” he said. Tim Meadows and Frank Grillo and Sol Rodríguez and David Denman. There are many people, Agee remark with awe. ” It&#8217, s a huge dance number, oh my god”.

Even Brooks, who comes to the show with a theater degree from Juilliard ( a credit she puts into perspective by noting that” Juilliard really can&#8217, t prepare you for falling out of a giant alien cow” ), found the sequence challenging. You are aware of when you need to rub your stomach and pat your head at the same time? That&#8217, s what it felt like”, she jokes. However, it really, really works once it starts to click in the body and everyone is doing it all at once.

” You’ve got this crazy cast of people who are totally one hundred percent in on this journey, and we’re doing this weird dance, and everyone is just ego aside”, adds Holland. ” You see someone like Tim Meadows really wanting to get it right, and it’s a really special experience”.

Agee states,” The first time I saw the dance number, I was smiling ear to ear.” ” People are going to love it”.

The change in the opening credits is undoubtedly a significant one that will definitely draw a lot of attention to Peacemaker season 2. But there’s another change that Peacemaker needs to deal with in season 2: a reboot of the entire DC Universe.

A New Universe

On the one hand, Gunn has a straightforward explanation for those who don’t understand how old stories are in the new universe. ” Nothing is canon before Creature Commandos, but you can think of those other things as vague memories of things that happened, going back even to the first Suicide Squad”.

Gunn, on the other hand, is aware that these issues come with the territory. ” There are going to be mistakes when you &#8217, re building a world as large as these ones are, whether it’s Game of Thrones, Star Wars, DC or Marvel. It&#8217, s going to be complicated, you know”?

That’s certainly true of the DC Universe, which has already seen multiple reboots in the comics industry since 1985. As a longtime comic book fan himself, Gunn can roll with the changes.

He says,” I’m a balanced canon guy,” and that’s what he’s doing. ” On the one hand, people take it a little too far. Obviously, these are fictional stories, so we don’t have to pretend that they’re reality. However, these tales are meant to be set in the same world, and there is need to be a focus on how they relate to one another.

Such complications are worth it, especially for someone like Gunn, who gets to fill the universe with oddballs from the comics, even if he can’t get them all on the screen yet. He describes the long-running DC series about 31st-century teenagers as” a difficult thing to bring to life,” and he hasn’t yet adapted his personal favorite, the magical imp known as Bat-Mite.

” I would love to be able to figure out a way to do Bat-Mite, or at least Peace-Mite, because I’m sure there’s an imp somewhere in the Ninth Dimension who worships Peacemaker. In fact, we see some imps in season 2 of Peacemaker“.

Gunn has a point, but Chris Smith has some good news. In fact, to hear Cena tell it, nothing can hold back Peacemaker, not even Gunn’s own rules.

Cena makes fun of James Gunn by saying that he already broke the sacred oath that he wasn’t bringing Peacemaker back after he passed away in The Suicide Squad. ” So I can confidently say that the future of Peacemaker is one that will defy the odds”.

That’s perfectly said, because when you’re talking about guys like Christopher Smith, “odd” is definitely the word.

On HBO Max, Peacemaker season 2 premieres on August 21, 2025.

The post Peacemaker Season 2: Exclusive Look at James Gunn&#8217, s Next Step in the DCU After Superman appeared first on Den of Geek.

With an MCU’s take on the Fantastic Four looming over cinemas like a hungry, hungry Galactus, some superhero fans are revisiting past iterations. And, to be frank, too many of these folks are getting it wrong when they defend 2005’s Fantastic Four or the 2007 follow-up Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. In case […]

The post The One Thing Fantastic Four (2005) Did That Marvel Needs to Emulate appeared first on Den of Geek.

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.

A lot has changed in the three years since John Cena last donned a silly silver helmet to play the hapless hero Peacemaker. That includes the rise of James Gunn to co-head of DC Studios, from which he’s given the universe a fresh reboot, complete with an all-new take on Superman.

Like any massive shift, the reboot of the DC Universe raises a lot of questions about what is and isn’t canon. But Peacemaker co-stars Steve Agee and Jennifer Holland reprised their roles as agents John Economos and Emilia Harcourt in 2022’s Black Adam and 2023’s Shazam! Fury of the Gods, so those movies count, right?

Not so, James Gunn tells Den of Geek in no uncertain terms. “They’re not canon! I hate it!” he fumes.

Such headaches are to be expected when recreating an entire cinematic universe. What’s less expected, however, is the guy who Gunn’s counting on to sort it out. Gunn doesn’t enlist the help of the Man of Steel, but rather the guy whose series has its second season premiere just weeks after Superman flies into the theaters.

That guy is Peacemaker, a man who loves peace so much, he’s willing to fight for it.

“There are certain things from the old universe that we refer to in Peacemaker season 2, but until then, they’re not canon,” Gunn explains. “Almost everything from season 1 is canon, but season 2 will explain everything that is or is not canon.”

That’s a lot of importance to put on a perennial Z-lister. Created by Joe Gill and Pat Boyette, Christopher Smith a.k.a. Peacemaker made his debut in 1966’s Fightin’ 5 #40, a war comic published by the now defunct Charlton Comics. When DC Comics acquired the Charlton characters in 1983, they gave Peacemaker another shot with a 1988 solo series and a handful of guest appearances before killing him off-panel in 1993. A resurrected and reimagined Chris Smith briefly popped up in 2009 and then disappeared again.

All of that changed in 2021, when James Gunn made Peacemaker a major part of his debut DC movie, The Suicide Squad. Even more surprisingly, Gunn cast wrestling superstar and actor John Cena in the role. Gunn then spun Peacemaker off into his own eight-episode HBO Max series in 2022, despite the fact that The Suicide Squad ended with Chris at death’s door after betraying his team and killing leader Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman).

Now things are changing again, as Gunn has ascended to co-head of DC Studios and rebooted the DC Universe, a new world that began with the 2024 animated series Creature Commandos and properly kicked off with the much-anticipated Superman.

Improbably, Peacemaker is at the center of these changes with season 2 of his series arriving on HBO Max on Aug. 21, 2025. Peacemaker season 2 puts Chris Smith deep into the new universe, carrying over stories from Superman and even clarifying some details about the cosmic reboot.

How does a low-ranking oddball like Christopher Smith handle the pressure? 

A Big Name for a Super-Nobody

By 2021, John Cena had built a storied wrestling career, scored multiple blockbuster film appearances, and even cut a couple of singles. Why would someone of his stature sign up to play a character unknown even to most comic fans? 

“I wanted to work in the DC universe,” Cena asserts. “The appeal, really, was working with James Gunn. He has a well-documented ‘no asshole’ policy, so I knew I’d be working with people who are friendly and kind and make me better. That right there is a ‘yes’ for me, regardless of the material.”

At first glance, Cena’s desire to work with the right type of people seems to put him at odds with Christopher Smith, whom the actor describes as “starving to have real human companionship.”

Peacemaker is a jingoistic meathead in The Suicide Squad, a mindless killer who becomes a secondary antagonist when his teammates turn against their handler, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), the duplicitous head of the intelligence agency A.R.G.U.S.

Yet, Gunn got no pushback when he offered Cena the part. “I have found that—uniformly— people dream of being a superhero,” Gunn says. “There’s never been a person that I’ve dealt with who was not extraordinarily excited about their costume.”

It also helps that Gunn tells complex stories about seemingly silly characters. “Whether dealing with Rocket Raccoon or Superman or Peacemaker, I start with the question, ‘What if this character were real? What would bring them to the place where they are today?’” These questions inform everything from personal motivations to costume choices.

“Superman is an alien from outer space who wants kids and people to like him. That’s why he wears the suit,” Gunn observes. “Peacemaker wants to be cool and instill fear in people, but he’s kind of an idiot.“Peacemaker might instill fear because he looks like John Cena, but I don’t think that costume’s instilling fear in anyone.”

Whatever Gunn’s description might suggest, Chris Smith does get some self-awareness throughout Peacemaker. “When he eliminates his friend and mentor Rick Flag in a quest for peace, Chris realizes that his definition of ‘peace’ has been vague and fragmented and flawed,” Cena acknowledges.

Peacemaker’s first season puts Chris on Project Butterfly, a minor assignment that gains importance when the alien butterflies he investigates invade Earth. Along the way, Peacemaker confronts his father, Auggie (Robert Patrick), who leads a white supremacist terror cell as the armored White Dragon and blames Chris for the death of beloved older son Keith (Liam Hughes).

From these revelations, Chris Smith seems less like a thug and more like a man suffering from toxic masculinity. Although reluctant to ascribe one specific meaning to his character’s condition—“audiences can take away whatever they want,” he insists—Cena sees these revelations as the character’s main appeal. 

“Chris has regrets about what he did to Rick Flag and has a lot of troubles at home. An eagle is his best friend; I think that says a lot,” he chuckles. “Eagly [Peacemaker’s CGI-rendered avian sidekick] is awesome, he’s a superstar, but Chris really has very few human companions. The people who want to be his friend, like Vigilante [Freddie Stroma], he pushes aside or acts like he’s better than.”

And yet, by the end of season 1, Peacemaker has stopped the invasion and faced down his father. More importantly, Christopher Smith has finally made friends, real human friends. And they’re just as messed up as he is.

Shakeup on 11th Street

In the first teaser for Peacemaker season 2, Chris Smith arrives at a secret location for an interview. Across from him sits billionaire benefactor Maxwell Lord (Sean Gunn), flanked by two members of the Justice Gang, Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and the Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion). As seen in Superman, the Justice Gang are the most important superhero team in the universe. And, having just saved the world from alien butterflies, Peacemaker is ready to join their ranks.

But when a tech error allows Smith to hear all of their snide comments, including Lord’s assessment that “this guy sucks,” Chris storms out of the building, his dignity in shambles.

