Peacemaker Season 2’s Big Twist Is More Complex and Satisfying Than Expected

This post contains full spoilers for Peacemaker season 2 episode 7.

Peacemaker season 2 episode 6 has us expecting a blood bath. In the final seconds of that installment, we get confirmation that the “perfect” alternate world where Chris Smith was a hero with a loving family is, in fact, Earth-X, a universe in which the Nazis won World War II. The episode features Vigilante finding his double and Judomaster entering the universe, making us hope that episode seven would be wall-to-wall anti-fascist destruction.

The following episode, “Like a Keith in the Night,” delivers on that promise, but not in a way that anyone expected. Late in the episode, some of the 11th Street Kids confront Earth-X Auggie and call him a Nazi. Auggie takes exception at the term, and launches a defense of himself and his actions, framing himself as a realistic resister, a fundamentally good man who does his best to live ethically in a world dominated by evil. No sooner does hope return to Chris’s eyes, no sooner does he begin to believe that he actually has met a kind and loving version of his father, than Vigilante smashes through a window and kills Earth-X Auggie.

At first glance, Earth-X Auggie death feels like a tragic rug pull, once again stealing from Chris a chance at happiness. But that reading ignores the moral complexity that James Gunn has been trying to bring to his DC Universe.

Gunn had teased as much in a recent interview with GQ, calling Earth-X “complicated.” He continued, “I think people think now it’s cut and dried and Auggie’s a Nazi and this and that, and I mean you’re going to get the next episode—it’s not cut and dried. People are complex, people are people.”

In fact, talking about Peacemaker‘s second season with Den of Geek, Gunn said such an approach applied not just to Chris Smith and an alternate universe run by Nazis, but to the entire DCU. “In the DCU in general, we’re finding shades of gray in people’s morality,” he told us. “That’s even with Superman, who’s as good as you can get, or the Justice Gang, who are heroes, but they’re corporate tools. It’s never a black and white thing.”

But shouldn’t it be black and white, at least when Nazis are involved? To be sure, Gunn has given us the Nazi-killing goodness we desire, in the wonderful G.I. Robot focused episode of Creature Commandos. However, he’s doing something more complicated and, frankly, more satisfying than just giving us a simple bad guy to punch.

As much as Auggie wants to believe that he’s a good man in a bad place, nothing outside of the speech backs up his claims. Sure, he kills the cops who try to arrest Chris and Harcourt, but he also stabs Economos in the hand. Sure, he talks about trying to raise his boys right, but Keith didn’t hesitate to shout “One got out! A Black!” when he saw Adebayo walking around. Sure, Auggie describes his Earth-One counterpart, a virulent white supremacist, in disparaging terms, but he also describes Earth-One as “a darker world.” Most damning of all, Auggie is a hero, beloved by those in a Nazi world, by those who–as Harcourt observes–have copies of Mein Kampf readily available.

In short, Auggie isn’t nearly the good man he thinks he is. Then again, no one in Gunn’s DCU is, not even Superman. And that’s to Gunn’s credit.

Superhero stories so often give us simple morality, which fits their origin as children’s entertainment or distractions for GIs in World War II. While Gunn’s approach to superhero stories has sometimes veered away from their kid focus in troubling ways, he does shades of moral grey the right way. By showing that Earth-X Auggie isn’t a virtuous hero, Peacemaker reminds us that the work of resisting fascism is ongoing, that it’s not enough to simply intellectually disagree while enjoying all the benefits of an unequal society. By showing us a Superman who isn’t a one-note paragon of good, we gain grace for ourselves and others, reminding us to forgive ourselves and one another when we slip up.

Is this reminder as cathartic as the part when Judomaster electrocutes a bunch of Nazis in a pool? No. But it is richer and deeper and, ultimately, more satisfying.

Peacemaker streams new episodes every Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO Max.