Peacemaker Season 2 is finally here and so is a brand new cast of characters, including The Office and Mare of Easttown alum David Denman. While other newcomers like Sol Rodriguez, Tim Meadows, and Michael Rooker have all had their character names released in the months leading up to the highly anticipated second season, giving fans plenty of time to look into their respective DC comic book origins — Sasha Bordeaux, Agent Langston Fleury, and Red St. Wild — Denman’s has remained a secret.

So, what’s with all the confidentiality? Well, there’s a good reason that HBO Max and series creator James Gunn have been hesitant to share details about Denman’s role in the sophomore season.

**Spoiler alert for the first episode of Peacemaker Season 2**

After three and a half long years of waiting for Peacemaker Season 2 and more than a year since news broke that Denman would be joining the newly rebooted DCU in an undisclosed role, we finally know who he is playing. Additionally, it’s finally become clear why his identity has been kept close to the vest in the lead-up to the premiere. Keep reading to find out everything about his role and how it plays a major part in Peacemaker Season 2.

Who Is David Denman playing in Peacemaker Season 2?

In Season 2 Episode 1, “The Ties That Grind,” as Peacemaker/Chris Smith (John Cena) is exploring an alternate dimension, he discovers that not only is his father, Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick), alive, they have a good relationship. In Peacemaker’s home dimension, this could not be further from the truth as the Smith family patriarch was a white supremacist and a sadist who forced his sons to fight each other, resulting in the death of his elder son at a young age.

Remember, back in Season 1, it was explained that Peacemaker had accidentally killed his brother as their father forced them to fight each other, punching him clear in the head and causing Keith to fall to the ground and start foaming at the mouth. This incident was a major part of the first season as Peacemaker continued to grapple with his own role in his brother’s death and the impact it had on him in becoming a killing machine in the name of peace. You may see where this is going, now.

Cut back to the Season 2 premiere, where Cena’s character is trying to digest another world in which his father was not abusive and did not encourage violence among his children. As “Dreamer” by Foxy Shazam plays — a song we should note repeats, “If this is just a dream, I don’t want to wake up” — a figure pulls up in a pickup truck and gets out to the confusion of Chris, who is standing on the front porch and admiring the stars. As he walks toward the door, Denman’s face is illuminated to reveal that this dimension’s Keith is alive and well.

Speechless, Chris tries to take in his brother’s presence, only to be left questioning going back to his own world, where he feels like a failure and a nuisance. As Chris, Keith, and Auggie sit down for a drink together, they reminisce on good times and laugh, and Chris cannot help but wonder what his life would look like if this were his dimension. This only causes him to go deeper, entering his own room and being caught and confronted by another version of himself.

After a struggle and a chase through the dimensional portal, our version of Peacemaker accidentally kills the other dimension’s, as his jetpack malfunctions and sends him directly into the pointed edge of a light fixture inside the void. Unfortunately, that is how the episode ends, leaving fans on a cliffhanger and paving the way for an epic season of potential dimension-hopping, with Chris trying to live the best of both worlds and ignore the bad in each.

As for Denman’s Keith, we predict he will play as big a role in Season 2 as the ghostly version of his character did in Season 1, possibly even unknowingly tempting Chris to continue jumping back and forth between the two worlds. Only time will tell!

The first episode of Peacemaker Season 2 is now streaming. New episodes drop on HBO Max on Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET.

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