Peacemaker’s Judo Master Looks Eerily Familiar to DC Fans

Fans can't stop pointing out how familiar Peacemaker's Judo Master looks.

By Michileen Martin | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

peacemaker judo master

It’s tough to believe, but we’re only a couple of weeks away from the premiere of Peacemaker on HBO Max. Starring John Cena as the eponymous lethal hero, Peacemaker will introduce at least two more costumed heroes lifted from DC’s comics. Freddie Stroma will play Adrian Chase, aka Vigilante, and in the teaser trailer that dropped in October during the DC FanDome event, we got our first look at Nhut Le (Kroll Show) as Judo Master. Now James Gunn has taken to social media to give fans a new look at Judo Master, and in response the fans can’t stop pointing out how much he looks like a character from another Gunn film.

James Gunn posted the new look at Judo Master on his official Twitter account, and the hero looks ready to beat the tar out of an unlucky opponent. Gunn tagged Le in the post, along with reminding his followers that Peacemaker begins streaming on HBO Max in 17 Days — on Friday, January 13. You can see Gun’s post and the photo of Nhut Le as Judo Master below.

As anyone who’s spent any amount of time on Twitter will tell you, when it comes to celebrity posts, there’s almost always a thorough — and often bewildering — mix of responses. There are fans cheering the posts on, people taking offense no matter what the post is about, and of course people chiming in with something that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of the post. In the case of Gunn’s preview of Peacemaker‘s Judo Master, there’s a surprising number of fans pointing out how much Nhut Le’s hero looks like Nathan Fillion’s T.D.K. — aka The Detachable Kid — from The Suicide Squad.

In fact, while the comparisons between Peacemaker‘s Judo Master and The Suicide Squad‘s T.D.K. are more numerous than others, there were a bunch of other comparisons made. Fans compared Judo Master to Dragonfly (Drake Bell) of the 2008 parody Superhero Movie and Jim Carrey’s screwball hero from 1994’s The Mask among others. Not to mention at least one person seems to think it’s secretly Batman?

Could there be something to how much Judo Master’s outfit looks so similar to that of T.D.K.? Is there a fan theory waiting to be formulated here? It seems unlikely, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. The first thing to take note of is that the similarity is probably not a case of James Gunn’s costume designers running out of ideas. According to the IMDb pages for The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, completely different designers worked on projects. Peacemaker‘s costume designers are Shay Cunliffe and Karin Nosella, neither of whom worked on The Suicide Squad, whose costume designer is listed as Judianna Makovsky.

It is also worth noting that on a number of occasions, James Gunn has gone out of his way to imply that — contrary to popular belief — we never see T.D.K. die in The Suicide Squad. He mentioned during an August online watch party of the film that when we last see the bizarrely-powered hero, his life signs are weak, but active. He reiterated this in a December tweet. What does this have to do with Peacemaker‘s Judo Master having an eerily similar costume? Probably nothing, but who knows? We should find out more when Peacemaker premieres on HBO Max Friday, January 13.