Warning: Contains spoilers for Peacemaker season 1.
The Peacemaker season 1 finale had a cameo appearance from Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and the Flash (Ezra Miller), and it adds an interesting twist to Peacemaker’s repeated Justice League insults. James Gunn teased that the Peacemaker season 1 ending contained a big secret for a long time which turned out to be a cameo from the Justice League. The cameo addresses some previous superhero universe plot holes where heroes don’t turn up to help, but it also does more than that.
From the very beginning of Peacemaker, Chris Smith has been repeating unflattering rumors about the Justice League as facts. The most prominent of these suggests that Aquaman has sexual relations with fish. Throughout the series, Peacemaker is repeatedly ridiculed for believing these stories, but in Peacemaker episode 8, John Economos (Steve Agee) says that he had also heard the rumor about Green Arrow being a Brony fetishist, and suggests that the story about Aquaman might also be true.
When the Justice League arrive in the Peacemaker season 1 finale, they are too late to actually help with anything and Peacemaker yells angrily at them about it, and suggests that Aquaman should get back to fornicating with fish. Aquaman sighs and says that he’s tired of that rumor, and in response Flash says “it’s not a rumor” and then laughs to himself. The puckish nature of his response implies that it is possible that it was actually Flash who started the rumor about Aquaman and fish. This is not only a twist on the fact that Peacemaker believes the story, but also shows something human (if not particularly flattering) about the Justice League in the DCEU.
The idea that the Flash is actually behind the Aquaman rumor is supported by the fact that he is one of the few heroes that doesn’t have a strange story about him circulated by Peacemaker. In Peacemaker episode 6, a kid asks him if he has met the Flash and the only thing he has to say about him was that he was an “unbearable d-bag.” It’s possible that there are so many rumors in the DCEU about the various heroes because the Flash is starting all of them to entertain himself. While he most likely uses social media to spread these stories and might be behind some of the accounts that Peacemaker mentions, Flash being behind the rumors hints at the idea that “false news travels fast.”
As well as being an impressive DCEU cameo and putting an extra spin on Peacemaker’s insults, Aquaman and the Flash’s appearance also highlights one other point. It is only in the final episode of Peacemaker season 1 that someone other than Peacemaker himself appears to respond to any of the rumors with anything other than incredulity, and up to that point it makes Peacemaker appear particularly stupid. However, Aquaman’s resignation and annoyance about the fish rumor makes it clear that he has heard it plenty of times and it implies that this is a story believed by many people in the DCEU, and that Peacemaker is not alone in believing the lie.
