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This page may contain some of the same content as the DC Database article. A more complete and current article is at the DC Comics Database Christopher Smith (DC Extended Universe). |
Overview
Peacemaker (real name Christopher "Chris" Smith) is a vainglorious and oversensitive extremist vigilante willing to do anything for the greater goal of achieving world peace, no matter how heinous. He has been used by the U.S. government for black-ops work as part of the Task Force X program.
History
I don't kill people for nothin', all right? When my brother died, I made a vow... Anyone I'd kill, I'd kill for peace, so unlike Keith, no one would ever die for no reason again. 
- -- Peacemaker src
Origins
A young Chris with his brother
Chris Smith was born in 1981 in Evergreen, Washington to Auggie Smith, the cruel white supremacist supervillain "The White Dragon" and leader of the Aryan Empire. Auggie trained Chris and his older brother Keith to be perfect killers practically from birth, training them every chance he could. Chris and Keith grew very close in their relaxation time, causing Chris to develop a love for rock 'n roll. One day, however, Auggie made his sons fight for the Aryans' entertainment, and Chris punched Keith in the head, causing him to have a fatal seizure. Auggie then lost all approval and respect for Chris, which, combined with his twisted ideals and constant training, caused him to grow up patriotic, gullible, and oversensitive.
Chris became obsessed with the idea of peace, and eventually donned a red, white, and blue costume and a chrome helmet, both adorned with a dove, and became the arrogant, violent vigilante known as "Peacemaker". Despite his disappointment in his son, Auggie still built several helmets with various functions to help Chris on his mission, including a force-field, sonic blast, and x-ray vision.[1][3][4]
Early career
As a vigilante operating out of an American-flag-themed trailer in his hometown, Peacemaker grew sadistic and proud of his self-imposed duty of taking any lives that he saw were threats to peace. He took to not like killing people he saw as being heroes or innocents, but in order to keep the peace, he believed it a painful but worthy sacrifice. He continued to receive equipment and weapons from his father over the years, despite their strained relationship.
Partners in crimefighting
Peacemaker also fostered and grew close to a bald eagle he named Eagly, and fought crime alongside him, calling him his sidekick. He also got to know the enthusiastic and sadistic Vigilante, who idolized him and wanted to be his best friend. The two fought crime together, brutally slaughtering criminals while narrowly evading the authorities themselves. Eventually, in 2017, Peacemaker was captured and detained at the Belle Reve Correctional Center.[4][5][6]
The Jotunheim mission
While at Belle Reve, Amanda Waller offered Chris the chance to reduce his sentence and serve his country by participating in missions as part of the black-ops team Task Force X, better known as the Suicide Squad. He accepted out of patriotism and duty, and in 2020, Waller planted him on the Squad team sent to Corto Maltese to destroy the laboratory Jotunheim and its primary experiment, Project Starfish, which would soon be used as a weapon by the new Maltese dictator.
Peacemaker with the Suicide Squad
Peacemaker was the inside man, and the only one to know that the mission's true objective was to destroy all evidence of the United States' heavy involvement the project. He was to destroy the evidence in case the other Squad members discovered this and refused to do it themselves. Armed with his weaponry, costume, and the truth, he joined the strike team lead by the aggressive assassin Bloodsport, and consisting of the rat-controlling thief Ratcatcher II, the incredibly strong and slow-witted King Shark, and the powerful but depressed Polka Dot Man.
Upon their arrival on Corto Maltese, the Squad was directed on a tangent mission to retrieve Colonel Rick Flag, Jr, one of the only surviving operatives of the first Squad team sent as a distraction for the Maltese Army. After a misunderstanding that resulted in the deaths of many allies Flag had made in Corto Maltese, he and the Squad made their way to the capitol, Valle Del Mar. When they entered the city, they located and captured the Thinker, the chief scientist of Jotunheim, to help them infiltrate the facility, and were joined by Harley Quinn, another member of Waller's distraction Squad.
