I Can’t Believe Which DCU Hero Just Got Their Own Joker

The DC Universe just gave one of its heroes their own Joker – and I can’t get over which character was chosen to get their own DC nemesis. With the DCU timeline still being very much in its infancy, we’ve gotten a lot of major firsts in the past few months, as the franchise’s story begins to properly get underway.

Of course, this has meant unveiling a range of heroes and villains, with the DCU taking care to introduce a wide range of underappreciated DC characters alongside big figures like Superman himself. Most recently, this has included making an unexpected DC duo nemeses, and giving a less well-known character Joker levels of obsession with their foe.

The Next DCU Hero To Get Their Own Nemesis Is The Last One You’d Expect

Following the DCU’s first depiction of DC nemeses via Superman – which adapted one of the most famous comic rivalries of all time by pitting Kal-El and Lex Luthor against each other – the franchise’s next look at archenemies seemed teed up to feature another major hero like Batman or Wonder Woman.

Instead, Peacemaker season 2 has steadily unveiled its next major DCU nemeses – that of an eagle, and the unhinged man who has become increasingly obsessed with murdering said eagle at all costs, to the point he now, as of Peacemaker season 2, episode 4, appears to consider their fates intertwined.

This is, of course, the story of Eagly – Peacemaker’s pet eagle and a consistent presence in the show – and Red St. Wild, an eagle hunter who is hired by ARGUS to take down Eagly as they begin to target Peacemaker. St. Wild’s professional task quickly becomes deeply personal, though, especially when he begins to believe Eagly is his destined foe.

After John Economos tells St. Wild he was attacked by a different eagle when he went to shoot Eagly – concealing that Economos attacked him to protect the bird – the hunter claims that Eagly must be a “primal eagle“, and thus an eagle he wants to kill even more than he already did, which seemed to be a great deal.

Red St. Wild’s Joker-esque levels of obsession with his foe develops from here, fueled by his head injury and his subsequent ritual to track down the avian. Given Red’s thirst to kill Eagly now clearly transcends professional commitments – and he seems to be able to track the bird – it’ll be interesting to see how the DCU’s second nemesis story unfolds.

The DCU’s Red St. Wild Story Bodes Really Well For Its Joker Debut

The emerging rivalry between Eagly and Red St. Wild has been fascinating to witness – in part because the story of a man forming an entirely one-sided seeming hatred for a bird he’s barely met suits the comedy of Peacemaker, and in part because it shows the DCU can make even smaller characters have genuinely engaging storylines.

Superman already proved the DCU could nail some of DC’s biggest rivalries – since Luthor’s hate for Superman is a core unpinning part of the story that’s conveyed effectively throughout – but Peacemaker season 2 shows that even more low-key iterations of this kind of story can work, suggesting a promising level of replicability to this side of the franchise.

The Joker’s unhinged commitment to being Batman’s archnemesis is something that’s rarely replicated outside of their stories, but Red St. Wild risking it all because of his personal vendetta with a bird certainly comes close. Hopefully, Peacemaker season 2 will continue to prove the DCU is set to make all its on-screen rivalries as intense and interesting as possible.