Peacemaker Season 2: Steve Agee hints at major change in tone for the end of the series

Peacemaker Season 2 has begun airing on HBO Max and the superhero series is based on the eponymous character from the DC Comics. Created and written by James Gunn, the show features John Cena in the titular role along with other cast members like Danielle Brooks, Steve Agee, and others.

The show focuses on the jingoistic mercenary Chris Smith/Peacemaker. While the first seasons was a spin-off of The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker Season 2 takes place after the events of the movie, Superman.

In the first season of the show, Peacemaker has to join the ARGUS black ops squad Project Butterfly and identify and eliminate parasitic butterfly-like creatures that have taken over human bodies.

With the release of Peacemaker Season 2, actor Steve Agee, who plays the role of John Economos, an ARGUS agent who offers tactical support for Project Butterfly, speaks to The Hollywood Reporter about his relationship with Gunn and the change of tone towards the end of Peacemaker Season 2.

Steve Agee on his relationship with James Gunn and the change of tone in Peacemaker Season 2

The relationship between Steve Agee and James Gunn goes back to 2008 when Gunn was not the famous co-CEO of DC Studios as he is now. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Steve Agee talks about how he came in contact with Gunn through a mutual friend called Shawnee Smith and Agee was immediately mesmerized by the Gunn brothers.

Soon, Steve Agee appeared in projects by James Gunn like Super and The Suicide Squad. Finally, when James Gunn decided to flesh out the character of Peacemaker from the movie, Agee was called to play the character of techie John Economos.

The bond between Agee and Gunn strengthened as Agee got the offer to star in Peacemaker at a time when he was struggling financially and had also lost his mother to leukemia. “I was down in the dumps. I had never been more depressed and lost,” Agee states. “I had nothing going on, but James wanted to make sure that everything was taken care of before he told me [about Peacemaker]. He didn’t want to get my hopes up.”

In Peacemaker Season 2, Economos is again working for ARGUS and he is also surveilling Peacemaker without his knowledge, since ARGUS came to know that the Peacemaker has used his family’s Quantum Unfolding Chamber. The device is important as it contains doorways to other dimensions. The remaining episodes of Peacemaker Season 2 are still to be released and Steve Agee states that,

“There’s a reason for that. The last three episodes are almost like a whole new season,” Agee states. “They are absolutely insane, and they really cross into that actual question even more so.”

Steve Agee on why he didn’t think his character of John Economos would go far

In the same interview, Agee reveals that he thought,

“I had more of a shot of continuing on as King Shark. I did motion capture for that character [who’s voiced by Sylvester Stallone], and it took up the bulk of my work on The Suicide Squad. John Economos was only a week’s worth of work for me in total on a five-month shoot. Between the two parts, I had more scheduled work days at the beginning of the schedule than anybody else on the movie, including Margo [Robbie] and Idris [Elba]. So John Economos was kind of a flat character in the background of these scenes with Amanda Waller [Viola Davis], and there was really no development there. I knew he was based on a DC character, but I didn’t see that going anywhere at all."

Therefore, Agee never thought that becoming John Economos would become his career’s most important character. Gunn developed the side character of Economos in the first season of the show and by the end, when Economos gives a poignant monologue about why he dyes his beard, the character became iconic and a running gag.

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Peacemaker Season 2 is available on HBO Max.

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