Threatening Colonel Flag
With the Thinker's help, the Squad infiltrated Jotunheim, armed with explosives, which they placed around the building. In the process, Ratcatcher and Flag encountered the alien beast Starro, Project Starfish's source, and witnessed the horrible experiments the Thinker and his team had performed over the years on both the creature and innocent Maltese civilians. When the Thinker explained that the United States funded the project, Flag removed a drive from Jotunheim's master computer to show the press. Peacemaker then stepped in and fought Flag as Polka Dot Man accidentally set off the explosives too early, resulting in him stabbing Flag through the heart, albeit reluctantly, to uphold his mission.
Shot in the throat by Bloodsport
Witnessing this, Ratcatcher grabbed the drive, and Peacemaker chased her to the crumbling building's ground floor. Before he could shoot her, however, Bloodsport arrived and shot Peacemaker in the throat, leading to him bleeding unconscious. After Starro broke free from its imprisonment and collapsed the entirety of Jotunheim on Peacemaker, the Squad defeated it and used the drive to blackmail their way out of prison. Peacemaker, meanwhile, was somehow extracted from Jotunheim's wreckage just in time and was transferred to an American hospital, where his life was saved and he made a miraculous recovery.[5]
Project Butterfly
Five months after the Maltese mission, Chris was discharged from the hospital, and was allowed to stay out of prison so long as he joined Clemson Murn's new black-ops team Project Butterfly, and helped them defeat an invasion of Butterflies, body-snatching, butterfly-like alien parasites. Peacemaker agreed, and joined the team alongside snarky tech support John Economos, his no-nonsense handler Emilia Harcourt, and friendly but insecure field agent Leota Adebayo, all while operating out of an abandoned video rental store in Chris' hometown of Evergreen. Once he retrieved Eagly from his father, Peacemaker was assigned the assassination of the Butterfly-infected senator Royland Goff.
Reunited with Vigilante
During a night out, Chris had sex with a woman who was secretly a Butterfly. When she read his mission dossier to kill Goff, which he carelessly left out for him to see, she attacked him and the two engaged in combat. Peacemaker killed her using his sonic blast helmet, and got a mysterious device with strange symbols from her apartment. After filling in his teammates about what happened, Peacemaker went back to his trailer, where he reunited with Vigilante, and after they celebrated him getting out of prison, Vigilante joined Project Butterfly, hoping to save the world with his friend.[4][6]
Peacemaker kills Royland Goff
As he got to know his teammates, Peacemaker's experiences with them began to make him feel lonely and rejected, dug into a hole of his own making by bullying those around him, especially John. While he started to form a friendship with Leota, he realized that everyone else, excluding Vigilante and Eagly, saw him as a means to an end. Contemplating all of this along with Rick Flag's last words, he also started to question if he still wanted to be a killer, resulting in him balking on the stakeout to assassinate Senator Goff and his family, who were all Butterflies. Vigilante was able to kill Goff's wife and children, but he and Peacemaker were attacked and captured by Judomaster, Goff's bodyguard, before they could take out Goff himself. Goff tortured Vigilante to make Peacemaker talk, but Peacemaker escaped and killed Goff before he revealed anything. The creature inside Goff broke free of his corpse, itself the Butterfly queen. Knowing he wasn't getting all the answers from Murn, Peacemaker captured Goff to study her himself away from the rest of the team.[1][2][4][7]
Arguing with Vigilante
After leaving Goff's mansion, Chris really began considering his role as a vigilante, arguing with Murn over being asked to kill children, and being berated by Vigilante for his role in letting Goff torture him. This allowed Chris to finally start seeing himself as a bad person, and pushing him further on his quest to become better. He then went with Vigilante to Auggie's home to find a helmet to use against the Butterflies. When they arrived at Auggie's empty house, Chris took every helmet he could and discovered from a neighbor that Auggie had been imprisoned, which it later turned out was thanks to John framing him to get the police off Peacemaker's trail.
