“In what world is he the hero?” the tagline for “Peacemaker” Season 2 asks.
The answer? Not a very good one.
“Peacemaker” Season 2 follows John Cena’s titular vigilante as he retreats into a world where he, his deceased brother and his racist, abusive father and are alive and well as their planet’s heroes, the Top Trio. Now, the disturbing truth behind this reality has finally been revealed.
Be warned, this article contains spoilers for “Peacemaker” Season 2, Episode 6. If you don’t want to know what’s really going on with Peacemaker’s parallel Earth, go watch the episode and then come back.
After Peacemaker returned to the parallel reality and shut the door behind him in the previous episode, “Peacemaker” Season 2, Episode 6, titled “Ignorance Is Chris,” follows the 11th Street Kids as they reopen the Quantum Unfolding Chamber and follow him to the other dimension. The world is almost identical, but it becomes quickly apparent something is off when everyone around the characters is white. James Gunn, who wrote and directed Episode 6, called this week’s installment one of his favorite things he’s ever made.
After Chris and Harcourt reunite following her being detained on suspicion of drugs, they realize ARGUS is run by nazis after noticing an American flag with a swastika on it. The reveal is all the more stressful for Adebayo, who ends up being chased by a stampede of people — including Peacemaker’s brother — down a quiet neighborhood in the episode’s final moments.
Adrien also meets this dimension’s version of himself and they’re getting along as expected until he lets slip that in the main Earth, he and Peacemaker are friends. On Earth-X, Vigilante and Peacemaker are enemies and he joined the Sons of Liberty — seen in the third episode — to fight back the Nazi government.
Now, viewers know the disturbing truth of this parallel Earth — or, as it’s called in the comics, Earth-X. In the show, as in the comics, this world exists as a universe where Nazi forces won World War II.
Fans had long speculated that Peacemaker’s “best universe ever” was in reality some riff on Earth-X from the comics. Waiting for some narrative shoe to drop and reveal a hard truth about the alternate reality, viewers were tipped off by a number of clues that this would indeed be a late-season reveal.
To begin with, audiences noticed early on the lack of diversity in the background characters of Peacemaker’s alternate world. Where the primary world of the DCU is filled with a diverse cast of actors and characters in “Peacemaker,” audiences could only find white extras and background actors in the alternate world Peacemaker finds himself in.
This led fans to ponder the question raised in the season’s tagline: “In what world is he the hero?” As Gunn showed viewers in Season 1 and a cold open in Season 2, Peacemaker’s father, Auggie Smith (played by Robert Patrick), was a raging white supremacist who raised his sons to share in his values. Throughout Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad” and “Peacemaker,” Gunn’s central character struggles to become a better man against these values outside of his father’s shadow.
Yet the Auggie Smith of this parallel dimension is much more loving and gentle toward his sons. Peacemaker’s brother Keith (played by David Denman) is alive and similarly caring. At first, it seems as if this is the primary twist of the new dimension — Peacemaker’s family is kinder, and they’re viewed as heroes as a result.
But fans expecting a twist and noticing the cast of background characters quickly suspected that Auggie, at his core, did not change. Rather, the world around him changed in a way that his supremacist views were now commonly accepted. Rather than entering a world where the White Dragon (or, on this Earth, the Blue Dragon) is a hero, Peacemaker simply found a reality where people don’t treat his racist beliefs as villainous.
Earth-X, or Earth-10 as it later became known, is a decades-old concept in the DC Comics universe, though not one with an overly extensive history. The idea originated in 1973’s “Justice League of America #107” by Len Wein and Dick Dillin. In the issue, members of the Justice League (Batman, Green Arrow, Elongated Man) and the Justice Society (Dr. Fate, Sandman, Earth-2’s Superman) are inadvertently launched onto Earth-X while using a transmatter machine during their annual team-up.
On Earth-X, history changes drastically when the Nazis win World War II, becoming a dominant global superpower. A group of heroes, known as the Freedom Fighters, fight as rebels in the name of America and freedom, led by Uncle Sam. The JLA and JSA help the Freedom Fighters overthrow the Nazi regime before returning to their own realities.
Since then, Earth-X has only appeared in a handful of stories. After the events of “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” some elements of the Nazi dimension, such as the Freedom Fighters, were folded into the composite New Earth. Later, after the multiverse re-expanded in “Infinite Crisis” and “52,” the Earth-X concept was adopted by one of the new 52 universes, Earth-10.
Grant Morrison later expanded upon Earth-10 during their series “The Multiversity,” which explored the multiverse’s 52 Earths in a post-Flashpoint, pre-Convergence timeline. In “The Multiversity: Mastermen” one-shot, Morrison and artist Jim Lee depicted a world in which Superman (here named Kal-L) was adopted by Adolf Hitler, allowing him to establish Nazi supremacy worldwide. This Kal-L goes by Karl Kant and adopts the name Overman, styling himself after fictional “Superman” comics read by Hitler. The most popular “Multiversity” one-shot, “Pax Americana,” starred the then-unpopular Peacemaker as the primary character.
Arguably, Earth-X’s most prominent appearance to date was in the CW Arrowverse event “Crisis on Earth-X.” In this four-part crossover between “Arrow,” “The Flash,” “Legends of Tomorrow” and “Supergirl,” the wedding of Barry Allen and Iris West is interrupted when Nazi forces, led by Dark Arrow and Overgirl, invade their world. The heroes themselves went over to Earth-X, seeing the world where Nazis ruled.
It’s not clear who is in charge of this DCU’s Earth-X quite yet or what the rules are. But it clearly is not the idyllic place to live that Chris initially thought.
“Peacemaker” Season 2 releases new episodes Thursdays on HBO Max.
