That all went to hell pretty immediately.
Recap
In the alt-universe, Chris is eating with his dad and brother and Emilia at a restaurant, and a kid approaches to ask if he can take a picture with the Blue Dragon. August is bad at selfies, so Emilia gets up to take the picture with the whole Top Trio and the kids.
The 11th Street Kids head to Adrian’s house to open the portal in his basement. First, they meet his mother, Mrs. Chase (Taylor St. Clair), who seems to believe that Harcourt is Adrian’s girlfriend and that they’re having relationship problems. The basement is where Vigilante keeps all the things he confiscates from criminals, meaning that it’s full of cash and drugs; Adrian won’t give it to the police because they’re just as corrupt, and won’t use it because it was gotten through nefarious means. Adebayo opens the quantum doorway using the closet door to Adrian’s beanie baby collection. The ripple effect causes cocaine to explode on everyone. Back at A.R.G.U.S., Fluery informs Rick Flag Sr. that they’ve lost Peacemaker, haven’t heard from Judomaster, and that Harcourt and Economos are also missing. Rick decides that he needs to make a visit to Belle Reve prison to talk to someone…
The group make it through the quantum area to the doorway with more Peacemaker helmets. Adrian knows August’s code, so they try it and get into the alt-dimension, finding Chris’ room. Keith finds Harcourt and says that he thought she was with Chris. She makes up a story about Chris asking her to get a snow globe from his mantle to keep on her work desk (which it turns out used to belong to their mother), and Keith offers to drive her back to work. She agrees, despite Adebayo trying to signal that she shouldn’t go. Adrian is determined to meet his alt-self, convinced that the guy will help them. Adebayo can’t stop him from leaving either. She and Economos discover Eagly raiding the fridge and clean up after him. At A.R.G.U.S. in the alt-dimension, Harcourt is flagged by a police dog for being covered in cocaine and is taken aside for search. Chris comes in as she’s being led away.
At Belle Reve, Rick Flag Sr. is meeting with none other than Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult). He asks for help in locating Peacemaker and this dimensional door, given how poorly the last dimensional rift went when Lex almost destroyed Metropolis. Lex agrees to help in exchange for moving to a different prison. Chris meets with Harcourt to discuss what happened between them, and she explains that she didn’t betray him, but saved his life from Bordeaux, and also that he should already know that. She insists that she’s fucked up and doesn’t connect with her emotions (hence the bar fights), and that they shouldn’t be together, even though Chris insists that he likes all of those things about her. She gives him a hard time for using this as a bargaining chip to come home. Back at the house, Adebayo asks Economos if he wants to go for a walk, but he refuses, so she goes alone. Adrian goes home and finds that nearly everything is the same there aside from slightly different tchotchkes and his dad still being there because he’s “not gay” in this universe.
Adrian meets himself and finds that they are, in fact, exactly alike. With one exception: Peacemaker is Adrian’s arch-nemesis in this universe, rather than his best friend. Alt-Adrian is confused at how they could ever be friends, and admits that the things Peacemaker has done is the reason he joined the Sons of Liberty. As Adebayo is walking, she notices that all the people are stopping to stare. Keith is driving home and pulls over to point at her. As Harcourt is being released from holding, she notes to Chris that she’s seen no people of color anywhere in this universe, which he assumes is nothing… until he notices an American flag on someone’s desk. The stars have been replaced with a swastika.
Adebayo gets chased by an angry mob who are shocked to see “a Black” in their community. Economos is discovered and stabbed by August and admits pretty much everything about why they’re here. Harcourt sees the flag and points out that Chris believes this is his “better” world when Emilia comes in and demands that Harcourt is arrested for impersonating her.
Commentary
Can’t say we didn’t see that coming.
Also can’t say that I was surprised that the prison cameo was Luthor—who else is Flag gonna talk to at Belle Reve? Presumably this will work toward a little bit of setup in the Superman sequel, but it also works to bring together dimensional questions, given that Luthor had his own far less stable pocket ones in the film.
The swastika on the flag seems like a little much—mostly for the fact that it feels obvious and begs a lot of questions about when and how this change took place? It’s getting me too stuck on worldbuilding when I would rather not be. Is this an indication that this version of the U.S. took root in World War II, in favor of Nazism? (Possible.) Is this a neo-Nazi signifier indicating that the swerve took place within Chris’ lifetime? (Also possible.) Is the flag change incidental, and this has been the course the U.S. was on since the Civil War? Earlier? (Any of these things could be true, and throwing that swastika in there is making me think too hard about it.)
The same is true for Adebayo getting chased through the streets. Most versions of white supremacy rely on using people of color for labor and treating them as less-than-human. Running someone out of town is certainly commonplace in this, but when you combine that with the fact that we see no POC anywhere in this landscape… that puts some far different, very frightening, options in mind. The main reason it bugs me is that I doubt we’ll be digging into the alt-dimension’s history. So much is being brought to the fore at a point when we’re likely about to peel away from this reality in a hurry.