Nobody’s surprised that Peacemaker wouldn’t be welcomed by those who rub shoulders with the Man of Steel, not even Cena. “He was put on the Suicide Squad, and they’re not necessarily our best and brightest,” he points out, “but now he wants to make it to the big leagues.”

What is surprising, however, is that Chris finds comfort from Leota Adebayo, daughter of Amanda Waller. 

Throughout the first season of Peacemaker, Adebayo was a reluctant participant in Project Butterfly, pushed into service by her mother and told to betray Chris. But in season 2, Adebayo and Chris have a very different relationship.

“These two definitely love each other,” says Danielle Brooks, Adebayo’s Oscar and Tony-nominated performer. “They’re both fighting for the love of their parents, the people who raised them and left them kind of awkward.”

It might be that awkwardness that helps Chris and Adebayo bond not only with one another, but also with the other weirdos in the show, which include not just Vigilante, but also fellow A.R.G.U.S. agents Emilia Harcourt and John Economos. After some initial bumps, Chris and his friends finally connected over their mission against the butterflies and their love of hard rock music, calling themselves “the 11th Street Kids,” after the 1984 track by Finnish band Hanoi Rocks.

At the start of Peacemaker’s second season, the Kids have fragmented, due in part to Adebayo’s decision to reveal her mother’s actions to the rest of the world at the end of the season. 

John Economos is back on familiar ground, working for Waller. “I’m back at A.R.G.U.S., back on computers doing my usual shit,” chuckles comedian Steve Agee, who has been playing Economos since The Suicide Squad. But familiarity does not mean life is better for the sad-sack nerd, last seen in Creature Commandos. “I don’t think Economos has ever been comfortable. He’s kind of been beaten down by life. He’s had a lot of jobs that haven’t been super pleasant, dealing with a lot of people who haven’t been super pleasant.”

According to co-star Jennifer Holland, things aren’t too much better for her character, the capable but cold Emilia Harcourt. “She’s in a worse place than she was in season 1. She lost her job after Adebayo’s leaks, and she’s desperate. Her whole life has been spent as a soldier, so she doesn’t have a whole lot of close personal relationships.”

Of course, a lack of personal relationships is the founding ethos of the 11th Street Kids, and it’s that desire for connection that binds the group together. Even Adebayo’s decision to reveal Waller to the world was an attempt to bond with them.

“Leaking information about Waller was Adebayo being a team player,” explains Brooks. “She finally understood what it was to be part of something and to be loyal. Adebayo wanted to do the right thing and stand with the team that’s been standing with her. She showed her mother and the team whose side she was really on.”

Such declarations of loyalty may be enough to get Harcourt to forgive Adebayo, but it’s not going to make things any easier for the one-time agent.

“A lot of the characters have shifted in different ways,” Holland points out. “At first, Adebayo was the new girl and Harcourt was capable professional and Peacemaker was the emotionally fucked-up buffoon. Peacemaker has grown since season 1, and Harcourt has regressed in a lot of ways.”

Whatever growth the characters have experienced, they can’t escape their past demons. In Chris’s case, those demons include the new head of A.R.G.U.S., Rick Flag Sr., who uses his position to get revenge against the man who killed his son.

“I’m the heavy,” says action veteran Frank Grillo, who reprises his role as Rick Flag Sr. from Creature Commandos and Superman. “Flag sees metahumans as aliens. They’re beings who need to be controlled because it’s easy for them to get out of control. Cena’s character is the hero, regardless of his behavior, but as far as Rick Flag is concerned, Peacemaker’s a bad guy.”

As if cutting a wrestling promo, Grillo starts to laugh. “Peacemaker’s gotta go, he’s gotta feel the wrath.”

Four-Color Heroes in Shades of Gray

So is Peacemaker the hero and Flag the villain? Or is it the other way around? Moral compasses aren’t so clear in Peacemaker, and that’s all part of Gunn’s design.

“In the DCU in general, we’re finding shades of gray in people’s morality,” says Gunn. “That’s even with Superman, who’s as good as you can get, or the Justice Gang, who are heroes, but they’re corporate tools. It’s never a black and white thing.

“And then there’s Peacemaker, an incredibly complex and conflicted individual who has done a lot of incredibly bad things. But even he has a sensitivity that’s been bashed down by his father and society.”

It certainly helps that Cena comes to the role with what he calls “a hardened shell,” developed through years in the ring. “The live wrestling audience is enthusiastic and at points relentless. The crowd will sing my theme song at the top of their lungs and will scream that I suck,” he says. That devotion to the part impresses his on-screen nemesis Grillo, who allows, “My hat’s off to John Cena because the way he plays Chris, you can’t help but love him.”

The respect that Cena and Grillo can show one another comes in part from their long history working in action entertainment. That background also prepares the actors for some intense fight sequences for Peacemaker’s second season.

“I’m mostly contained, but I have one big fight scene with Cena. It’s fun and brutal,” teases Grillo, before pointing to another castmate whose physical prowess impressed him. “Jennifer Holland’s fight stuff is phenomenal!” he enthuses.

While thrilled with the end result of Harcourt’s massive episode one rumble, she’s quick to point out that it didn’t come to her easily. “I couldn’t have done it without my stunt double, C.C. Ice. She tirelessly trained with me,” Holland admits. “All the stunt actors in that scene with me were training in the gym for weeks to get it right.”

In fact, all of the 11th Street Kids get their big moments in season 2… whether they want to or not.

“John Economos is a reluctant hero,” laughs Agee. “Pretty much everything he does is against his better judgment. He’s very much like me. Honestly, though, I would be super stoked if I saved some people’s lives by killing a monster gorilla,” referring to Economos’s moment of gory heroism in the first season. “I would be so jazzed.”

Do You Really Wanna Taste It?

As a show about superheroes and alien invaders, Peacemaker has to nail the action scenes. But the cast found another, very different physical aspect of the show even more challenging. And, in a way, more important. “We really had to get the opening dance number dialed in,” reveals Grillo. “James was very serious about it.”

Every episode of Peacemaker season 1 opened with the entire cast, in costume, dancing to “Do You Wanna Taste It” by Norwegian glam metal band Wig Wam. The song turned out to be a viral hit, inspiring hundreds of imitators on social media. For season 2, Peacemaker’s dialing things up with a new song, new moves, and a much bigger cast.

“There are so many more people in the cast. Tim Meadows and Frank Grillo and Sol Rodríguez and David Denman. There are so many people,” says Agee with some awe. “It’s a huge dance number, oh my god.”

Even Brooks, who comes to the show with a theater degree from Juilliard (a credit she puts into perspective by noting that “Juilliard really can’t prepare you for falling out of a giant alien cow”), found the sequence challenging. “You know when you have to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time? That’s what it felt like,” she jokes. “But once it clicks in the body and everybody is doing it all together, it really, really works.”

“You’ve got this crazy cast of people who are totally one hundred percent in on this journey, and we’re doing this weird dance, and everyone is just ego aside,” adds Holland. “You see someone like Tim Meadows really wanting to get it right, and it’s a really special experience.”

“The first time I saw the dance number, I was smiling ear to ear,” Agee concludes. “People are going to love it.”

Clearly, the change in the opening credits is a big deal, one that’s sure to draw a lot of attention to Peacemaker season 2. But there’s another change that Peacemaker needs to deal with in season 2: a reboot of the entire DC Universe.

A New Universe

On one hand, Gunn has a simple explanation for those who don’t understand the status of past stories in the new universe. “Nothing is canon before Creature Commandos, but you can think of those other things as vague memories of things that happened, going back even to the first Suicide Squad.”

On the other hand, Gunn also knows that these issues come with the territory. “There are going to be mistakes when you’re building a world as large as these ones are, whether it’s Game of Thrones, Star Wars, DC or Marvel. It’s going to be complicated, you know?”

That’s certainly true of the DC Universe, which has already been rebooted in the world of comics multiple times since 1985. As a longtime comic book fan himself, Gunn can roll with the changes.

“I’m a balanced canon guy,” he observes. “On the one hand, people take it a little too far. Obviously, these are fictional stories, so we don’t have to pretend that they’re reality. But at the same time, these stories are supposed to be in the same world, and you need to pay attention to the connection between things.”

Such complications are worth it, especially for someone like Gunn, who gets to fill the universe with oddballs from the comics, even if he can’t get them all on the screen yet. “The Legion of Super-Heroes is a difficult thing to bring to life,” he says of DC’s long-running series about 31st-century teenagers, and he hasn’t yet figured out how to adapt his personal favorite, the magical imp known as Bat-Mite.

“I would love to be able to figure out a way to do Bat-Mite, or at least Peace-Mite, because I’m sure there’s an imp somewhere in the Ninth Dimension who worships Peacemaker. In fact, we see some imps in season 2 of Peacemaker.”

Clearly, Gunn isn’t done with the weirdos of the DC Universe, and that’s good news for Chris Smith. In fact, to hear Cena tell it, nothing can hold back Peacemaker, not even Gunn’s own rules.

“James Gunn made a sacred oath that he’s not bringing characters back from the dead, and he already broke that by bringing Peacemaker back after he died in The Suicide Squad,” teases Cena. “So I can confidently say that the future of Peacemaker is one that will defy the odds.”

That’s perfectly said, because when you’re talking about guys like Christopher Smith, “odd” is definitely the word.

Peacemaker season 2 premieres Thursday, August 21, 2025 on HBO Max.

The post Peacemaker Season 2: Exclusive Look at James Gunn’s Next Step in the DCU After Superman appeared first on Den of Geek.

Last year, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was rudely canceled, which shocked followers of the late-night talk show style and raised more than a few eyebrows for the socially active. First hosted by David Letterman, The Late Show has aired for three decades on CBS, a network that ]… ]

Does Late Night Late Night As a Genre End with Stephen Colbert’s Leave? appeared second on Den of Geek.

This article appears in the new problem of&nbsp, DEN OF GEEK&nbsp, publication. These are all of our newspaper stories and nbsp available.

A lot has changed in the three decades since John Cena next donned a foolish gold hat to enjoy the hapless hero Peacemaker. That includes James Gunn‘s elevation as co-head of DC Studios, where he has given the world a new reboot with an all-new interpretation of Superman.

Like any large change, the relaunch of the DC Universe raises a lot of concerns about what is and isn’t lore. But Peacemaker co-stars Steve Agee and Jennifer Holland reprised their jobs as officials John Economos and Emilia Harcourt in 2022’s Black Adam and 2023’s Shazam! So those videos count, right? Fury of the Gods.

Not in this case, James Gunn rebuttes in no uncertain terms for Den of Geek. ” They’re not cannon! I detest it”! he pollutants.

For problems are to be expected when recreating an entire visual world. The gentleman Gunn is counting on to solve the situation is less likely, though. Gunn doesn’t enlist the help of the Man of Steel, but rather the man whose line has its second season debut just days after Superman flies into the venues.

That person is Peacemaker, a person who but devoted himself to promoting peace.

” There are certain items from the ancient world that we refer to in Peacemaker time 2, but until then, they’re never canon”, Gunn explains. ” Virtually everything from time 1 is cannon, but season 2 will explain all that is or is not lore”.

That’s a lot of significance to put on a regular Z-lister. Created by Joe Gill and Pat Boyette, Christopher Smith a. k. a. Peacemaker made his debut in 1966’s Fightin ‘ 5# 40, a combat comics published by the now defunct Charlton Comics. Before killing him off-screen in 1993, DC Comics gave Peacemaker another picture with a 1988 guitar set and a few guest appearances when the characters were acquired in 1983. A revived and recreated Chris Smith recently popped up in 2009 and subsequently disappeared again.

All of that changed in 2021, when James Gunn made Peacemaker a major part of his album DC film, The Suicide Squad. Unsurprisingly, Gunn chose wrestler-turned-actor John Cena for the part, which is even more surprising. Gunn then spun Peacemaker off into his own eight-episode HBO Max series in 2022, despite the fact that The Suicide Squad ended with Chris at death’s door after betraying his team and killing leader Rick Flag ( Joel Kinnaman ).

As Gunn ascends to co-head of DC Studios and reboots the DC Universe, a brand-new earth that began with the 2024 animated set Creature Commandos and appropriately kicked off with the eagerly awaited Superman, things are beginning to change.

Unlikely, Peacemaker is at the core of these changes with time 2 of his line arriving on HBO Max on Aug. 21, 2025. Peacemaker winter 2 puts Chris Smith deep into the new world, carrying over reports from Superman and yet clarifying some information about the celestial reset.

How does a low-ranking jerk like Christopher Smith deal with force? &nbsp,

A Great Name for a Super-Nobody

By 2021, John Cena had built a historic wrestling job, scored various blockbuster movie appearances, and even split a couple of singles. Why would someone of his appearance sign up to perform a figure unknown perhaps to most humorous fans? &nbsp,

” I wanted to work in the DC universe”, Cena asserts. Actually, the charm was working with James Gunn. He has a well-documented’ no jerk ‘ legislation, so I knew I’d been working with people who are polite and kind and make me better. That straight there is a’ yes’ for me, regardless of the material”.

Cena appears to be at odds with Christopher Smith, whom the actor describes as” starving to have real human companionship,” at first because of his desire to work with the right kind of people.

Peacemaker is a jingoistic meathead in The Suicide Squad, a mindless killer who becomes a secondary antagonist when his teammates turn against their handler, Amanda Waller ( Viola Davis ), the duplicitous head of the intelligence agency A. R. G. U. S.

However, when Gunn offered Cena the role, she didn’t respond. ” I have found that —uniformly — people dream of being a superhero”, Gunn says. ” There&#8217, s never been a person that I&#8217, d dealt with who was not incredibly excited about their costume”.

Gunn’s ability to tell difficult stories about apparently silly characters is also a plus. ” Whether dealing with Rocket Raccoon or Superman or Peacemaker, I start with the problem,’ What if this figure were true? What may lead them to the present-day location? These questions tell everything from individual motivations to wardrobe choices.

” Superman is an alien from outer space who wants kids and people to like him. That’s why he’s wearing the coat, Gunn explains. ” Peacemaker wants to become cool and instill fear in people, but he’s kind of an idiot”.Peacemaker may put anxiety because he looks like John Cena, but I don’t believe that picture’s instilling fear in anyone.”

Chris Smith does experience some self-awareness throughout Peacemaker, regardless of Gunn’s description. When he eliminates his friend and mentor Rick Flag in a quest for peace, Chris realizes that his definition of’ peace’ has been vague and fragmented and flawed,” Cena acknowledges.

Peacemaker‘s first season puts Chris on Project Butterfly, a minor assignment that gains importance when the alien butterflies he investigates invade Earth. Peacemaker confronts his father, Auggie ( Robert Patrick ), who controls a white supremacist terror cell as the armored White Dragon, and accuses Chris of killing his beloved older son Keith ( Liam Hughes ) along the way.

From these revelations, Chris Smith seems less like a thug and more like a man suffering from toxic masculinity. Cena sees these revelations as the main appeal of his character, despite his resistance to assigning a single specific meaning to the fact that “audiences can take away whatever they want.” &nbsp,

” Chris has regrets about what he did to Rick Flag and has a lot of troubles at home. His best friend, an eagle, is his best friend, and that, in my opinion, means a lot, “he chuckles.” Eagly]Peacemaker’s CGI-rendered avian sidekick ] is awesome, he&#8217, s a superstar, but Chris really has very few human companions. Like Vigilante [ Freddie Stroma], the people who want to be his friends, he rejects or acts like he’s better than them.

And yet, by the end of season 1, Peacemaker has stopped the invasion and faced down his father. More importantly, Christopher Smith has finally made friends, real human friends. And they’re just as flawed as he is.

Shakeup on 11th Street

Chris Smith arrives at a secret location for an interview in the first teaser for Peacemaker season 2. Across from him sits billionaire benefactor Maxwell Lord ( Sean Gunn ), flanked by two members of the Justice Gang, Hawkgirl ( Isabela Merced ) and the Green Lantern Guy Gardner ( Nathan Fillion ). As seen in Superman, the Justice Gang are the most important superhero team in the universe. Peacemaker is prepared to join their ranks after just protecting the planet from alien butterflies.

But when a tech error allows Smith to hear all of their snide comments, including Lord’s assessment that” this guy sucks,” Chris storms out of the building, his dignity in shambles.

Nobody is surprised that Peacemaker wouldn’t be greeted by those who interact with the Man of Steel, not even Cena. He was put on the Suicide Squad, and they’re not necessarily our best and brightest, “he points out”, but now he wants to make it to the big leagues.”

What is surprising, however, is that Chris finds comfort from Leota Adebayo, daughter of Amanda Waller. &nbsp,

Throughout the first season of Peacemaker, Adebayo was a reluctant participant in Project Butterfly, pushed into service by her mother and told to betray Chris. However, Adebayo and Chris ‘ relationship is drastically different in season 2.

” These two definitely love each other,” says Danielle Brooks, Adebayo’s Oscar and Tony-nominated performer”. They’re both fighting for the love of their parents, the people who raised them and left them kind of awkward.”

It might be that awkwardness that makes Chris and Adebayo bonded with the other weirdos in the series, which include not just Vigilante but also fellow A. R. G. U. S. agents Emilia Harcourt and John Economos. After some initial bumps, Chris and his friends finally connected over their mission against the butterflies and their love of hard rock music, calling themselves” the 11th Street Kids,” after the 1984 track by Finnish band Hanoi Rocks.

The Kids have splintered at the start of Peacemaker‘s second season as a result of Adebayo’s decision to let the rest of the world know about her mother’s actions at the end of the season. &nbsp,

John Economos is back on familiar ground, working for Waller”. Steve Agee, who has been playing Economos since The Suicide Squad, jokes,” I’m back at A. R. G. U. S., back on computers, doing my usual shit.” But familiarity does not mean life is better for the sad-sack nerd, last seen in Creature Commandos“. I don’t believe Economos has ever been at ease. He’s kind of been beaten down by life. He’s had a lot of jobs that haven’t been super pleasant, dealing with a lot of people who have n&#8217, t been super pleasant.”

Co-star Jennifer Holland claims that Emilia Harcourt, a capable but cold Emilia Harcourt, is not much better for her character. She’s in a worse place than she was in season 1. She is desperate and lost her job as a result of Adebayo’s leaks. Her whole life has been spent as a soldier, so she doesn’t have a whole lot of close personal relationships.”

Of course, a lack of personal relationships is the founding ethos of the 11th Street Kids, and it &#8217, s that desire for connection that binds the group together. Even Adebayo&#8217’s choice to reveal Waller to the world was an attempt to form a friendship with them.

” Leaking information about Waller was Adebayo being a team player, “explains Brooks”. She finally understood how important it was to be loyal and a part of something. Adebayo wanted to do the right thing and stand with the team that’s been standing with her. She showed her mother and the team whose side she was really on.”

Such loyalty declarations may convince Harcourt to forgive Adebayo, but they won’t make things any easier for the once-award agent.

” A lot of the characters have shifted in different ways,” Holland points out”. Adebayo was the new girl, Harcourt was a capable professional, and Peacemaker was the emotionally stumbling buffoon at first. Peacemaker has grown since season 1, and Harcourt has regressed in a lot of ways.”

Whatever growth the characters have experienced, they can’t escape their past demons. In Chris ‘ case, Rick Flag Sr., the new head of A. R. G. U. S., uses his position to exact revenge on the father who murdered his son.

” I’m the heavy,” says action veteran Frank Grillo, who reprises his role as Rick Flag Sr. from Creature Commandos and Superman“. Falke views metahumans as aliens. They’re beings who need to be controlled because it &#8217, s easy for them to get out of control. Cena’s character is the hero, regardless of his behavior, but as far as Rick Flag is concerned, Peacemaker’s a bad guy.”

