The Multi-Dojo: Peacemaker Shot Five and a Half Episodes With a Completely Different Vigilante

When Peacemaker started filming, Chris Conrad was Adrian Chase.

This wasn’t one of those stories where somebody was considered for a part, had a meeting and then watched another actor get it. Conrad actually had the role and was making the damn show.

James Gunn later revealed just how far they had gotten: the production had completed Episodes 1 through 5 and part of Episode 8 with Conrad as Vigilante.

Conrad also comes with a résumé that makes him particularly appropriate around here. He played Eric McGowen opposite Hilary Swank and Pat Morita in The Next Karate Kid, then took over as Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.

So before he nearly became one of the strangest characters in James Gunn’s corner of DC, Conrad had already spent time with Mr. Miyagi and gotten himself killed by Shao Kahn.

That’s a respectable run around the block. But still, for Gunn, it just wasn't clicking.

When Conrad left Peacemaker, the initial explanation was the old Hollywood standby: creative differences. His departure was reported as amicable, and Conrad himself doesn’t appear to have publicly gone into detail about what happened.

Gunn eventually said more. He called Conrad “an incredibly talented guy,” but said the two were “on different pages about certain things.”

Years later, Gunn was even more direct about what was happening on his end while they were filming.

He said he was lying awake worried about the show because “one particular part of it wasn’t working as well as it could.” That particular part was Vigilante. That’s a much bigger statement than “creative differences.”

Gunn loved the show he was making, Vigilante was already one of his favorite characters on the page, and more than half the season had been filmed. But what he was seeing on screen wasn’t matching what he thought the character could be.

So he made the kind of decision that probably makes producers start checking their blood pressure and he replaced him.

Freddie Stroma came aboard as the new Adrian Chase.

And Gunn didn’t try to solve the problem with clever editing, a mask, a stand-in or the television equivalent of sticking a lamp in front of Vigilante every time he walked into the room. He simply shot Vigilante's scenes over.

Gunn said:

“So we brought Freddie in, five-and-a-half episodes in, and I reshot all of his scenes.”

Gunn personally directed those replacement scenes, rebuilding Vigilante across everything they had already filmed. Now take a second and think about what that means.

John Cena and the rest of the cast had already played those scenes with somebody else. Timing had been established. Reactions had been built. Relationships were already taking shape.

Then Stroma walked into a show that was more than halfway through production and had to make everyone forget any of that had happened. Even Stroma has described the whole thing as strange.

Talking about how he entered Peacemaker, Stroma said:

“It was all kind of a weird situation.”

He didn’t even originally audition using Vigilante’s real name. The production gave the character a different name for the audition material, and after Stroma got the call from Gunn they were already figuring out what could be salvaged—including whether Stroma could simply redub some of Conrad’s masked dialogue.

That tells you how deep into the damn thing they already were.

Some of Conrad’s physical work remained usable when Vigilante was masked, with Stroma providing replacement dialogue where possible. But whenever Adrian’s face mattered, Gunn needed Freddie Stroma.

And Stroma walked into a show already running at full speed and somehow made Vigilante feel as though he had been there from the beginning.

To me, that's the best part of this entire story.

Stroma’s Adrian Chase is a cheerful psychopath who can discuss murder with roughly the same emotional weight most people use while deciding whether they want fries with that.

He desperately wants to be Peacemaker’s best friend. He barely understands normal human interaction. He’s frighteningly comfortable killing people and somehow still comes across as weirdly sweet. And that version wasn’t something Stroma invented after studying decades of Vigilante comics.

He quickly realized Gunn had basically created his own Adrian Chase.

Stroma later said:

“It’s a completely different character.”

The comic-book Adrian Chase is a far more conventional and serious crimefighter. Stroma said once he read Gunn’s scripts, he understood that the role wasn’t really asking him to reproduce that character. His job was to play what Gunn had written.

That symmetry matters because Vigilante could’ve become unbearable very quickly. Instead, Stroma plays him like a homicidal golden retriever. One who'd probably kill your paperboy for missing your porch when tossing the paper.

That’s a very specific performance. Which also makes the idea of someone else's version considerably more interesting.

We don’t know exactly what Chris Conrad’s Vigilante was like. That needs to stay clear.

There are assumptions floating around that Conrad wanted to play Adrian Chase more seriously, or that Gunn wanted a completely different interpretation, but neither Conrad nor Gunn has publicly given us enough information to say that as fact.

“Creative differences” is what was originally reported. Gunn saying they were on different pages is confirmed. Gunn saying the character wasn’t working as well as it could is confirmed. Anything beyond that becomes guesswork.

And that’s also why I wish Conrad had talked about it.

There are two sides to every creative disagreement, and so far we’ve really only heard Gunn’s. Conrad has apparently chosen to leave whatever happened on that set there.

But we do know that another version existed.

For five and a half episodes, John Cena was playing scenes opposite a different Adrian Chase. Different timing, different chemistry, different reactions, maybe a different sense of humor, maybe not.

Who knows and that’s what makes this much better than the usual “somebody almost got the role” story. Chris Conrad actually got the role. He played Vigilante. Most of a television season was shot with him. Then James Gunn erased that version and built another one on top of the grave.

There is footage of Chris Conrad playing Adrian Chase while John Cena plays Peacemaker beside him. Scenes were completed. Episodes were deep into production. An entire relationship between those two characters had already started taking shape.

Then Gunn decided it wasn’t the version he wanted. That was a hell of a gamble. Thank the sweet sky it also worked.

Freddie Stroma became so closely tied to Vigilante that finding out somebody else had already played the character for five and a half episodes feels almost impossible.

But that footage exists. Somewhere there’s a version of Peacemaker with Chris Conrad standing beside John Cena as Adrian Chase, and after hearing Gunn admit that version was keeping him awake at night, I want to see the damn thing.

Stroma was clearly the right choice. Now let us see what the wrong one looked like.

Release the Conrad cut, you cowards.