SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in Season 2, Episode 6 of “Peacemaker,” currently streaming on HBO Max.
In Season 2 of “Peacemaker,” the titular shoot-first-ask-questions-later hero Christopher Smith (John Cena) has been enchanted by an alternate universe in which he had never accidentally killed his older brother when they were kids. On this Earth, Chris, his brother Keith, aka Captain Triumph (David Denman), and their father Auggie, aka Blue Dragon (Robert Patrick), aren’t just a happy family, but a trio of beloved superheroes. The alternative version of the love of Chris’ life, Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), is emotionally well-adjusted and capable of maintaining a romantic relationship. Life seems so great on this alt-Earth, and Chris’ own life seems so terrible, that at the end of Episode 5, he abandons his world and chooses to move to the alternate one. (It helps that Chris already killed his alt-Earth doppelgänger in Episode 1.)
And yet, for many viewers, something about this world has always felt…off — and not just because Cheerios is spelled Cheeri-ohs. In Episode 6, “Ignorance Is Chris,” we finally learn just how off, after Harcourt, Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) and Economos (Steve Agee) — who call themselves the 11th Street Kids — all venture into the alt-Earth to convince their Peacemaker to come home. (Because this is “Peacemaker,” en route, they wind up getting splattered with Vigilante’s stash of recovered contraband cocaine.)
Once they arrive, they quickly get split up. Harcourt convinces Keith to take her to A.R.G.U.S. headquarters, where en route, she begins to notice that there are no people of color anywhere in town. Vigilante is delighted to find his alt-Earth doppelgänger, who is exactly like him in every conceivable way except one: Alt-Vigilante calls Peacemaker his “archenemy.” Meanwhile, Adebayo and Economos stay behind at the Smith family compound with no clear sense of what to do, so Adebayo decides to explore the neighborhood. As she walks around, people stare at her in shock and disgust, until Keith passes by, slams on his breaks, and screams, “One got out! A Black!” Adebayo starts running for her life as a mob of Nazi Americans chase after her.
At this same moment, Peacemaker — after he and Harcourt finally have a tearful heart-to-heart about their feelings for each other — takes a closer look at the American flags that line the desks at alt-A.R.G.U.S. To his horror, he discovers that, instead of stars, there’s a swastika. On this Earth — which, like in the DC comics, “Peacemaker” creator and DC Studios co-chief James Gunn refers to as “Earth X” — Nazi Germany won World War II.
Gunn, who wrote and directed the episode, guarded this twist so closely that he declined to send it out to press for advance review. But he did do his own private test screenings of Season 2 to see if anyone noticed that Earth X was populated only with white people before the big reveal in Episode 6.
“No one noticed at all,” he tells Variety. “And that was people of color, too, by the way. It wasn’t just, you know, the whites.”
The internet being the internet, however, some fans had correctly guessed this twist was coming after sharing Harcourt’s observation about the population’s whiteness — matched with the fact that on the main Earth, Auggie was a virulent white supremacist known as the White Dragon.
“It’s really hard when you’re online and one person out of the millions of people that are watching the show says, ‘Wait a second, here’s a screenshot of what it’s like in the alternate world, and here’s a screenshot of the background actors in the DCU,’ and you see the difference between them immediately,” he says. “A lot of people don’t go online to talk about television. So I got a lot of comments of people that were freaked out. But a lot of people knew it was coming.”
Gunn talked with Variety about the experience of shooting this episode during the 2024 presidential election, why he brought Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) onto the show, why Superman won’t join him and how Lex’s cameo connects to the 2027 feature film “Superman: Man of Tomorrow.”
So, Nazis.
So, Nazis!
Could you talk about how you decided to hide this twist sort of in plain sight? It seems like you wanted to put the audience in Peacemaker’s mindset?
In very plain sight! You know, Peacemaker is not a bad guy. He’s not a racist, but he does have this sort of narcissistic tendency to judge moments based on how he’s being treated and judged. He’s able to go to this other planet and not notice at all that, “Hey, wait a second…” I mean, you think we’re blind for not noticing it on a TV show with clips that are 30 seconds long; he didn’t notice it walking and driving around that everybody was white. Whereas Harcourt, who’s more attentive to details, and probably more sensitive to that sort of thing anyway, notices the minute she’s out in public. She’s looking around, going, “What the fuck?”