Chris reunites with his father
Furious, Chris made his way with Vigilante to the local prison to talk to Auggie. Adebayo tried to stop them and tried to convince Chris that his father was a bad man not worth saving, but he wouldn't listen and went to talk with him anyway. Meeting with his father, Chris explained everything and apologized, but it merely resulted in Auggie calling him worthless and deciding to tell the police the truth. While leaving the prison with Adebayo, they discovered that Judomaster, who the team had been keeping captive, was loose again. Peacemaker tried to take him down at Project Butterfly's headquarters, and was almost told a big secret about the Butterflies by him, but Adebayo shot Judomaster before he could finish. Chris then went home, feeling inadequate and lonely, but not before Adebayo assured him that he wasn't as bad as he thought he was.[1]
Peacemaker berates Economos
The next day, Chris and Vigilante were properly filled in on the situation with the Butterflies, and the immensity of their invasion. Angry at John for putting his father behind bars, though, Chris started an argument with John, calling him names and insulting him. Adebayo later told him that he'd hurt John's feelings, but Chris just brushed it off and prepared for their next mission: infiltrating a warehouse filled with Butterflies producing the goo that they eat. On the ride over to the warehouse, Chris and John bonded over their shared love of the band Hanoi Rocks, causing Chris to have a lot more compassion for his teammate than before.
Infiltrating the warehouse
Armed with his x-ray vision helmet, Peacemaker and the team infiltrated the warehouse while John stayed behind to act as tech support. The team realized that it was the base for the entire country's supply of Butterfly food, but before they could do anything, the team was attacked by a Butterfly-infected gorilla named Charlie. The team was able to hurt him, but Charlie would have killed the entire team if not for John's timely arrival, plunging through his back a chainsaw Vigilante had brought for the mission. Project Butterfly regrouped and went back to headquarters, Peacemaker now having made a new friend in John. Adebayo and Chris also celebrated in his trailer, bonding closer than ever before, and helping Chris not feel so alone.[8]
The next day, Peacemaker and Vigilante attempted to communicate with Goff to figure out the Butterflies' plan, but they were ambushed by a team of Evergreen police, led by Detective Sophie Song, who had been sent on Chris' trail by his father. Peacemaker and Vigilante attempted to escape, Peacemaker insisting they don't kill any cops, but in the ensuing scuffle, Goff escaped her jar and took Detective Song as her new host.[2]
Betrayed by his friends
When Peacemaker and Vigilante escaped with Eagly, Peacemaker noticed that Caspar Locke, an A.R.G.U.S. agent sent by Murn to save him, murdered several cops in cold blood to help them. Furious, Peacemaker returned to headquarters and berated Murn, having finally decided that he didn't want to kill anymore. He also realized that no one on the team truly trusted or respected him outside of John and Vigilante, with even Adebayo turning her back on him. Despite bonding more with Harcourt, Chris sulked in headquarters that evening until Vigilante informed him that the police were on his tail again because of a fake diary found in his trailer, planted by Adebayo on orders of her mother, Amanda Waller. Knowing his time was short, Peacemaker decided to complete the team's mission himself by killing the alien cow generating the Butterflies' food at Coverdale Ranch.[2]
Peacemaker confronts the White Dragon
Peacemaker, Vigilante, John, and Eagly started driving to the ranch, but they were intercepted by a vengeful Auggie Smith, who had taken up his White Dragon persona once again to finally murder his son. They fought the Dragon, and Peacemaker was forced to confront his father and the abuse he'd endured for years from the man, especially after he severely wounded Eagly. Peacemaker shot his father in the head, thinking he'd finally freed himself of his influence. After he recovered, Peacemaker regrouped with Project Butterfly at a veterinary hospital where Eagly was being treated, where he learned that Murn had been shot and killed. After Harcourt was elected the team's new leader, Project Butterfly made their way to Coverdale Ranch together to kill the cow and end the Butterfly invasion once and for all.[3]
Last stand against the Butterflies
Peacemaker and the others arrived at the ranch, prepared to kill the Butterflies. Using John to get the sonic blast helmet to the barn, Adebayo used a two-way radio to activate its sonic blast capabilities, which ultimately failed to kill the cow. With no other option, Peacemaker, Vigilante, and Harcourt charged into battle against the Butterflies, allowing Peacemaker to enter the barn for the final showdown against Goff. The two had a brutal fight before Goff revealed the true purpose for her invasion: the Butterflies planned take control of humanity to stop them from destroying each other and Earth the same way the Butterflies had done to their home planet, meaning that like Peacemaker, they just wanted peace. Peacemaker finally realized that while peace was important, it wasn't worth all this carnage, and so when Adebayo arrived wearing the human torpedo helmet, he activated it, propelling her into the cow's heart, killing it instantly and ending the Butterfly threat once and for all.
