Is Peacemaker Season 2 About to Adapt the Darkest DC Universe?

This post contains spoilers for Peacemaker season 2 episodes 1-5.

For the first five episodes of Peacemaker‘s second season, Chris Smith believes that he has found the best universe ever. This alternate reality that he accesses through a Quantum Folding Chamber offers everything that Chris wants. Not only is his father kind and supportive, not only is his brother Keith alive, but also Peacemaker is a hero revered by all.

And yet, some clever viewers have noticed something amiss about Peacemaker‘s dream world. Where the mainline Peacemaker cast reflects the diversity of our real world and of the Prime DC Universe, the alternate world seems very, very white. In fact, no person of color shows up in the world at all.

Now, we have only seen a few shots of the alternate reality, most of which happen in enclosed areas such as the Smith home or A.R.G.U.S. headquarters. But even the few shots that occur outside seem pretty Caucasian. That lack of diversity has led some to wonder if the alternate reality in Peacemaker has been conquered by Nazis, or perhaps the type of White Supremacists that the Auggie Smith leads in the Prime Universe.

If that’s the case, then Peacemaker wouldn’t be veering away from the comics. Rather, it would be adapting one of the more upsetting parts of the DC multiverse.

In Justice League of America #107 from 1973, written by Len Wein and penciled by Dick Dillin, the titular team crosses the multiverse to arrive in a world where the Nazis won World War II. The one source of rebellion is a superhero group called the Freedom Fighters: Uncle Sam, Black Condor, Doll Man, Phantom Lady, and the Ray.

After its first appearance, Earth-X only showed up a few more times. In fact, the first Freedom Fighters ongoing series saw the team come to Earth-2 (the world of the Golden Age superheroes), having thrown off the shackles of fascism in their own world. Further, Earth-X gets wiped out with all of the other alternate realities during the DC Comics event Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Freedom Fighters were integrated into the one mainline world. Yet, in the 2005 event Infinite Crisis—which, incidentally, begins with the Freedom Fighters being slaughtered—the Multiverse was restored and, with it, Earth-X.

Since the restoration of the Multiverse, Earth-X has made a few more appearances in DC Comics. Most notably, Grant Morrison visited the world, now also known as Earth-10, for their miniseries The Multiversity. 2015’s The Multiversity: Mastermen, Morrison and penciler Jim Lee reimagine a world in which the infant Kal-El lands in Nazi-controlled Kansas in 1939. Raised by Hitler, Kal-El becomes Overman and leads a fascist variations of the Justice League called the New Reichsmen, which counts as members Blitzen (Flash), Brünhilde (Wonder Woman), and Leatherwing (Batman). In this version of Earth-X, many of the Freedom Fighters are those persecuted by Nazis: Black Condor is a Black man, the Ray is homosexual, etc.

James Gunn has been very open about his admiration for Morrison’s work, and may have already integrated into Peacemaker the Multiverse Map from The Multiversity. But there are even more reasons to believe that he would use a variation of Earth-X in the show.

First of all, the Freedom Fighters have a lot in common with Peacemaker and Judomaster. