Peacemaker opens about five months after the events of 2021's The Suicide Squad, with Christopher Smith still in a hospital after Bloodsport shot him in the throat. He is presumed dead at first, then later revealed in a post-credits scene to be recovering, and the series begins by showing him stubbornly discharging himself.
That return matters because it is not a clean reset. Amanda Waller's A.R.G.U.S. agents quickly track Smith down and pull him into a new mission, bringing Clemson Murn, Emilia Harcourt, John Economos and Leota Adebayo into the same orbit. Adrian Chase, better known as Vigilante, is added as an overly zealous sidekick, turning the team into a dysfunctional group rather than the kind of polished unit a government operation would prefer.
The setup reaches back to the film that introduced this version of Smith as one of several criminal-turned-vigilantes recruited by Waller for an overseas mission. His true assignment was never heroism in the clean, comic-book sense; it was to make sure the operation and the U.S. government's role in it stayed buried at any cost. That collision of loyalty and cover-up is the engine that carries into the series.
James Gunn has described the character's approach as more grounded than what comes before, and that is exactly where the story lands. Peacemaker is not built around a spotless hero rising to save the day. It is built around a man who already crossed the line once, survived, and is now being asked to do it again for the same kind of people who sent him into danger the first time.
That is also why the supporting cast matters as more than backup. A.R.G.U.S. is not presented as a cold, professional machine. Murn, Harcourt, Economos and Adebayo make the operation feel improvised and uneasy, and Adebayo's link to Waller sharpens the pressure inside the group. The show comes out of a broader shift away from traditional superhero archetypes, but its real hook is simpler: it asks whether a peacemaker can ever really be built out of secrets, violence and orders that exist to protect the powerful.
The answer, at least at the start, is no. Smith leaves the hospital, gets found, and is pulled right back into the same kind of mission that nearly killed him. The difference this time is that everyone involved knows exactly what kind of man he is.