I appreciate the conversation between Chris and Harcourt for the fact that there are no easy answers to the problem they’ve got, and she calls him out for basically treating her as the carrot to get him to come home. The funny part is that they do fill in gaps for each other in the oddest ways; Chris, for all this issues, has a comfort with considering emotions that Harcourt does not have in the slightest; Harcourt hasn’t been poisoned by August Smith’s worldview her whole life, and is far more street savvy. They balance each other well when they’re both in the mood to be balanced.
The way the penny drops in this episode, just a fraction at a time, is endlessly entertaining. It’s the equivalent of watching glass crack from stress fractures, and wanting to tap and make it explode. Adrian’s doppelgänger was what I was waiting for, though—once we learn that this version of Adrian is exactly the same, you knew what the twist had to be. Adrian called Chris on his dad’s racism in season one, so naturally, this version of Adrian would hate Chris if he accepted dad’s dogma. And of course the Sons of Liberty aren’t a terrorist group here—they’re freedom fighters. And Chris murdered them all without hesitation. (You knew that was gonna be the wrong call.)
Again, Adrian’s well-timed innocence around pieces of the puzzle hurt the most: How about the one major change in his home? “My dad’s not gay in this universe!” There he is, sitting on a couch next to Mrs. Chase.
Oh, sweetheart. Yeah, he is. He’s just not allowed to show it.
Keeping the Peace (Thoughts and Asides)
- Uh… where the hell is Judomaster? Little concerned due to all the very bad options where that question is concerned.
- Adrian thinks his mom is annoying without realizing how alike they are; she also cannot stop talking about whatever is on her mind, no matter how out of pocket or appropriate to the moment. I dunno, I just love when any story points out that having things in common is no guarantee that you’ll understand each other whatsoever, especially in families.
- Adrian’s worst sensation is softly touching human skin. So he’s likely the “crush-me-into-a-diamond level pressure” kind of neurodivergent. Bananas opinion on shag carpeting, though. You’ve got no idea what’s in there, buddy.
- That beanie baby collection hurt my soul. (Because I also had one. Don’t even look at me right now, I’m being haunted by Happy the Hippo.)
We’ve got two episodes left. Let’s see what horrors unfold next week.
I have no idea if there are plans afoot for a third season, but if there are, I do wonder if Judomaster will end up becoming an 11th Street Kid for it. If GotG is any indication, Gunn does like a good “adversary to ally” arc.
The two bits of pop culture from the alt-earth here are telling, too: Pokemon exist in this world, but The Beatles are very different. I’m putting my bets on World War II as the point of divergence here, at least for now.
I would 100% watch an entire episode that’s just Adrian describing his surroundings.
I think it’s important to note that this is the James Gunn DCU so if we’re asking about world-building, we have to include possibilities that would only exist in comics books or Star Trek or Star Trek comic books. Things like the United States was conquered by Vandal Savage using the Spear of Destiny or everyone getting brainwashed by a hate ray. It may not work for a “serious” work but it gives us a pass for most questions of logistics or world building.
Sadly, Keith says she’s got out so I presume the POC in this world are being used as slaves–out of sight, out of mind.
I just assumed they meant brand new shag carpet, never trod upon, factory fresh.
I read something where Gunn was gleefully saying that in a test screening, literally no-one spotted the fact that the alt universe town had nobody of color in it. I’m far from the sharpest at noticing things on screen, but seriously, it took even me about three seconds.
In the matter of the Nazi takeover’s timeframe, I’d suggest that it happened prior to the 1960’s, at the latest. Adebayo being referred to as a “Black” is the clue here. One would expect a Nazi to use the N-Word, or similar insult, but prior until the early sixties, “Black” was seen as a pejorative in American English, the polite term being “Colored” or “Negro”. (I’m a white guy, my late wife and most of my family are POC; we’ve had a lot of discussions on the subject.) Nothing pulled my lady out of a period fiction worse than someone using an anachronistic term in an attempt to be inoffensive to a modern audience. Her opinion was that no white person speaking before 1960 would have used the term “Black” as anything but an insult. Sometimes linguistic drift can be our friend.
Also, we should keep in mind that DC comics parallel worlds do not necessarily run on the Marvel-Style Fractal Split principal. In “Crisis on Infinite Earths” it was established that DC reality began as a Monoverse until the actions of the mad Oan Krona caused it to retroactively split at the Big Bang into a myriad of worlds, each of which had its own independant past and future, and though this might have similar results to “What If?” style divergences, except for that primal sundering, they didn’t start out branching off from one another. At the end of COIE, things were reduced to a Monoverse for a (subjective) time. When a later crisis recreated a 52-reality multiverse, they began identically until a rogue chronovore literally ate some of each one’s history, making each one different to greater or lesser degrees. (IIRC, since the last cosmic retcon we’re back to an effectively infinite DC multiverse again, Wibbly-Wobbly TImey-Wimey.)
One of the cries I heard as Adebayo walked through the neighborhood was “One of them got out!”. So the various POC of this ‘verse are somewhere, and I’m going to bet that Judomaster, who’s just as visibly an Other as Adebayo, got seized immediately and is there. That or he’s trying to locate Cheetos.