Grillo begins to laugh as if cutting a wrestling promo. Peacemaker’s gotta go, he’s gotta feel the wrath.”

Four-Color Heroes in Gray Shades

So is Peacemaker the hero and Flag the villain? Or is it the other way around? In Peacemaker, the lens is completely transparent, which is a feature of Gunn’s design.

” In the DCU in general, we’re finding shades of gray in people’s morality,” says Gunn”. That applies even to the Justice Gang and Superman, who are both as good as you can get, but they’re corporate tools. It’s never a black and white thing.

” And then there’s Peacemaker, an incredibly complex and conflicted individual who has done a lot of incredibly bad things. But even he has a sensibility that has been downplayed by his father and society.

It certainly helps that Cena comes to the role with what he calls” a hardened shell”, developed through years in the ring. The audience for live wrestling is enthusiastic and, at times, unrelenting. The crowd will sing my theme song at the top of their lungs and will scream that I suck”, he says. That devotion to the part impresses his on-screen nemesis Grillo, who allows,” My hat’s off to John Cena because the way he plays Chris, you can&#8217, t help but love him”.

Cena and Grillo can show one another respect for one another because of their long-standing involvement in action entertainment. That background also prepares the actors for some intense fight sequences for Peacemaker‘s second season.

” I’m mostly self-assured, but I do have one significant fight scene with Cena.” It’s fun and brutal”, teases Grillo, before pointing to another castmate whose physical prowess impressed him. ” Jennifer Holland’s fight stuff is phenomenal”! he enthuses.

While thrilled with the end result of Harcourt’s massive episode one rumble, she’s quick to point out that it didn’t come to her easily. Without C. C. Ice, my stunt double, I couldn’t have accomplished it. She tirelessly trained with me”, Holland admits. ” All the stunt actors in that scene with me were training in the gym for weeks to get it right”.

In fact, everyone on 11th Street gets their big moments in season 2 if they choose to or not.

” John Economos is a reluctant hero”, laughs Agee. ” Almost everything he does goes against his own judgment,” he said. He’s very much like me. Honestly, though, I would be super stoked if I saved some people&#8217, s lives by killing a monster gorilla”, referring to Economos’s moment of gory heroism in the first season. ” I would be so excited,” he said.

Do You Really Wanna Taste It?

Peacemaker has to master the action scenes in a show about superheroes and alien invaders. But the cast found another, very different physical aspect of the show even more challenging. And, in a way, more important. The opening dance number was “absolutely dialed in,” Grillo explains. ” James was very serious about it”.

Every episode of Peacemaker season 1 kicked off with the entire cast dancing to” Do You Wanna Taste It” by Norwegian glam metal band Wig Wam. The song turned out to be a viral hit, inspiring hundreds of imitators on social media. For season 2, Peacemaker‘s dialing things up with a new song, new moves, and a much bigger cast.

” The cast has a lot more people in it. Tim Meadows and Frank Grillo and Sol Rodríguez and David Denman. There are so many people, Agee exclaims in some awe. ” It&#8217, s a huge dance number, oh my god”.

Even Brooks, who comes to the show with a theater degree from Juilliard ( a credit she puts into perspective by noting that” Juilliard really can&#8217, t prepare you for falling out of a giant alien cow” ), found the sequence challenging. You are aware of the times you need to rub your stomach and pat your head at once? That&#8217, s what it felt like”, she jokes. However, it really, really works once it clicks in the body and everyone is doing it all together.

” You’ve got this crazy cast of people who are totally one hundred percent in on this journey, and we’re doing this weird dance, and everyone is just ego aside”, adds Holland. ” You see someone like Tim Meadows really wanting to get it right, and it’s a really special experience”.

Agee concludes,” I was smiling ear to ear when I saw the dance number.” ” People are going to love it”.

The change in the opening credits is undoubtedly significant, and Peacemaker season 2 will likely receive a lot of attention for it. But there’s another change that Peacemaker needs to deal with in season 2: a reboot of the entire DC Universe.

A New Universe

On the one hand, Gunn has a straightforward explanation for those who don’t understand the status of the old stories in the new universe. ” Nothing is canon before Creature Commandos, but you can think of those other things as vague memories of things that happened, going back even to the first Suicide Squad”.

Gunn is also aware that these issues come with the territory. ” There are going to be mistakes when you &#8217, re building a world as large as these ones are, whether it’s Game of Thrones, Star Wars, DC or Marvel. It&#8217, s going to be complicated, you know”?

That is undoubtedly the case with the DC Universe, which has experienced numerous reboots since 1985 in the comics industry. As a longtime comic book fan himself, Gunn can roll with the changes.

He says,” I’m a balanced canon guy,” and that’s what he’s doing. ” On the one hand, people take it a little too far. Obviously, these are fictional stories, so we don’t have to pretend that they’re reality. However, these tales are meant to be set in the same world, and there is need to be a focus on how they relate to one another.

Such complications are worth it, especially for someone like Gunn, who gets to fill the universe with oddballs from the comics, even if he can’t get them all on the screen yet. He describes the long-running DC series about 31st-century teenagers as” a difficult thing to bring to life,” and he hasn’t yet developed a workable adaptation of his personal favorite, the magical imp known as Bat-Mite.

” I would love to be able to figure out a way to do Bat-Mite, or at least Peace-Mite, because I’m sure there’s an imp somewhere in the Ninth Dimension who worships Peacemaker. In fact, we see some imps in season 2 of Peacemaker“.

Gunn is undoubtedly not done with the DC Universe’s weirdos, which is good for Chris Smith. In fact, to hear Cena tell it, nothing can hold back Peacemaker, not even Gunn’s own rules.

Cena makes fun of James Gunn by saying that he already broke the sacred oath that he wasn’t bringing Peacemaker back after he passed away in The Suicide Squad. ” So I can confidently say that the future of Peacemaker is one that will defy the odds”.

That’s perfectly said, because when you’re talking about guys like Christopher Smith, “odd” is definitely the word.

On HBO Max, Peacemaker season 2 premieres on Thursday, August 21, 2025.

The post Peacemaker Season 2: Exclusive Look at James Gunn&#8217, s Next Step in the DCU After Superman appeared first on Den of Geek.

This content appears in DEN OF GEEK magazine’s newest matter. You can read all of our newspaper stories below. In the three decades since John Cena next wore a careless metal hat in the role of Peacemaker, a lot has changed. That includes the rise of James Gunn to co-head of DC Studios, from which ]… ]

The article Peacemaker Season 2: Special Glance at James Gunn’s Next Step in the DCU After Superman appeared first on Den of Geek.

This content appears in the newest problem of the magazine Cave OF GEEK&nbsp. You can read all of our publication stories&nbsp, around.

In the three decades since John Cena next wore a ridiculous metal hat in the role of Peacemaker, a miserable hero, a lot has changed. That includes the rise of James Gunn to co-head of DC Studios, from which he’s given the world a new reset, perfect with an all-new taking on Superman.

Like any large change, the relaunch of the DC Universe raises a lot of concerns about what is and isn’t lore. However, in 2022’s Black Adam and 2023’s Shazam!, Peacemaker co-stars Steve Agee and Jennifer Holland reprised their jobs as officials John Economos and Emilia Harcourt. Fury of the Gods, so those shows count, right?

No so, James Gunn tells Den of Geek in no uncertain terms. They’re not cannon, they’re! I hate it”! he pollutants.

When recreating an entire visual world, for migraine are expected. What’s less expected, however, is the man who Gunn’s calculating on to sort it out. Gunn does not seek the assistance of the Man of Steel, but rather the person whose television show has its second season launch just before Superman enters venues.

That gentleman is Peacemaker, a man who loves harmony so much, he’s willing to fight for it.

” There are certain items from the old world that we refer to in Peacemaker time 2, but until then, they’re never canon”, Gunn explains. ” Second year will explain everything that is or is not canon, but essentially everything from year one is.”

That’s a lot of significance to put on a persistent Z-lister. Christopher Smith, aka Peacemaker, made his comeback in 1966’s Fightin’ 5# 40, a war comics that was published by the now-defunct Charlton Comics. He was co-written by Joe Gill and Pat Boyette. When DC Comics acquired the Charlton figures in 1983, they gave Peacemaker another picture with a 1988 guitar set and a handful of visitor looks before killing him off-panel in 1993. A revived and reconstructed Chris Smith recently popped up in 2009 and subsequently disappeared again.

All of that changed when James Gunn made Peacemaker a significant component of his album DC film, The Suicide Squad, in 2021. Even more amazingly, Gunn cast wrestling singer and actor John Cena in the position. Despite the fact that Chris was put at the death’s door in The Suicide Squad after betraying his team and killing leader Rick Flag ( Joel Kinnaman ), Gunn then spun Peacemaker off into his own eight-episode HBO Max series in 2022.

Today things are changing again, as Gunn has ascended to co-head of DC Studios and rebooted the DC Universe, a new world that began with the 2024 animated line Creature Commandos and effectively kicked off with the much-anticipated Superman.

Unlikely, Peacemaker is at the core of these changes with time 2 of his line arriving on HBO Max on Aug. 21, 2025. Chris Smith digs deeply into the new world in Peacemaker season 2, bringing back some Superman-related revelations and providing some clarifications about the celestial reboot.

How does a low-ranking quirky like Christopher Smith handle the pressure? &nbsp,

A Great Name for a Super-Nobody

By 2021, John Cena had built a historic wrestling job, scored various blockbuster movie appearances, and even split a couple of singles. Why would a person of this caliber sign up to enjoy a character that is unfamiliar to the majority of comic book fans? &nbsp,

Cena claims that” I wanted to work in the DC universe.” ” The charm, truly, was working with James Gunn. He has a well-documented’ no jerk ‘ legislation, so I knew I’d been working with people who are polite and kind and make me better. That is true, regardless of the source material, there is a “yes” for me.

