The ‘Peacemaker’ Finale Just Set A Big Record For HBO Max

While everyone expects most of Disney’s MCU series to do really well compared to everything else on that service, I don’t think anyone, even James Gunn, expected Peacemaker to do quite as well as it’s done on HBO Max with its weird corner of the DC Universe.

Gunn took to Twitter this week to announce that the Peacemaker finale, which aired this Thursday, set a single day viewership record for HBO Max, which represented ratings that climbed 44% since the show premiered, implying massive word of mouth increases over time.

Peacemaker has already been renewed for season 2, even after this performance, and it’s no surprise, given these numbers. This record is sort of complicated because we have to remember that technically HBO Max and HBO are separate entities, which is getting increasingly confusing and kind of a pointless distinction after a certain point. Peacemaker and Raised by Wolves, for instance, are HBO Max. Mare of Easttown, Euphoria and the upcoming Last of Us series are HBO. So no, Peacemaker didn’t just shatter a bunch of Game of Thrones records or anything.

Still, it’s impressive all the same, and it’s no surprise Peacemaker is returning for a second season, and reportedly a second spin-off series from Gunn’s Suicide Squad is being considered for HBO Max, though we don’t know what that would be yet.

DC continues to cast a wide net on HBO Max. In addition to Peacemaker, it has separate universe shows Titans and Doom Patrol, along with the Harley Quinn animated series, all refugees from the new defunct DC Universe streaming service. Two spin-offs of Robert Pattinson’s Batman movie are planned, one about the GCPD, the other about the Penguin. At some point they’re making a Green Lantern series from the Arrowverse’s Greg Berlanti. Superman and Lois is also half an HBO Max show these days. It’s a far cry from the intricately connected Marvel series on Disney Plus, and yet it’s been working well for them all the same, even when it’s led by heroes no one had heard of a year ago like Peacemaker.

It will likely be at least a year until Peacemaker returns for a second season, but if you haven’t watched it yet, now’s the time to catch up. I also think this lends credence to the argument about binge versus weekly airing, as dumped all at once, Peacemaker would have probably been watched by a small crowd several weeks ago and never talked about since. Instead, it had time to breathe and grow, hence the massive increases it saw by the end of the season. But that may be a debate for another day.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.