Chris with Auggie's ghost
Peacemaker and Adebayo took their wounded teammates to the hospital, and the two reconciled their differences. Now having realized the error of his ways, Chris tried to move on from the disaster of his career, especially after Adebayo outed the existence of Task Force X to the public. However, he still couldn't escape his father, and began hallucinating visions of Auggie, still taunting him from beyond the grave.[9]
Powers and Abilities
Abilities
- Template:Animal Training
- Peak Human Condition: Peacemaker is in incredible physical shape to make his efforts as a vigilante easier, with incredible strength, stamina, agility, and reflexes thanks to his hulking physique.
- Martial Arts: Due to his rigorous training from birth by his father, his experience as a violent vigilante, combined with his powerful physique and stamina, Peacemaker is a phenomenally well-seasoned hand-to-hand combatant.
- Weaponry: Peacemaker is a master of several different types of weapons.
- Demolitions[5]
- Firearms: Peacemaker has trained his whole life to bring peace to the world, and he knows how to use and properly aim his guns as well as accurately fire his blowgun from a distance
- Throwing
- Swordsmanship: Peacemaker is lethal with a broadsword, using it to efficiently cut down enemies at close range.
- Gadgetry
- Archery: Peacemaker is also a skilled archer and can use a recurve bow.
- Indomitable Will: Peacemaker will do whatever it takes in order to achieve his warped form of peace. He is so obsessed with attaining peace that he will kill as many men, women, and even children as he has to in order to make it happen.
- Intimidation: Due to his absolute belief in keeping the peace, Smith is willing to go to any length to complete his mission. As he claims to be thorough, Ratcatcher II was visibly afraid of his ruthlessness.
- Music: Chris is a skilled piano player.
- Tactical Analysis: While he comes off as a brutish soldier, Peacemaker is not entirely unintelligent when it comes to strategy. He knows how to effectively use his resources; he brought his x-ray vision helmet on a mission after learning that Butterflies infest a person's brain so he could identify them
- Driving
- Singing
Paraphernalia
Equipment
- Helmets: As Peacemaker, Chris wears an odd, domed chrome helmet with his downward-facing dove symbol on it, that he believes is a "beacon of freedom". He has several of these helmets with various abilities, all custom-built by his father.
- X-ray vision helmet
- Force-field helmet
- Underwater helmet
- Sonic blast helmet
- Anti-gravity helmet
- Human torpedo helmet
- Screwdriver helmet
- Itchy ban helmet
- Scabies helmet
- "Bound for Good" helmet
Transportation
- Ford Comet: Chris drives a Ford Comet painted like the American flag, with the license plate "PSS-MKR".[4]
- Ex-Static Electrical van: Along with the rest of Project Butterfly, Peacemaker travels around Evergreen in a van branded as from "Ex-Static Electrical".[7]
Weapons
- Pistols: Peacemaker carries around a pair of chrome twin pistols.
- Broadsword: As a skilled swordsman, Peacemaker uses a large broadsword to kill his enemies.
- Hatchet: Peacemaker uses a hatchet for throwing at enemies and slicing into them in close combat.
- Blow-darts: Chris has poisonous blow-darts he uses to target and kill enemies silently from a distance.
