James Gunn Weighs in on Controversial Peacemaker Character

This post contains spoilers for Peacemaker season 2 episode 7.

Earth-X Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick) isn’t a Nazi.

That surprising twist came late in the penultimate episode of Peacemaker‘s second season, in which Chris Smith has to reckon with the fact that the alternate reality Earth-X may be a place where his beloved father and brother still live, and where he’s considered a hero and he can have a relationship with Harcourt, but it’s also a world controlled by Nazis. Yet, when Prime Harcourt calls Earth-X Auggie a Nazi, the elder man responds with disgust, and gives a heartfelt speech about doing the best he can in an imperfect world.

The speech moves Chris, restoring hope that he has actually found a much better version of the man who raised him, a white supremacist and devotee of toxic masculinity. That hope dies when Vigilante smashes through a window and stabs Earth-X Auggie to death. The speech also filled some viewers with hope, who saw this Auggie as a good man, ironically killed by a reckless Vigilante.

However, Peacemaker showrunner and DC Studios co-head James Gunn has a different take. Posting on Threads, Gunn wrote, “Auggie’s speech is important not only because it reveals who Auggie is but also how it speaks to Harcourt and Economos, who have truly spent a lot of their lives as cogs in a corrupt system, rarely fighting it.”

Gunn has been very clear about how he wishes to avoid black and white morality in his DCU, and Earth-X Auggie might be the clearest example of this ethos. Obviously, Auggie has his good qualities. He’s smart enough to recognize that the Nazis who run the world (or, at least, the United States on Earth-X) are evil, and he shows genuine thoughtfulness when he advises Keith against seeking revenge for the death of Earth-X Chris. He also dispatches the cops trying to kill Prime Chris and Harcourt.

However, many viewers were willing to give Earth-X Auggie a pass for being a hero on the Nazi world based on very little evidence. For them, Auggie’s claims about his own goodness and his speculation that prime Earth isn’t perfect is enough for them to accept that he must be a good man.

Gunn’s comments on Threads put Auggie’s goodness into a new perspective. By calling him a “cog,” Gunn suggests that Auggie and the Top Trio don’t resist the fascist machinery around them; rather, they help make it happen, which explains why they’re so beloved in this world. The very noble thoughts that Auggie has about himself help him cope with this reality, but they don’t change it.

Lest we go too far the other way and call Earth-X Auggie a basic villain, it’s important to note that Gunn explicitly compares him to two of our heroes, Harcourt and Economos. We first met that duo in The Suicide Squad, where they not only did the bidding of amoral leader Amanda Waller, but actually took bets on who would live and die during Task Force X’s mission.

By the end of that film, they push back at Waller and prevent her from killing Bloodsport and others who fight against her orders, but that’s a relatively small act–they are both back working for her when Peacemaker season 1 begins (and in Black Adam and Shazam: Fury of the Gods, but as Gunn made abundantly clear to Den of Geek, those aren’t canon).

In short, Gunn’s comments basically repeat what he’s said all along about his approach to the DC heroes. These are people first, even when they are aliens from the planet Krypton. They’re never fully good and never fully bad. Why should Auggie be different, no matter which reality he’s from?

Peacemaker season 2 finale streams Thursday, October 9 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO Max.