Peacemaker’s Season 2 Finale Just Launched Checkmate — Here’s Why the DCU Might Never Be the Same
Peacemaker season 2 ends with the 11th Street Kids leaving ARGUS and forming a new agency called Checkmate. The finale shows ARGUS under Rick Flagg Sr. taking harsher actions, which helps push the team to split and start their own organization with the stated goal to “make the world better.”
Checkmate formation
In the Peacemaker season 2 finale, members of the 11th Street Kids — including Leota Adebayo, Emilia Harcourt, John Economos, Vigilante, and Judomaster — create a new intelligence agency called Checkmate. They also recruit Sasha Bordeaux and Langston Fleury, who had been ARGUS agents during the season.
Why the team left ARGUS
During season 2, ARGUS leadership changes and Rick Flagg Sr. becomes more extreme in his methods. Consequently, ARGUS operations include heavy surveillance and dangerous missions to explore other worlds for a metahuman prison. These actions concern several agents and contribute directly to the decision by Adebayo and others to leave.
Key events that led to the split
Over the season, Rick Flagg Sr. escalates efforts to find Peacemaker and explore extradimensional portals. In addition, ARGUS agents are sent on missions with high casualty risk. As a result, two formerly callous agents — Langston Fleury and Sasha Bordeaux — voice their reservations, and Adebayo helps coordinate the move away from ARGUS.
Checkmate and comics history
Checkmate first appeared in DC Comics in 1988 as a covert operations agency connected to the United Nations Security Council. In the comics, Checkmate is an offshoot of Amanda Waller’s Task Force X, and characters such as Peacemaker, Vigilante, and Sasha Bordeaux have been associated with it. The organization has been portrayed as morally ambiguous in various storylines.
Relevant comic storyline
In the 2005 DC Comics miniseries The OMAC Project by Greg Rucka and Jesus Saiz, Maxwell Lord controls Checkmate and uses technology to try to neutralize metahumans. That storyline includes an AI-powered satellite and sleeper agents, and it directly involves Bordeaux, Batman, and other heroes.
Connections to the DCU
Maxwell Lord appears in James Gunn’s Superman, played by Sean Gunn, and he also appears briefly in the Peacemaker season 2 premiere while auditioning members for the Justice Gang. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor is aligned with ARGUS during season 2, and James Gunn has said that Peacemaker season 2 acts as a bridge between Superman and the upcoming sequel Man of Tomorrow (2027).
Therefore, the show establishes multiple concrete links between its events and broader DCU properties: characters who appear across titles, Checkmate’s comic history, and stated creative intent from James Gunn about the season’s role in the franchise.
