Warner Bros. went out of its way to make sure that James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad wasn’t exactly looked at as a direct sequel to David Ayer’s Suicide Squad even though that’s what it was. In the case of HBO Max’s new Peacemaker spinoff series, though, the studio’s taking a much different approach to addressing the connections between its rather messy cinematic universe.
It’s become commonplace for spinoff superhero series informed by the events of big...