This article contains spoilers for episode six of Peacemaker Season 2.
Oh my god, we were wrong. It was Nazis all along.
The latest episode of Peacemaker revealed that the alternate dimension Christopher Smith has become increasingly infatuated with is, in fact, a world in which the Nazis won World War II and have since seemingly gone on to enforce their white supremacist policies on a global level. While it always seemed obvious that alternate world was not quite as rosy as Peacemaker believed it was, the nature of that revelation is quite shocking.
According to Peacemaker showrunner James Gunn, though, the signs that something like this was going to happen were hidden in plain sight.
“In very plain sight!” Gunn says in a recent Variety interview regarding the revelation. “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.”
Gunn goes on to admit that he, as a viewer, may not have spotted the twist if he was “in a bubble and not talking to people online about the show.” In many ways, the reveal really is all about perspective. Peacemaker is generally burdened by lingering naivety and is so enamored with the things in his personal life that are right about this other world that he’s seemingly become even more blind to the many red flags (some of which actually have swastikas on them). By comparison, Danielle Brooks’ Leota Adebayo is able to tell that something is wrong right away, even if she isn’t immediately sure what the cause of that something is. In fact, Brooks was one of the first people to know about the twist.
“When I wrote episode 206, I sent it to Danielle, and I was like, ‘This is where we’re going with this. Tell me what you think.’ And she was into it,” Gunn said to The Hollywood Reporter. “She was the first person I checked with, and you’ve got to check yourself with things like this. We can all tell stories that people are affected by or affect them emotionally in ways that we don’t understand.”
In retrospect, it’s certainly easy enough to look back at the events of this season and see some of the signs. For instance, it’s been noted that one of the dance moves that Peacemaker and others perform in this season’s opening title sequence seemingly forms a swastika and may actually be a callback to an old Donald Duck short that Disney released during World War II. It’s a subtle tip of the hat that apparently went over the heads of many, including the publishers of the video game Fortnite.
Yes, as part of their continuing effort to promote absolutely everything within their blockbuster battle royale title, Epic Games released a new Fortnite dance emote earlier this year called “Peaceful Hip” that was based on that Peacemaker dance move. The emote was pulled from the game over the weekend with Epic Games telling fans that it has issued a refund for the premium move until they can “inquire into our partner’s creative intentions.” That raises a few questions about whether or not Gunn, HBO, and the DC team disclosed the hidden meaning of that dance to Epic prior to reaching the promotional agreement or if the video game studio was one of the many kept in the dark about the nature of the show’s incredibly secretive final episodes.
As it stands, there are only two episodes of Peacemaker Season 2 left, and Gunn has long insisted that these final episodes will include a number of shocking moments in terms of both the show itself and the nature of upcoming DC projects.
