Is John Cena's 'Peacemaker' Bi, Pan, or... Omni?

Christopher Smith, a.k.a. Peacemaker, the character John Cena plays on the DC comics-derived superhero show of the same name, puts the + in LGTBQ+, to judge by to comments from "Suicide Squad" director and "Peacemaker" creator James Gunn.

Fightful.com reported on Gunn's saying that "Cena... single-handedly made Peacemaker bisexual by improvising and opening up the sexuality of the character."

The article quotes remarks in which Gunn notes that Cena "does improv all the time, and he just turned Christopher Smith into this hyper-sexualized dude that is open to anything sexually."

Slashfilm noted that Gunn has, in the past, referred to Pacemaker as "omnisexual," and implied that if it weren't for editing-room shears, Peacemaker's big-screen persona –�also portrayed by Cena, in the movie "Suicide Squad" – would have indicated that the character is LGBTQ+.

"He loves everybody," Gunn told Fox News, Slashfilm recalled. "He wants to have sex with everybody. So that's where [Cena] went at the end of every scene and it was always disgusting and always hilarious.

"But none of it's in the movie because it was just too disgusting for even me," Gunn explained, "And that's saying a lot."

Even so, Cena's riffs have made their way into the HBO Max series, Slashfilm detailed, referencing his time as prison as a long stretch of not having sex... with women, at least. At another point, Peacemaker says of superhero Aquaman, "He bangs chicks? Good for him. He fucks dudes? Got no problem with that. He starts fucking fish? That's taking it a step too far."

Whether such dialogue is improvised or not, the storylines in the show strongly point to Peacemaker being bi, the article noted. (The article also noted that Peacemaker might well be "pansexual," though the writer chose to use "bisexual" throughout the piece.)

As examples, Slashfilm furnished the detail that in one episode Peacemaker enjoys a threesome with Vigilante, a man (played by Freddie Stroma), and Amber (Alison Araya), a woman –�and afterwards he "comments on Vigilante's genitalia extensively."

In another episode, the article notes, "Peacemaker's dad Auggie (Robert Patrick) points out that his son has had sex with both women and men," before hurling an anti-gay slur at him.

Calling the scene "a heartbreaking moment," the article reflected on how the character's "self-loathing is wrapped up in his dad's skewed ideas on masculinity."

In followup article that referenced an interview with Gunn in today's issue of Empire Magazine, Slashfilm noted that "Cena shared that his perspective was that Peacemaker had been brought up a certain way, but later realized that he was more open-minded than he had been raised. His time in prison served as a 'period of experimentation' that opened his mind to other experiences.

" 'Also,' Cena says, 'I view him as willing to do anything.' "