WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Peacemaker Season 1 and The Suicide Squad, streaming now on HBO Max.
Season 1 of Peacemaker was a triumph for everyone involved. For HBO Max, it’s been a bonafide hit, with the season finale having the highest single-day viewership in the streamer’s history. It’s another feather in the cap of writer/director James Gunn, who got a runaway hit out of a show about an obscure douchebag superhero.
John Cena might have been the biggest beneficiary of Peacemaker‘s success. After impressing as a supporting player in The Suicide Squad, Cena proved he could carry a project as a lead. It cements his transition from a wrestler who does some acting to a working actor who wrestled. While all of Peacemaker‘s viewership could enjoy the arc Cena’s Chris went on, WWE fans got even more out of it.
John Cena first became a star in WWE as a villainous, foul-mouthed rapper. From the time WWE turned him “face” (a heroic character in wrestling) in 2003 to his potential wrestling swan song at SummerSlam 2021, Cena was portrayed as a hero. He was functionally a combination of Captain America and Superman in jorts. For nine years, Cena was WWE’s biggest babyface star, even if a loud portion of WWE’s audience hated the sight of him.
As the edges were sanded off Cena’s character, he became beloved by WWE’s youngest fans, a demographic the organization began catering to as the Attitude Era’s raunchy content outlived its welcome. Cena became the squeaky clean face of a company that desperately needed one following multiple scandals and wrestler deaths.
While Cena endeared himself to younger fans, the adults who sat through his long run as the company’s biggest star resented him. Some of their animosity came from the feeling that WWE shoved Cena down their throats against their will, although that ignores how popular he was during his battle rapper days. It also didn’t help that Cena steamrolled so many other popular wrestlers that “LOL Cena wins” became a meme, second only to jokes about Cena’s invisibility.
Cena became the rare top WWE babyface who would get booed out of WrestleMania stadiums. Crowds became downright bloodthirsty at niche shows like the ECW revival One Night Stand. While there was no financial incentive for WWE to change up Cena’s act, there were creative reasons to. His act became ever staler as the years wore on and fan-favorite characters like CM Punk played second fiddle to Cena’s unstoppable boy scout.
Fans begged for WWE to turn Cena “heel” (a villain in wrestling), in part so they could finally have a reason to cheer him again. Like some superhero fans, many jaded wrestling fans love to cheer for the villains, even if they rarely win in the end. Counter-intuitively, many wrestlers become bigger crowd favorites following heel turns.
While doing press for Peacemaker, Cena acknowledged that he would have loved to turn heel. Cena felt like he could have had “10 years worth of story” playing the kind of corrupted hero that wrestlers like Hulk Hogan and Roman Reigns have excelled at. While any villainous ambitions Cena had were frustrated in WWE, he had a chance to fulfill them in his first superhero blockbuster role.
Cena’s Peacemaker went from an anti-hero to a villain when he betrayed the Squad on the orders of Amanda Waller. While he was conflicted about it, Peacemaker murdered Cena-esque straight arrow Rick Flag in cold blood to fulfill his vow of peace at any cost. He was prepared to do the same to the innocent Ratcatcher, only stopped by the dumb luck that put Bloodsport in his path.
Cena’s heel turn in The Suicide Squad allowed James Gunn to flesh him out in Peacemaker. While it didn’t smooth all of his rough edges, it did make him a more sympathetic character than the flawless WWE Cena was. He may have been a bully and creep at times, but Cena’s Peacemaker was true to who he was and genuinely changed over the course of the season. It’s impossible to imagine WWE Cena breaking his somewhat nebulous vow of “Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect” to save his friends the way Peacemaker did for his, partially because Cena never had any friends in WWE.
WWE fans got to have the best of both worlds that the sports entertainment giant denied them. They got to see Cena as a heel and a more compelling character than he was allowed to be during his days of wrestling stardom. His arc made Cena’s Peacemaker a character even the most jaded wrestling fans were happy to cheer for by the end of Season 1.
While you wait for WrestleMania, all 8 episodes of Peacemaker can be binged on HBO Max now.
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