At first glance, Cena’s desire to work with the right type of people seems to set him at odds with Christopher Smith, whom the actor describes as” starving to have real human companionship”.

Peacemaker is a mindless killer in The Suicide Squad who turns into a secondary antagonist when his teammates rebel against their handler, Amanda Waller ( Viola Davis ), the duplicitous head of the intelligence agency A. R. G. U. S.

However, Gunn got no opposition when he offered Cena the piece. ” I have found that —uniformly — people dream of being a superhero”, Gunn says. There has never been a man I’ve dealt with who wasn’t particularly excited about their costume.

It even helps that Gunn tells sophisticated narratives about apparently crazy characters. What if this figure were true, whether it was Rocket Raccoon, Superman, or Peacemaker? What may take them to the place where they are nowadays?’” These questions remind everyone from individual motivations to wardrobe choices.

” Superman is an alien from room who wants kids and fans,” he says. That’s why he wears the match”, Gunn observes. Peacemaker wants to be nice and make people afraid, but he’s kind of an idiot. Because he looks like John Cena, Peacemaker does make people afraid, but I don’t believe that the costume is.

Whatever Gunn’s information may advise, Chris Smith does acquire some self-awareness throughout Peacemaker“. When he eliminates his friend and mentor Rick Flag in a search for peace, Chris realizes that his explanation of’ serenity’ has been obscure and scattered and weak,” Cena acknowledges.

Chris is assigned to Project Butterfly, a small task that becomes significant as the alien butterflies he investigates, in the first season of Peacemaker. Along the way, Peacemaker confronts his father, Auggie ( Robert Patrick ), who leads a white supremacist terror cell as the armored White Dragon and blames Chris for the death of beloved older son Keith ( Liam Hughes ).

Chris Smith appears to be more like a person suffering from toxic manhood than a criminal, according to these revelations. Although reluctant to attach one particular meaning to his character’s situation —”audiences may take away whatever they want, “he insists—Cena sees these disclosures as the writer’s major appeal. &nbsp,

Chris regrets what Rick Flag did to him and is in a lot of trouble at home. An owl is his best friend, I think that says a bit, “he smiles”. Although Eagly [Peacemaker’s CGI-rendered birds sidekick ] is great and a superstar, Chris actually has very few human companions. The people who want to be his friend, like Vigilante] Freddie Stroma], he pushes away or acts like he’s better than.”

And still, by the end of winter 1, Peacemaker has stopped the war and faced down his parents. More crucially, Christopher Smith has now established true human friends. And they’re really as messed up as he is.

11th Street Reshuffle

In the first trailer for Peacemaker year 2, Chris Smith arrives at a key area for an appointment. Across from him sits billionaire benefactor Maxwell Lord ( Sean Gunn ), flanked by two members of the Justice Gang, Hawkgirl ( Isabela Merced ) and the Green Lantern Guy Gardner ( Nathan Fillion ). The Justice Gang are the most significant hero team in the world, as seen in Superman. And, having really saved the world from mysterious moths, Peacemaker is ready to join their ranks.

However, when a technical problem allows Smith to discover all of their disparaging responses, including Lord’s analysis that” this man sucks,” Chris storms out of the building with his dignity in disarray.

Nobody’s surprised that Peacemaker wouldn’t be welcomed by those who rub shoulders with the Man of Steel, not even Cena”. He was put on the Suicide Squad, and they’re not necessarily our best and brightest, “he points out”, but now he wants to make it to the big leagues.”

What is surprising, however, is that Chris finds solace in Leota Adebayo, the daughter of Amanda Waller. &nbsp,

Adebayo’s mother pressured her into service and told to betray Chris throughout Peacemaker‘s first season, and she remained a reluctant participant. But in season 2, Adebayo and Chris have a very different relationship.

” These two definitely love each other,” says Danielle Brooks, Adebayo’s Oscar and Tony-nominated performer”. They are both fighting for the affection of their parents, who raised them and made them feel awkward.

It might be that awkwardness that helps Chris and Adebayo bond not only with one another, but also with the other weirdos in the show, which include not just Vigilante, but also fellow A. R. G. U. S. agents Emilia Harcourt and John Economos. After going through some initial rocky patches, Chris and his friends came together to talk about their fight against the butterflies and their love of hard rock music, adopting the name” the 11th Street Kids,” in honor of the Hanoi Rocks track from 1984.

At the start of Peacemaker‘s second season, the Kids have fragmented, due in part to Adebayo’s decision to reveal her mother’s actions to the rest of the world at the end of the season. &nbsp,

John Economos is back at work for Waller and is familiar. I’m back at A. R. G. U. S., back on computers doing my usual shit,” chuckles comedian Steve Agee, who has been playing Economos since The Suicide Squad. However, being well-known does not mean that a sad-sack nerd like you saw in Creature Commandos is happier. I don&#8217, t think Economos has ever been comfortable. He’s kind of been beaten down by life. He’s worked a lot of jobs that haven’t been particularly pleasant, and he’s dealt with a lot of people who haven’t been particularly pleasant.

According to co-star Jennifer Holland, things aren’t too much better for her character, the capable but cold Emilia Harcourt”. She’s in a worse situation than she was in season 1. She lost her job after Adebayo’s leaks, and she’s desperate. Her whole life has been spent as a soldier, so she doesn’t have a whole lot of close personal relationships.”

Of course, the 11th Street Kids ‘ ethos, which includes a lack of personal connections, is the group’s bond, and it &#8217 ;s desire for connection is that. Even Adebayo&#8217, s decision to reveal Waller to the world was an attempt to bond with them.

” Leaking information about Waller was Adebayo being a team player,” explains Brooks. She finally understood what it was to be part of something and to be loyal. Adebayo wanted to do the right thing and stand with the team that’s been standing with her. She revealed to her mother and the team who were truly with her.

Such declarations of loyalty may be enough to get Harcourt to forgive Adebayo, but it’s not going to make things any easier for the one-time agent.

” A lot of the characters have shifted in different ways,” Holland observes. At first, Adebayo was the new girl and Harcourt was capable professional and Peacemaker was the emotionally fucked-up buffoon. Peacemaker has grown since season 1, and Harcourt has regressed in a lot of ways.”

Whatever evolution the characters have gone through, they are unable to turn away from their past demons. In Chris’s case, those demons include the new head of A. R. G. U. S., Rick Flag Sr., who uses his position to get revenge against the man who killed his son.

Action legend Frank Grillo reprises his role as Rick Flag Sr. in Creature Commandos and Superman, saying,” I’m the heavy.” Flag sees metahumans as aliens. They’re beings who need to be controlled because it &#8217, s easy for them to get out of control. Regardless of how he acts, Cena’s character is the hero, but as for Rick Flag, Peacemaker is a bad guy.

As if cutting a wrestling promo, Grillo starts to laugh”. Peacemaker must leave and experience his wrath.

Four-Color Heroes in Shades of Gray

So is Peacemaker the hero and Flag the villain? Or the other way around? Moral compasses aren’t so clear in Peacemaker, and that’s all part of Gunn’s design.

We’re finding shades of gray in people’s morality in the DCU in general, says Gunn. That’s even with Superman, who’s as good as you can get, or the Justice Gang, who are heroes, but they’re corporate tools. It’s never a black and white thing.

” And then there’s Peacemaker, a highly conflicted and complex individual who has committed many highly evil deeds. But even he has a sensitivity that &#8217, s been bashed down by his father and society”.

It is certainly helpful that Cena enters the role with what he refers to as” a hardened shell,” which he developed while working in the ring. ” The live wrestling audience is enthusiastic and at points relentless. The crowd will sing my theme song at the top of their lungs and will scream that I suck”, he says. His on-screen nemesis Grillo, who allows,” My hat’s off to John Cena because his play Chris, you can’t help but love him,” impresses with his devotion to the part.

The respect that Cena and Grillo can show one another comes in part from their long history working in action entertainment. The actors get some intense fight scenes for Peacemaker‘s second season thanks to that background.

” I’m mostly contained, but I have one big fight scene with Cena. It’s fun and brutal”, teases Grillo, before pointing to another castmate whose physical prowess impressed him. Jennifer Holland’s fight action is incredible! he enthuses.

While thrilled with Harcourt’s massive episode one rumble, she quickly points out that it didn’t come to her quickly. ” I couldn’t have done it without my stunt double, C. C. Ice. She tirelessly trained with me”, Holland admits. ” All the stunt actors in that scene with me were training in the gym for weeks to get it right.”

In fact, all of the 11th Street Kids get their big moments in season 2… whether they want to or not.

Agee chuckles,” John Economos is a reluctant hero.” ” Pretty much everything he does is against his better judgment. He’s very much like me. Sincerely, though, I would be extremely excited if I killed a monster gorilla in the first season to save some people’s lives. ” I would be so jazzed”.

Do You Want to Try It Really?

As a show about superheroes and alien invaders, Peacemaker has to nail the action scenes. But the cast found another, very different physical aspect of the show even more challenging. And perhaps more significant. ” We really had to get the opening dance number dialed in”, reveals Grillo. James took it very seriously.

Every episode of Peacemaker season 1 opened with the entire cast, in costume, dancing to” Do You Wanna Taste It” by Norwegian glam metal band Wig Wam. The song turned out to be a viral hit, inspiring hundreds of imitators on social media. Peacemaker is adjusting things up for season 2 with a brand-new song, new techniques, and a much bigger cast.

” There are so many more people in the cast. David Denman, Sol Rodrguez, and Tim Meadows. There are so many people”, says Agee with some awe. ” It&#8217, s a huge dance number, oh my god”.

Even Brooks, who has a theater degree from Juilliard ( a credit she makes in part by noting that” Juilliard really can’t prepare you for falling out of a giant alien cow ), found the sequence challenging. ” You know when you have to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time? She makes fun of how it felt like that,” and that’s what it felt like.” ” But once it clicks in the body and everybody is doing it all together, it really, really works”.

