Peacemaker season two is in full swing of things on HBO Max these days and the John Cena-led series has some pretty insane moments already. Robert Patrick starred in the first season of the show and makes his return in the second season. He sat down with our friend Brandon Davis of Phase Hero to talk about the second season of the show and what makes James Gunn’s writing so special.
He made particular notice of how diabolical some of the lines are.
“Those are the brilliant lines of James Gunn. That’s the some of the most incredible dialog I’ve ever got to say on film.”
Q: Do you ever have a hard time with how vile some of the things are at all?
“People ask me that, they go, ‘How could you say those thing? They were written, you know? I didn’t write it. I’m just the guy saying the line. I have so much fun doing it. Auggie Smith is a brutal character. He is a horrible, horrible, horrible human being. And I know that. And you just got to go in knowing that you know, you give you give him what humanity you can.
That’s not all Robert Patrick had to say about his character in the second season though. Beware for those that haven’t seen the second season, some spoilers are ahead.
Q: If the White Dragon in season one is symbolic of some really terrible, awful traits about humans, what would you say the Blue Dragon we’re seeing in season two is a symbol of?
RP: I just started doing it. The scene was; I exit and go to bed, and I wanted to show some sort of affection for him as a man and something that I probably did when he was a child and I could just it would immediately resonate with him. And the ear tug I just did. I just started grabbing his ear as I was going, I just grabbed the lobe of his ear. You know, ‘I love you. love you, son. Good night.’
And I kept doing it and eventually James, I remember when he finally says, I heard him go, ‘The ear tug stays, by the way.’ He was glad to do it. And then he asked me about it, he goes, ‘Is that something you do?
And I said, ‘You know, I’m going to tell you where the genesis of the ear tug came from.’ When I was doing Ladder 49, which is a firefighting movie I did that Jay Russell directed with John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix and Balthazar Getty. My dear friend, Balthazar Getty, he started tugging on my ear and I would tug on Joaquin’s here, so it was like a circle tug, if you will. So, you’d be standing there, and you’d just reach over and Balt would grab my ear, and I’d reach over and grab Joaquin’s ear, and the whole way through the movie, and then everybody’s pulling ears. Instead of shaking hands, we’d just pulling on each other’s ears. To this day, if I see Joaquin or Balt, we just tug each other’s ear. And it’s a real intimate, you know, it’s just the thing that we started doing.
And so James said, ‘Where did you get that?’ I said, ‘That’s something that Joaquin and Balthazar Getty and did on Ladder 49 and it carried over when I did Walk the Line with Joaq. It was it was it was like, ‘I’m not going to give you a hug, but I’m gonna tug your ear. It’s so simple but it really does say I love you.”
About Peacemaker Season Two
Peacemaker season two debuted on Max on August 21st, 2025. It comes from James Gunn and stars John Cena, Danielle Brooks, Freddie Stroma, Jennifer Holland, Steve Agee, Frank Grillo, and Tim Meadows. The first season of the show came from the time before DC Studios was a thing, so fans were left wondering how much different this season would be. The answer looks to be, not very.
DC Studios kicked off their plan with Superman and are now moving into films like Supergirl, Wonder Woman, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and more. They also have other films like Clayface and the upcoming The Batman 2 from Matt Reeves.
For more on DC, make sure to check back to That Hashtag Show.
Source: BD/Phase Hero
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