TL;DR: Lex Luthor just crashed Peacemaker’s party, and in doing so, James Gunn has basically told us that the road to Man of Tomorrow runs straight through Chris Smith’s blood-soaked living room. And honestly? I’m all in.

Some TV episodes come and go without leaving a mark, background noise while you fold laundry or scroll through your phone. And then there are the ones that stop you dead in your tracks, the kind where the air in the room shifts because you know you’ve just seen the moment that everything else will pivot around. Peacemaker season 2 episode 6 is exactly that kind of episode. Forget the blood, the chaos, the dick jokes that are practically a second language on this show—this one drops a cameo so significant it reshapes not just the series, but the entire DCU roadmap.

Yes, Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor has arrived. Not as a flashback, not as a sly Easter egg, but as a fully-formed, spine-tingling presence. And once you realize what James Gunn is up to here, it’s impossible not to get that jittery thrill that only comes when you see the pieces of a larger puzzle finally snapping into place.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know Gunn has been playing a long game with this new DCU. His Superman (still too early for me to call it “iconic,” but I’ll give David Corenswet credit: he nails the earnestness without slipping into parody) set the stage for a new cinematic universe not with bombast but with balance. It was bright but not naïve, hopeful but not saccharine, grounded but not Nolan-grim. It was a film that reminded you Superman doesn’t need to be re-invented every decade; he just needs to be believed in. And now, Peacemaker is slyly threading its narrative tendrils into that same tapestry. Lex’s cameo isn’t just fan service—it’s connective tissue. It’s narrative infrastructure. It’s the smoking gun that confirms Peacemaker isn’t a side show. It’s the main artery.

The setup in the episode is deliciously unassuming. Rick Flag Sr. (still chewing scenery with that grizzled gravitas that makes him the perfect stand-in for every grumpy dad who’s had enough of your shit) casually mentions a visit to Belle Reve. We all know what that means. We’ve all watched enough of these to smell the setup a mile away. And yet when the camera finally cuts to Hoult, sitting there in his orange jumpsuit like Hannibal Lecter with a Silicon Valley jawline, it lands with a thud in your chest. Because Lex Luthor, for all his intellectual fireworks and monologuing tendencies, has always been most dangerous in silence. Hoult plays him with this uncanny restraint—like he’s thinking ten moves ahead while letting you believe you’re in on the conversation. It’s unnerving. It’s perfect.

The dialogue between him and Flag Sr. isn’t just about ARGUS’s latest portal-hopping headaches. It’s about promise. About potential. About the oldest trick in the comic book: the villain who insists he’s the real savior. The price of Luthor’s cooperation is, of course, leverage. He dangles tech, they dangle freedom. It’s the world’s least romantic tango, and we all know where it’s going: right into the heart of Metropolis, and straight toward the next chapter of Gunn’s DCU film saga, Man of Tomorrow.

That phrase—Man of Tomorrow—has been rattling in my head since Gunn first dropped the title. It’s clean, classic, evocative of everything Superman is supposed to be. But here’s the twist: tomorrow only means something if yesterday still haunts you. And if this cameo proves anything, it’s that tomorrow belongs not just to Kal-El, but to Lex Luthor too. The decision to put them in the same city, to let them circle each other like wary predators forced into the same cage, is storytelling dynamite. We already know from Gunn’s teases that they won’t just be enemies in this film. They’ll be uneasy allies. And nothing terrifies me more than a Superman who needs Lex Luthor. Because that means Lex wins, at least a little.

The brilliance of sticking this reveal in Peacemaker is that it reframes the entire show’s existence. Peacemaker isn’t just comic relief, a vulgar break from the operatic stakes of Superman. He’s the glue. The interdimensional nonsense, the ARGUS bureaucratic chess, the “redemption” bargains—all of it is scaffolding for the DCU’s larger architecture. By making Lex show up here, Gunn is basically standing on a table and yelling, “Hey! Pay attention! This is all one story.” And somehow, amidst the fart jokes and eagle hugs, it works.

Of course, cameos are easy dopamine hits. We’ve been burned before. Remember the CW’s obsession with Crisis crossovers? Or Marvel’s phase four, which sometimes felt like a Disney+ commercial stitched together with action scenes? But this feels different. This isn’t an empty tease. Lex’s presence here already bends the story’s trajectory. His transfer to Van Kull, Metropolis’s maximum-security home for big bads, is a plot device loaded with potential energy. Because you can’t move Lex Luthor into Superman’s backyard without expecting fireworks. It’s Chekhov’s Prison Transfer.

There’s also a wicked irony in how Flag Sr. pitches it to him: a shot at redemption. Government-sanctioned atonement. If you know your comics, you know how much Lex thrives on the idea of being the hero. He doesn’t want to destroy Superman because he’s a mustache-twirling villain; he wants to prove Superman isn’t necessary. That humanity, guided by people like Lex, can save itself. In his mind, locking horns with Kal-El isn’t malice—it’s destiny. So hearing the phrase “redemption” dangled like bait? You can practically see Hoult’s eyes gleam. This isn’t just a cameo. It’s the prologue to a cosmic ego trip.

What excites me most, though, is how personal this all feels. The DCU has always been at its best when it remembers that these gods in capes are still just people trying to figure out their place in the world. Gunn gets that. That’s why Peacemaker works so well—because beneath the crude exterior, Chris Smith is a broken man fumbling his way toward some kind of peace. And now, Lex is slotted into that same messy world, stripped of grandeur and forced to barter like any other inmate. It humanizes him before setting him loose on the biggest stage of all.

Episode 6, then, isn’t just another chapter in Peacemaker’s gleefully chaotic ride. It’s the hinge point. The moment where the jokes and the gore crystallize into something bigger. When Gunn himself calls it a “really important moment for not only Peacemaker, but the entire DCU,” he’s not exaggerating. Because if this is how the threads are starting to weave together, then Man of Tomorrow won’t just be another Superman movie. It’ll be the payoff to a story that started with a man in a chrome helmet dancing to 80s hair metal. And honestly? That’s the kind of continuity I can get behind.

Final Verdict:

Peacemaker season 2 episode 6 delivers not just the show’s sharpest cameo, but a tectonic shift in how the DCU is stitching itself together. Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor is already magnetic, unnerving, and eerily calculated, and his presence here sets the stage for a Superman story that might finally crack open new territory. It’s bold, it’s risky, and it’s exactly what this universe needed.