” You’ve got this crazy cast of people who are totally one hundred percent in on this journey, and we’re doing this weird dance, and everyone is just ego aside”, adds Holland. It’s a truly special experience to witness someone like Tim Meadows really wanting it to get it right.

” The first time I saw the dance number, I was smiling ear to ear”, Agee concludes. ” People will adore it,” the saying goes.

Clearly, the change in the opening credits is a big deal, one that’s sure to draw a lot of attention to Peacemaker season 2. But there’s another change that Peacemaker needs to deal with in season 2: a reboot of the entire DC Universe.

A New Universe

On one hand, Gunn has a simple explanation for those who don’t understand the status of past stories in the new universe. Nothing canon exists prior to Creature Commandos, but those other things can be considered hazy memories of events that date back as far as the first Suicide Squad.

On the other hand, Gunn also knows that these issues come with the territory. ” There are going to be mistakes when you &#8217, re building a world as large as these ones are, whether it’s Game of Thrones, Star Wars, DC or Marvel. It&#8217 will be challenging, I assure you.

That’s certainly true of the DC Universe, which has already been rebooted in the world of comics multiple times since 1985. Gunn can adapt to change because he has a long history of comic book fans.

” I&#8217, m a balanced canon guy”, he observes. ” On the one hand, people take it a little too far. We don’t have to pretend that these are real because these are fictitious stories, of course. But at the same time, these stories are supposed to be in the same world, and you need to pay attention to the connection between things”.

Such difficulties are worth it, especially for someone like Gunn, who fills the universe with strange characters from the comics even if he can’t yet get them all to the screen. ” The Legion of Super-Heroes is a difficult thing to bring to life”, he says of DC’s long-running series about 31st-century teenagers, and he hasn’t yet figured out how to adapt his personal favorite, the magical imp known as Bat-Mite.

” I would love to be able to figure out a way to do Bat-Mite, or at least Peace-Mite, because I’m sure there’s an imp somewhere in the Ninth Dimension who worships Peacemaker. In Season 2 of Peacemaker, there are some imps.

Clearly, Gunn isn’t done with the weirdos of the DC Universe, and that’s good news for Chris Smith. Nothing can stop Peacemaker, not even Gunn’s own rules, as Cena has it to say.

” James Gunn made a sacred oath that he’s not bringing characters back from the dead, and he already broke that by bringing Peacemaker back after he died in The Suicide Squad“, teases Cena. ” So I can confidently say that the future of Peacemaker is one that will defy the odds”.

That’s perfectly true, because the word “odd” is definitely the word when you’re talking about guys like Christopher Smith.

Peacemaker season 2 premieres Thursday, August 21, 2025 on HBO Max.

The first episode of Peacemaker Season 2: An Exclusive Look at James Gunn&#8217’s Next Step in the DCU After Superman ran through Den of Geek.

But what on earth is a passionate stress?

Imagine a person determined to do it all. She is homeschooling two wonderful children while simultaneously working remotely with her husband. She has a demanding customer fill at work—all of whom she loves. She wakes up early to get some movement in ( or frequently catch up on work ), prepares dinner while the kids are having breakfast, and works while positioning herself near the end of her “fourth grade” to watch as she balances clients, tasks, and budgets. Sound like a bit? Yet with a supportive group both at home and at work, it is.

Sounds like this person needs self-care because she has too much on her disk. But no, she doesn’t have occasion for that. In truth, she begins to feel as though she’s dropping balloons. No accomplishing enough. There’s not enough of her to be here and that, she is trying to divide her head in two all the time, all day, every day. She begins to question herself. And as those thoughts creep in more and more, her domestic tale becomes more and more important.

She KNOWS what she needs to perform right away! She really Would MORE.

This is a challenging and dangerous period. Know the reason. Because when she doesn’t end that new purpose, that storyline will get worse. She instantly starts failing. She isn’t doing much. SHE is not enough. She’ll discover more she may do because she might neglect, or perhaps her home. She doesn’t nap as much, proceed because much, all in the attempts to do more. caught in this pattern of attempting to prove herself to herself without ever succeeding. Not feeling “enough”.

But, yeah, that’s what zealous burnout looks like for me. It doesn’t develop over in some grand gesture, but it does rather develop gradually over the course of several weeks and months. My burning out process looks like speeding up, not a man losing target. I move up and up and up, and therefore I simply quit.

I am the one who was

It’s interesting the things that shape us. Through the camera of my own childhood, I witnessed the battles, sacrifices, and concerns of someone who had to make it all work without having much. I was happy that my mom was so competent and my dad sympathetic, I never went without and also got an extra here or there.

Growing up, I didn’t feel shame when my mom gave me food passports; in fact, I would have likely sparked debates about the subject, orally eviscerating anyone who dared to criticize the disabled person who was attempting to ensure all of our needs were met with so little. As a child, I watched the way the worry of not making those begins meet impacted people I love. As the non-disabled people in my home, I did take on many of the real things because I was” the one who was” make our lives a little easier. I soon realized that I had to put more of myself into it because I was the one who could. I learned first that when something frightens me, I may double down and work harder to make it better. I am capable of taking on the issue. When people have seen this in me as an child, I’ve been told I seem brave, but make no mistake, I’m not. If I seem courageous, it’s because this behavior was forged from another people’s worries.

And here I am, more than 30 years later, also feeling the urge to aimlessly force myself forward when faced with daunting tasks in front of me, assuming that I am the one who is and consequently does. I find myself driven to prove that I can make things happen if I work longer hours, take on more responsibility, and do more.

I don’t see people who struggle financially as failures because I have seen how strong that tide can be; it pulls you along the way. I truly get that I have been privileged to be able to avoid many of the challenges that were present in my youth. That said, I am still” the one who can” who feels she should, so if I were faced with not having enough to make ends meet for my own family, I would see myself as having failed. Despite my best efforts and education, the majority of this is due to good fortune. I will, however, allow myself the arrogance of saying I have been careful with my choices to have encouraged that luck. I believe I am” the one who can,” so I feel compelled to do the most because of this. I can choose to stop, and with some quite literal cold water splashed in my face, I’ve made the choice to before. But that choosing to stop is not my go-to, I move forward, driven by a fear that is so a part of me that I barely notice it’s there until I’m feeling utterly worn away.

Why all this history, then? You see, burnout is a fickle thing. Over the years, I have read and heard a lot about burnout. Burnout is real. Especially now, with COVID, many of us are balancing more than we ever have before—all at once! It’s challenging, and so many amazing professionals are affected by the avoidance, the shutting down, and the procrastination. There are important articles that relate to what I imagine must be the majority of people out there, but not me. Not at the time of my burnout, though.

The dangerous invisibility of zealous burnout

A lot of work environments see the extra hours, extra effort, and overall focused commitment as an asset ( and sometimes that’s all it is ). They see a person attempting to overcome obstacles, not a person trapped in fear. Many well-meaning organizations have safeguards in place to protect their teams from burnout. However, in situations like this, alarms don’t always ring, and some organization members are surprised and depressed when the inevitable stop occurs. And sometimes maybe even betrayed.

Parents—more so mothers, statistically speaking—are praised as being so on top of it all when they can work, be involved in the after-school activities, practice self-care in the form of diet and exercise, and still meet friends for coffee or wine. Many of us have watched countless streaming COVID episodes to see how challenging it is for the female protagonist, but she is strong and funny and can do it. It’s a “very special episode” when she breaks down, cries in the bathroom, woefully admits she needs help, and just stops for a bit. Truth be told, countless people are avoiding tears or doomscrolling to flee. We know that the media is a lie to amuse us, but often the perception that it’s what we should strive for has penetrated much of society.

Women and burnout

I adore men. And though I don’t love every man ( heads up, I don’t love every woman or nonbinary person either ), I think there is a beautiful spectrum of individuals who represent that particular binary gender.

Despite this, women are still more frequently at risk of burnout than their male counterparts, especially in these COVID stressed out times. Mothers in the workplace feel the pressure to do all the “mom” things while giving 110 %. Mothers not in the workplace feel they need to do more to” justify” their lack of traditional employment. Women who are not mothers frequently feel the need to do even more because they don’t feel the pressure that comes with being a mother. It’s vicious and systemic and so a part of our culture that we’re often not even aware of the enormity of the pressures we put on ourselves and each other.

And there are costs that go beyond happiness. Harvard Health Publishing released a study a decade ago that “uncovered strong links between women’s job stress and cardiovascular disease”. The CDC noted,” Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the United States, killing 299, 578 women in 2017—or about 1 in every 5 female deaths”.

According to what I’ve read, this connection between work stress and health is more dangerous for women than it is for their non-female counterparts.

But what if your burnout isn’t like that either?

That might not be you either. After all, each of us is so different and how we respond to stressors is too. It’s part of what makes us human. Don’t put too much emphasis on how burnout manifests; rather, learn to recognize it in yourself. Here are a few questions I sometimes ask friends if I am concerned about them.

How are you feeling? This simple question should be the first thing you ask yourself. Chances are, even if you’re burning out doing all the things you love, as you approach burnout you’ll just stop taking as much joy from it all.

Do you feel like you have the authority to decline? I have observed in myself and others that when someone is burning out, they no longer feel they can say no to things. Even those who don’t” speed up” feel pressured to say “yes” to avoid apprehension.

What are three things you’ve done for yourself? Another observance is that we all tend to stop doing things for ourselves. anything from avoiding conversations with friends to skipping showers and eating poorly. These can be red flags.

Are you using justifications? Many of us try to disregard feelings of burnout. Over and over I have heard,” It’s just crunch time”,” As soon as I do this one thing, it will all be better”, and” Well I should be able to handle this, so I’ll figure it out”. And it could be just one more thing you need to learn, or it might just be crunch time. That happens—life happens. Be open to yourself if this continues to happen. If you’ve worked more 50-hour weeks since January than not, maybe it’s not crunch time—maybe it’s a bad situation that you’re burning out from.

