See John Cena’s Extended, Improvised Peacemaker Rant
If you like laughter, watch John Cena rant in this clip.
This article is more than 2 years old
If you’ve already seen Peacemaker‘s fifth episode “Monkey Dory” — or if you haven’t, and you don’t care about very mild spoilers — and you happen to like laughter, congratulations. Today is your lucky day. HBO Max released an extended version of John Cena’s rant from the opening of the episode. It includes everything from the main body of “Monkey Dory,” everything from the episode’s post-credits scene, and even some extra rant.
In case you’re confused: in Peacemaker‘s premiere episode, John Cena’s titular character is attacked by a “Butterfly” — a human taken over by some kind of insect like alien — and kills her in self-defense. To keep everything under wraps, Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) orders John Economos (Steve Agee) to use his hacking expertise to frame someone else for her death. Stressed and apparently with a limited imagination, Economos frames Peacemaker’s father Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick) aka the infamously racist White Dragon. In the opening of “Monkey Dory,” Peacemaker is still angry about his father being framed, and the entirely improvised rant Cena unleashes is a list of people Economos could have framed rather than his father. Hit play below, and make sure no kids are around.
While we will by no means produce the entire list here, John Cena’s long list of potential alternate targets of Economos’ frame-job include real living people (e.g. Ariana Grande, Brad Pitt), real people who are dead (e.g. George Carlin, Amy Winehouse, half of the Beatles), real people who apparently are not real people in the DCEU (Peacemaker writer/director James Gunn and Freddie Stroma, who plays Vigilante and is sitting at the table as Cena delivers the rant), video game characters, muppets, cartoon characters, incorrectly named versions of cartoon characters (i.e. Voltron is made of lions, not tigers), Transformers, Sesame Street characters, and fast food mascots. Also, he’s apparently not a fan of the CW’s Riverdale.
One thing that’s quickly becoming apparent about Peacemaker is that the fun doesn’t stop when the episode is over. Not only has Gunn said that every single episode will include a post-credits scene — and so far, that’s been proven accurate — but it seems like lately the episodes are accompanied by online extras like John Cena’s beautifully eloquent (except for the tiger/lion mix-up) rant released today. For example, there was the “Mean Tweets” video from last week when Cena read haters’ tweets in character.
It’s tough to not want to pray that James Gunn, John Cena, and everyone else involved moves forward with season 2 of Peacemaker. Gunn recently revealed there’s a good chance we’re going to see another season of the show. He’s apparently also looking to bring a second The Suicide Squad spinoff series to HBO Max.
Speaking of The Suicide Squad, that brings up an interesting question: what happens to the prospects of John Cena and the rest of Peacemaker‘s main cast showing up in any theatrical follow-ups to The Suicide Squad if the HBO Max series continues? Will Cena and the rest have to sit out the movies, like Clark Gregg never appeared in a Marvel Studios movie once he started showing up in ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Hopefully not, but we might have to wait and see.