- Machine gun: Peacemaker uses a machine gun to take out multiple targets from a distance.[6]
- Shotgun: Peacemaker has a powerful shotgun he can use to kill his opponents.[6]
- Bow and Arrows: Peacemaker is a skilled archer and can use a bow to fire arrows at his opponents from a distance.[6]
- Shield: Chris has a bulletproof shield with serrated edges that he can use for both defense and attack.[9]
Notes
- This version of the character is exclusive to the continuity of the DC Extended Universe and is an adaptation of Peacemaker. The original character was created by Joe Gill and Pat Boyette and first appeared in Fightin' 5 #40.
- Peacemaker is portrayed by John Cena, and by Quinn Bennett as a child.
- James Gunn initially picked Peacemaker as a character for The Suicide Squad because of his ridiculous helmet.[10]
- Gunn originally wrote the role of Peacemaker for Dave Bautista, but he turned it down to work on Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead.[11]
- Peacemaker was originally intended to die in The Suicide Squad, but once the film was completed, Gunn was given a chance to make the Peacemaker TV series, and so shot the post-credits scene of Peacemaker alive in the hospital at the last minute on the set of the show.[12]
- Peacemaker's emotional connection to 80's glam metal because of his late brother's love for it mirrors Star-Lord's connection to 70's pop music because of his late mother's love for it in the Guardians of the Galaxy films, which were also written and directed by Gunn.
- This version of Peacemaker appears as a DLC playable character in Mortal Kombat 1, with John Cena returning to voice the character.
- This also marks the second DC character to appear in a NetherRealm Mortal Kombat game, after Joker in Mortal Kombat 11, as well as the first one to not appear in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.
- This also marks the second DC character to appear in a NetherRealm Mortal Kombat game, after Joker in Mortal Kombat 11, as well as the first one to not appear in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.
Trivia
- Chris is a fan of glam metal music, going so far as to risk a mission to get some more records for his collection. Some of his favorite bands include Hanoi Rocks and Quireboys. However, he can't stand jazz.[4][6][8]
- Chris cannot draw his "dove of peace", claiming it always looks like a ghost when he tries and declaring he's "not a drawer".[7]
- Chris gets most of his information from Twitter, Facebook, and Google. This results in him spouting exaggerated rumors about other superheroes, such as Superman having a poop fetish, Aquaman regularly having sex with fish, and Green Arrow regularly going to brony conventions with an opening over his costume's butthole.[4][7][8][9]
- When he was initially arrested in 2017, Chris was sentenced to thirty years in Belle Reve.[4]
- Chris is bisexual, which was one of the many reasons his bigoted father despised him.[3]
- Chris regularly drinks alcohol and smokes marijuana.[2][6][8]
Recommended Reading
Links and References
- 9 Appearances of Christopher Smith (DC Extended Universe)
- Minor Appearances of Christopher Smith (DC Extended Universe)
- Media Christopher Smith (DC Extended Universe) was Mentioned in
- Images featuring Christopher Smith (DC Extended Universe)
- 4 Quotations by or about Christopher Smith (DC Extended Universe)
- Character Gallery: Christopher Smith (DC Extended Universe)
- Peacemaker at the DC Extended Universe Wiki
- Peacemaker at the DC Universe Wiki
- Peacemaker at the Peacemaker Wiki
Footnotes
- ā 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Peacemaker: "The Choad Less Traveled"
- ā 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Peacemaker: "Murn After Reading"
- ā 3.0 3.1 3.2 Peacemaker: "Stop Dragon My Heart Around"
- ā 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Peacemaker: "A Whole New Whirled"
- ā 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 The Suicide Squad (Movie)
- ā 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 Peacemaker: "Best Friends, For Never"
- ā 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Peacemaker: "Better Goff Dead"
- ā 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Peacemaker: "Monkey Dory"
- ā 9.0 9.1 9.2 Peacemaker: "It's Cow or Never"
- ā Meghan O'Keefe on Twitter
- ā EW.com - How James Gunn took The Suicide Squad over the top
- ā Collider - Is Peacemaker Dead? James Gunn Explains Suicide Squad Credits Scene
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References
  Suicide Squad member |