Do you have a plan to stop feeling this way? If something is only temporary and you have to push through, it has an exit route and a reward system.
defined end.

Take the time to listen to yourself as you would a friend. Be honest, allow yourself to be uncomfortable, and break the thought cycles that prevent you from healing.

So now what?

What I just described has a different path to burnout, but it’s still burnout. There are well-established approaches to working through burnout:

• Get enough sleep.
• Eat healthy.
• Work out.
• Go outside.
• Take a break.
• Practice self-care in general.

Those are hard for me because they feel like more tasks. If I’m in the burnout cycle, doing any of the above for me feels like a waste. Why would I take care of myself when I’m dropping all those other balls if I’m already failing, as the narrative suggests? People need me, right?

Your inner voice might already be pretty bad if you’re deeply in the cycle. If you need to, tell yourself you need to take care of the person your people depend on. If your roles are pushing you toward burnout, use them to help make healing easier by justifying the time spent working on you.

I have come up with a few things that I do when I start to feel like I’m going into a zealous burnout to help me remember the airline attendant advice to put the mask on yourself first.

Cook an elaborate meal for someone!

Okay, since I’m a “food-focused” person, I’ve always been a fan. There are countless tales in my home of someone walking into the kitchen and turning right around and walking out when they noticed I was” chopping angrily”. But it’s more than that, and you should give it a try. Seriously. It’s the perfect go-to if you don’t feel worthy of taking time for yourself—do it for someone else. Because the majority of us work in a digital world, cooking can pique your interest and make you feel present in the moment in all your ways. It can break you out of your head and help you gain a better perspective. In my house, I’ve been known to pick a place on the map and cook food that comes from wherever that is ( thank you, Pinterest ). I enjoy making Indian food because the smells are warm, the bread needs just enough kneading to keep my hands engaged, and the process requires real attention for me because it’s not what I was raised making. And in the end, we all win!

Vent like a sniveling jerk.

Be careful with this one!

I have been making an effort to practice more gratitude over the past few years, and I recognize the true benefits of that. Having said that, sometimes you just need to let it all out, even the ugly ones. Hell, I’m a big fan of not sugarcoating our lives, and that sometimes means that to get past the big pile of poop, you’re gonna wanna complain about it a bit.

When that is required, turn to a trusted friend and give yourself some pure verbal diarrhea by expressing all your concerns. You need to trust this friend not to judge, to see your pain, and, most importantly, to tell you to remove your cranium from your own rectal cavity. Seriously, it’s about getting a reality check here! One of the things I admire most about my husband is how he can simplify things down to their simplest bits, despite often after the fact. ” We’re spending our lives together, of course you’re going to disappoint me from time to time, so get over it” has been his way of speaking his dedication, love, and acceptance of me—and I could not be more grateful. Of course, it also required that I take my head out of that rectal cavity. So, again, usually those moments are appreciated in hindsight.

Pick up a book!

There are many books out there that are more like you sharing their stories and how they’ve come to find greater balance than they are self-help. Maybe you’ll find something that speaks to you. Among the titles that have stood out to me are:

• Thrive by Arianna Huffington
• Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
• Girl, Stop apologizing, Rachel Hollis
• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

Or, if I love to read or listen to a book that doesn’t have anything to do with my work-life balance, I can use another tactic. I’ve read the following books and found they helped balance me out because my mind was pondering their interesting topics instead of running in circles:

• The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart
• Darin Olien’s Superlife
• A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford
• Toby Hemenway’s Gaia’s Garden

If you’re not into reading, pick up a topic on YouTube or choose a podcast to subscribe to. I’ve watched countless permaculture and gardening topics in addition to how to raise chickens and ducks. For the record, I don’t currently have a particularly large food garden or raise any kind of livestock. I just find the topic interesting, and it has nothing to do with any aspect of my life that needs anything from me.

Give yourself a break.

You are never going to be perfect—hell, it would be boring if you were. It’s OK to be broken and flawed. It’s human nature to be depressed, anxious, and tired. It’s OK to not do it all. You can’t be brave without being imperfect, which is terrifying.

This last one is the most important: allow yourself permission to NOT do it all. You never promised to be everything to everyone at all times. Our fears determine our strength, not ours.

This is hard. It’s challenging for me. It’s what’s driven me to write this—that it’s OK to stop. It’s OK that your unhealthy habit that might even benefit those around you needs to end. You can continue to succeed in life.

I recently read that we are all writing our eulogy in how we live. What will your professional accomplishments say, knowing that yours won’t be mentioned in that speech? What do you want it to say?

Look, I get that none of these ideas will “fix it”, and that’s not their purpose. Only how we react to the things around us is what we control. These suggestions are to help stop the spiral effect so that you are empowered to address the underlying issues and choose your response. They are the things that largely work for me. Maybe they’ll work for you.

Does this sound familiar?

If this sounds familiar, you’re not just going to know about it. Don’t let your negative self-talk tell you that you “even burn out wrong”. It is not improper. Even if rooted in fear like my own drivers, I believe that this need to do more comes from a place of love, determination, motivation, and other wonderful attributes that make you the amazing person you are. We’re going to be OK, ya know. When we stop and look around, the only eyes that judge us are usually the ones who look in the mirror, so the lives that unfold before us might never seem to be the same as the story in our heads.

Do you remember that Winnie the Pooh sketch that had Pooh eat so much at Rabbit’s house that his buttocks couldn’t fit through the door? Well, I already have a strong connection to Rabbit, so it was surprising when he unexpectedly declared that this was unacceptable. But do you recall what happened next? He put a shelf across poor Pooh’s ankles and decorations on his back, and made the best of the big butt in his kitchen.

We are resourceful and aware that we can push ourselves when we are needed, even when we are exhausted to the core or have a ton of clutter in our room. None of us has to be afraid, as we can manage any obstacle put in front of us. And maybe that means we need to redefine success in order to make room for comfort in human nature, but that doesn’t really sound so bad either.

So, wherever you are right now, please breathe. Do what you need to do to get out of your head. Give thanks and be considerate.

One of the most powerful smooth abilities we have at our disposal is the ability to work together to improve our designs while developing our own abilities and perspectives, regardless of how it is used or what it might be called.

Feedback is also one of the most underestimated equipment, and generally by assuming that we’re now great at it, we settle, forgetting that it’s a skill that can be trained, grown, and improved. Bad feedback can lead to conflict in projects, lower confidence, and long-term, undermine trust and teamwork. Quality opinions can be a revolutionary force.

Practicing our knowledge is absolutely a good way to enhance, but the learning gets yet faster when it’s paired with a good base that programs and focuses the exercise. What are some fundamental components of providing effective opinions? And how can comments be adjusted for isolated and distributed job settings?

A long history of sequential feedback can be found online: code was written and discussed on mailing lists before becoming an open source standard. Currently, engineers engage on pull calls, developers post in their favourite design tools, project managers and sprint masters exchange ideas on tickets, and so on.

Design analysis is often the label used for a type of input that’s provided to make our job better, jointly. So it generally adheres to many of the concepts with comments, but it also has some differences.

The information

The content of the feedback serves as the foundation for every effective analysis, so we need to start there. There are many versions that you can use to design your content. The one that I personally like best—because it’s obvious and actionable—is this one from Lara Hogan.

This equation, which is typically used to provide feedback to users, even fits really well in a design critique because it finally addresses one of the main issues that we address: What? Where? Why? How? Imagine that you’re giving some comments about some pattern function that spans several screens, like an onboard movement: there are some pages shown, a stream blueprint, and an outline of the decisions made. You notice a flaw in the situation. If you keep the three components of the equation in mind, you’ll have a mental unit that can help you become more precise and effective.

Here is a post that could be included in some feedback, and it might appear fair at first glance because it appears to merely fit the equation. But does it?

Not confident about the keys ‘ patterns and hierarchy—it feels off. Does you alter them?

Observation for style feedback doesn’t really mean pointing out which part of the software your input refers to, but it also refers to offering a viewpoint that’s as specific as possible. Do you offer the user’s viewpoint? Your expert perspective? A business perspective? From the perspective of the project manager? A first-time user’s perspective?

I anticipate that one of these two buttons will go forward and the other will go back when I see them.

Impact is about the why. Just pointing out a UI element might sometimes be enough if the issue may be obvious, but more often than not, you should add an explanation of what you’re pointing out.

I anticipate that one of these two buttons will go forward and the other will go back when I see them. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow.

The question approach is meant to provide open guidance by eliciting the critical thinking in the designer receiving the feedback. Notably, in Lara’s equation she provides a second approach: request, which instead provides guidance toward a specific solution. While that’s a viable option for feedback in general, in my experience, going back to the question approach typically leads to the best solutions because designers are generally more at ease in being given an open space to explore.

The difference between the two can be exemplified with, for the question approach:

I anticipate that one of these two buttons will go forward and the other will go back when I see them. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Would it make sense to unify them?

Or, for the request approach:

I anticipate that one of these two buttons will go forward and the other will go back when I see them. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same pair of forward and back buttons.

At this point in some situations, it might be useful to integrate with an extra why: why you consider the given suggestion to be better.

I anticipate that one of these two buttons will go forward and the other will go back when I see them. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons so that users don’t get confused.

Choosing the question approach or the request approach can also at times be a matter of personal preference. I did rounds of anonymous feedback and I reviewed feedback with other people a while back when I was putting a lot of effort into improving my feedback. After a few rounds of this work and a year later, I got a positive response: my feedback came across as effective and grounded. Until I changed teams. Surprise surprise, one particular person gave me a lot of negative feedback. The reason is that I had previously tried not to be prescriptive in my advice—because the people who I was previously working with preferred the open-ended question format over the request style of suggestions. However, there was one person in this other team who now preferred specific guidance. So I adapted my feedback for them to include requests.

