Peacemaker’s Worst Helmet Has A Deeper Meaning Than You Realized

Warning! SPOILERS for Peacemaker‘s season 1 finale.

Peacemaker‘s “Scabies For All” helmet made reference to James Gunn’s first independent superhero movie, The Specials, and a villainous plot enacted by the reformed supervillain Amok. Released in 2000, The Specials remains surprisingly obscure, despite an ensemble full of notable actors and James Gunn crediting the script for the movie with making his career in Hollywood.  This is why only the most devout fans of Gunn’s work noticed the homage to The Specials placed in Peacemaker’s shocking season 1 finale.

Early on in “It’s Cow or Never,” Peacemaker and his allies assessed what few resources they had at hand for launching a raid on an alien base. This included a collection of Peacemaker helmets that Peacemaker’s father had made before his death, which granted the wearer unique superpowers. Unfortunately, as Peacemaker considered this arsenal, he concluded that most of them wouldn’t be of much help since they offered highly situational superpowers, such as breathing underwater.

The oddest helmet in this collection was “Scabies For All,” which Peacemaker claimed “gives everybody in a one-mile radius scabies, except, of course, the wearer of the helmet.” This helmet stood out as unique, given that a weapon that causes people to develop a skin rash seems more appropriate to a villain like Poison Ivy than a nominal hero like Peacemaker. This was because the mention of scabies was a nod to The Specials.

One scene in The Specials centered around a conversation between the villain-turned-hero Amok (Jamie Kennedy) and the second-generation superhero Weevil (Rob Lowe), who parodied elements of Gambit, Nightcrawler, Spider-Man and Blue Beetle – these two being the “bad boys” of The Specials superhero team. The two discussed Weevil pondering a job offer from a more prestigious group, the Crusaders, and Amok’s fears regarding Weevil leaving the team. While Amok would never admit it openly, he clearly valued Weevil’s friendship, noting that Weevil was the only one of his teammates who had never given him a hard time about his efforts to reform. This scene in The Specials foreshadowed James Gunn’s later MCU and DCEU movies and the strong relationships his characters developed while having eclectic conversations.

Amok’s villainous past was briefly discussed as he voiced his distaste for the Crusaders, noting that they were the heroes who put him in prison when he was 19. Weevil agreed that the Crusaders were jerks, but pointed out, in fairness, that Amok’s team had been trying to give everyone in the world scurvy. Amok protested this, saying his team was trying to give everyone scabies rather than scurvy and that merely giving everyone a treatable skin disease was nowhere near as serious as “what pirates get.”

The mention of scabies in the Peacemaker season 1 finale seems too oddly specific not to have been an intentional shout-out to The Specials. This is somewhat odd, as James Gunn was reportedly unhappy with the finished film, which he had originally written as an Abbot Elementary style mockumentary, only to have most of the documentary elements of the script cut by director Craig Mazin. Despite this, The Specials still holds many hallmarks of Gunn’s unique style and is well worth tracking down if one is a fan of superheroes and Gunn’s work.

About The Author

Matt Morrison
(1835 Articles Published)

Matt Morrison has been writing about comics since before the word
“blogging” was coined. He got his start writing for the
legendary DC Comics digital fanzine Fanzing,
before receiving his own column, The Mount. Since then he has gone on
to write for over a dozen websites, including 411
Mania, Comics
Nexus and The Cult of Nobody. He holds both an MS in Information
Science from the University of North Texas and a BFA from the
University of Texas at Arlington. Known as a font of comic book
history trivia, he has delivered lectures on the history of American
Comic Books, Japanese Manga, Doctor Who, and Cosplay at over a dozen conventions
and served as an Expert In-Residence for a course on Graphic Novels
for Librarians at the University of North Texas. In addition to his
work for Screen Rant, Matt is currently the Editor In Chief of
Kabooooom.com and writes reviews for No
Flying, No Tights – a graphic literature and anime review site
aimed at teachers and librarians. He also maintains a personal blog –
My Geeky Geeky Ways –
which hosts his extensive episode guide for the television series
making up The Arrowverse as well as his
comedic Let’s Play videos. What little spare time he has is
devoted towards acting, role-playing, movie-riffing and sarcasm. You
can follow his adventures on Twitter, @GeekyGeekyWays.

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