If there’s one thing we can almost always rely on to power the emotional arc of a leading character in the superhero genre, it’s daddy issues.
Some of the big name comic book favorites to have wrestled with the lives, legacies and sins of their fathers include Iron Man, Black Panther, Superman, Gamora, Nebula, Thor, Loki, and plenty more, and that’s just in the last decade.
James Gunn knows a thing or two about in-canon family turmoil thanks to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 revealing Star-Lord’s father to be responsible for the death of his mother, but apparently he’s got nothing on John Cena’s Peacemaker.
Grizzled veteran character actor Robert Patrick plays Auggie Smith, father of Cena’s Christopher, in the HBO Max series, with Gunn revealing to Empire that Peacemaker’s old man is much worse than anything Peter Quill had to content with.
“You know, I write the character, so I really love him. I do think that he has a lot good attributes, and he’s trying to do the right thing, but he’s kind of been brought up in really f*cked way. And his father’s just about the worst father I’ve ever written. And I wrote Ego, who killed Peter Quill’s mother with cancer.”
That’s quite the bold statement when you remember Ego’s entire remit was to leverage his son’s latent Celestial powers in an effort to reshape and terraform the entire universe however they saw fit, so there’s clearly something very dangerous about Peacemaker’s old man.
Yesterday’s full-length trailer promised plenty of R-rated humor and action, but it sounds as though there’s going to be plenty of family drama as well.