One comment that I heard come up a few times is that this kind of feedback is quite long, and it doesn’t seem very efficient. Yes, but no. Let’s explore both sides.

No, this kind of feedback is effective because the length is a byproduct of clarity, and giving this kind of feedback can provide precisely enough information for a sound fix. Also if we zoom out, it can reduce future back-and-forth conversations and misunderstandings, improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of collaboration beyond the single comment. Imagine that in the example above the feedback were instead just,” Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons”. The designer receiving this feedback wouldn’t have much to go by, so they might just implement the change. In later iterations, the interface might change or they might introduce new features—and maybe that change might not make sense anymore. The designer might assume that the change is about consistency without the explanation, but what if it wasn’t? So there could now be an underlying concern that changing the buttons would be perceived as a regression.

Yes, this style of feedback is not always efficient because the points in some comments don’t always need to be exhaustive, sometimes because certain changes may be obvious (” The font used doesn’t follow our guidelines” ) and sometimes because the team may have a lot of internal knowledge such that some of the whys may be implied.

Therefore, the equation above is intended to serve as a mnemonic to reflect and enhance the practice rather than a strict template for feedback. Even after years of active work on my critiques, I still from time to time go back to this formula and reflect on whether what I just wrote is effective.

The atmosphere

Well-grounded content is the foundation of feedback, but that’s not really enough. The soft skills of the person who’s providing the critique can multiply the likelihood that the feedback will be well received and understood. It has been demonstrated that only positive feedback can lead to lasting change in people, and tone alone can determine whether content is rejected or welcomed.

Since our goal is to be understood and to have a positive working environment, tone is essential to work on. I’ve tried to summarize the necessary soft skills over the years using a formula that resembles the one for content: the receptivity equation.

Respectful feedback comes across as grounded, solid, and constructive. It’s the kind of feedback that, whether it’s positive or negative, is perceived as useful and fair.

The time when feedback occurs is known as timing. To-the-point feedback doesn’t have much hope of being well received if it’s given at the wrong time. When a new feature’s entire high-level information architecture is about to go on sale, it might still be relevant if the questioning raises a significant blocker that no one saw, but those concerns are much more likely to have to wait for a later revision. So in general, attune your feedback to the stage of the project. Early iteration? Iteration later? Polishing work in progress? Each of these needs varies. The right timing will make it more likely that your feedback will be well received.

Attitude is the equivalent of intent, and in the context of person-to-person feedback, it can be referred to as radical candor. That entails checking before writing to see if what we have in mind will actually help the person and improve the project overall. This might be a hard reflection at times because maybe we don’t want to admit that we don’t really appreciate that person. Hopefully that’s not the case, but it can happen, and that’s okay. Acknowledging and owning that can help you make up for that: how would I write if I really cared about them? How can I avoid being passive aggressive? How can I encourage constructive behavior?

Form is relevant especially in a diverse and cross-cultural work environments because having great content, perfect timing, and the right attitude might not come across if the way that we write creates misunderstandings. There could be many reasons for this, including the fact that occasionally certain words may cause specific reactions, that non-native speakers may not be able to comprehend all thenuances of some sentences, that our brains may be different, and that we may perceive the world differently. Neurodiversity is a requirement. Whatever the reason, it’s important to review not just what we write but how.

A few years back, I was asking for some feedback on how I give feedback. I was given some sound advice, but I also got a surprise comment. They pointed out that when I wrote” Oh, ]… ]”, I made them feel stupid. That’s not what I meant to say! I felt really bad, and I just realized that I provided feedback to them for months, and every time I might have made them feel stupid. I was horrified … but also thankful. I quickly changed my spelling mistake by adding “oh” to my list of replaced words (your choice between aText, TextExpander, or others ) so that when I typed “oh,” it was immediately deleted.

Something to highlight because it’s quite frequent—especially in teams that have a strong group spirit—is that people tend to beat around the bush. It’s important to keep in mind that having a positive attitude doesn’t necessarily mean passing judgment on the feedback; rather, it simply means that you give it constructive and respectful feedback, whether it be difficult or positive. The nicest thing that you can do for someone is to help them grow.

We have a great advantage in giving feedback in written form: it can be reviewed by another person who isn’t directly involved, which can help to reduce or remove any bias that might be there. The best, most insightful moments for me came when I shared a comment and asked a trusted person how it sounds, how can I do it better, or even” How would you have written it”? I discovered that by seeing the two versions side by side, I’ve learned a lot.

The format

Asynchronous feedback also has a significant inherent benefit: we can devote more time to making sure that the suggestions ‘ clarity of communication and actionability meet two main objectives.

Let’s imagine that someone shared a design iteration for a project. You are reviewing it and leaving a comment. Let’s try to think about some factors that might be helpful to consider, as there are many ways to accomplish this, and context is of course a factor.

In terms of clarity, start by grounding the critique that you’re about to give by providing context. This includes specifically describing where you’re coming from: do you have a thorough understanding of the project, or is this your first encounter with it? Are you coming from a high-level perspective, or are you figuring out the details? Are there regressions? Which user’s point of view are you addressing when offering your feedback? Is the design iteration at a point where it would be okay to ship this, or are there major things that need to be addressed first?

Even if you’re giving feedback to a team that already has some background information on the project, providing context is helpful. And context is absolutely essential when giving cross-team feedback. If I were to review a design that might be indirectly related to my work, and if I had no knowledge about how the project arrived at that point, I would say so, highlighting my take as external.

We frequently concentrate on the negatives and attempt to list every improvement that could be made. That’s of course important, but it’s just as important—if not more—to focus on the positives, especially if you saw progress from the previous iteration. Although this may seem superfluous, it’s important to keep in mind that design is a field with hundreds of possible solutions to each problem. So pointing out that the design solution that was chosen is good and explaining why it’s good has two major benefits: it confirms that the approach taken was solid, and it helps to ground your negative feedback. In the longer term, sharing positive feedback can help prevent regressions on things that are going well because those things will have been highlighted as important. Positive feedback can also help, as an added bonus, prevent impostor syndrome.

There’s one powerful approach that combines both context and a focus on the positives: frame how the design is better than the status quo ( compared to a previous iteration, competitors, or benchmarks ) and why, and then on that foundation, you can add what could be improved. There is a significant difference between a critique of a design that is already in good shape and one that isn’t quite there yet.

Another way that you can improve your feedback is to depersonalize the feedback: the comments should always be about the work, never about the person who made it. It’s” This button isn’t well aligned” versus” You haven’t aligned this button well”. This can be changed in your writing very quickly by reviewing it just before sending.

In terms of actionability, one of the best approaches to help the designer who’s reading through your feedback is to split it into bullet points or paragraphs, which are easier to review and analyze one by one. You might want to break up the feedback into sections or even between several comments for longer pieces. Of course, adding screenshots or signifying markers of the specific part of the interface you’re referring to can also be especially useful.

One approach that I’ve personally used effectively in some contexts is to enhance the bullet points with four markers using emojis. A red square indicates that it is something I consider blocking, a yellow diamond indicates that it should be changed, and a green circle indicates that it is fully confirmed. I also use a blue spiral � � for either something that I’m not sure about, an exploration, an open alternative, or just a note. However, I’d only use this strategy on teams where I’ve already established a high level of trust because the impact could be quite demoralizing if I had to deliver a lot of red squares, and I’d change how I’d communicate that a little.

Let’s see how this would work by reusing the example that we used earlier as the first bullet point in this list:

• 🔶 Navigation—I anticipate that one of these two buttons will go forward and the other will go back when I see them. But this is the only screen where this happens, as before we just used a single button and an “×” to close. This seems to be breaking the consistency in the flow. Let’s make sure that all screens have the same two forward and back buttons so that users don’t get confused.
• � � Overall— I think the page is solid, and this is good enough to be our release candidate for a version 1.0.
• � � Metrics—Good improvement in the buttons on the metrics area, the improved contrast and new focus style make them more accessible.
• Button Style: Using the green accent in this context, which conveys that it is a positive action because green is typically seen as a confirmation color. Do we need to explore a different color?
• Considering the number of items on the page and the overall page hierarchy, it seems to me that the tiles should use Subtitle 2 instead of Subtitle 1. This will keep the visual hierarchy more consistent.
• � � Background—Using a light texture works well, but I wonder whether it adds too much noise in this kind of page. What is the purpose behind using that?

What about giving feedback directly in Figma or another design tool that allows in-place feedback? These are generally difficult to use because they conceal discussions and are harder to follow, but in the right setting, they can be very effective. Just make sure that each of the comments is separate so that it’s easier to match each discussion to a single task, similar to the idea of splitting mentioned above.

One final note: say the obvious. Sometimes we might feel that something is clearly right or wrong, and we don’t say it. Or sometimes we might have a doubt that we don’t express because the question might sound stupid. Say it, that’s fine. You might have to reword it a little bit to make the reader feel more comfortable, but don’t hold it back. Good feedback is transparent, even when it may be obvious.

Another benefit of asynchronous feedback is that written feedback automatically monitors decisions. Especially in large projects,” Why did we do this”? There’s nothing better than open, transparent discussions that can be reviewed at any time, which could be a question that arises from time to time. For this reason, I recommend using software that saves these discussions, without hiding them once they are resolved.

Content, tone, and format. Although each of these subjects offers a useful model, focusing on eight areas, including observation, impact, question, timing, attitude, form, clarity, and actionability, is a lot of work at once. One effective approach is to take them one by one: first identify the area that you lack the most (either from your perspective or from feedback from others ) and start there. Then the third, the third, and so on. At first you’ll have to put in extra time for every piece of feedback that you give, but after a while, it’ll become second nature, and your impact on the work will multiply.

Thanks to Brie Anne Demkiw and Mike Shelton for reviewing the first draft of this article.