But part of it is us, you know? Honest to God, I don’t think I would have noticed if I was in a bubble and not talking to people online about the show. And I think that is something that we maybe can all think about.
You said on the official “Peacemaker” podcast about this episode that the first scene outside of Vigilante’s house was shot on Halloween of 2024. How present in your mind was the presidential election while you were shooting this episode and the episodes that are to come?
I shot the scene where the cocaine splashes over everyone the morning after the presidential election. But when I’m writing a show like this, I am telling a story, first and foremost. I’m never thinking, “Oh, I’ve got to prove a point about something.” But undoubtedly, there are things from our actual world that influence what I’m writing. Obviously, Adebayo’s situation at the end of the episode, from one perspective, is the most important thing. But at the end of the day, the show is about the 11th Street Kids and their relationships with each other and what they get from each other and how they change each other. Probably the biggest scene in the show was the scene between Peacemaker and Harcourt in the interrogation room. In a lot of ways, that’s the heart of the show. It isn’t about Earth X. It’s about them.
And people are also going to find out next episode, that Earth X is not simplistic. If we were raised in Nazi world and accepted that as being OK, how would you think? We get a little bit more of that with specific characters next episode.
Speaking about the next episode, Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) visits Lex Luthor in Belle Reve prison and strikes a deal with him in exchange for help finding Peacemaker. Should we expect to see David Corenswet as the Earth X or Earth 1 versions of Superman on the show?
No. In fact, David was very upset that Nick got to be on the show, and he didn’t. It just didn’t work. I needed Lex in the show to serve a specific purpose. And actually, what Lex and Rick Flag are up to affects very much what happens in an aspect of “Man of Tomorrow.” So all of that is connected. But this relationship between Rick Flag and Lex Luthor is a potentially negative thing for Superman and all meta-humans.
You were writing this season while you were also working on “Superman,” so did you know where you wanted to take the Lex storyline for “Man of Tomorrow” already?
Totally, yeah. I didn’t know some things about it, but I knew what the overall story of the DCU was. That was something I pitched to [Warner Bros. Discovery CEO] David Zaslav before we even took the job. I’m like, here’s the story. There’s going to be this movie, this show, this movie, this show, and those things all fit in in different ways. Some things came, like “Clayface,” that we didn’t expect, and other things have been a harder road to travel. But the general outline of that overall story is what we are following through “Superman,” “Peacemaker,” “Man of Tomorrow” and beyond.
How much of Earth X will play a role in the DCU moving forward?
Not much. It’s not a major part of the storytelling. That’s about Peacemaker.
To go back to my earlier question, you obviously wrote this show not knowing what the outcome of the presidential election was going to be. But how has it been for you, knowing that this twist was coming, and watching the real world edge closer to Earth X more than anybody would have anticipated?
[Long pause] I think I don’t know how to answer the question. Obviously, there are many things in the world I’m not happy with. I’m not so narcissistic as to think of the world in relationship to my TV show. I mean, there’s weird things with this show. There were weird things with “Superman.” Absolutely 100% of that movie was written and done before anything ever happened between Israel and Palestine, and everyone continues to refuse to believe that that’s not what it’s about. It’s not. It just isn’t. You can take whatever you want from that, to mean what you want, but I didn’t write it to be a stand in for Israel and Palestine.
Do you feel the same way about this season of “Peacemaker”?
I mean, you’ll see some things next episode where, of course, there’s parallels. We’ve seen more racism lately, right? Is that because there’s more racism or because it’s more OK to be out in the open? It’s probably the latter. That’s obviously fucking discouraging. And if my stupid TV show has anything to do with people being like, “Oh, maybe I should be more aware of my prejudices,” great. But that isn’t what I write the show for. I write the show for the emotional angle, just like I wrote “Superman” to be about kindness. If there was a sociopolitical aspect of “Superman,” it’s that there has been an absence of kindness and understanding and loving a human being, no matter what their thoughts or feelings are.
Everybody’s a fucking antihero. Everybody’s too fucking cool. What about not being cool? What about being a nice human being to someone? Why is that considered old-fashioned and Pollyanna? I want to be Pollyanna. I love that aspect of myself. I believe in the goodness of the human spirit. I think a lot of the people that are doing things I don’t like, I think that they are essentially good people. They just have weird ideas about things, and I think that we can communicate with those people. Maybe I’m naive, I don’t know, but that’s who I am.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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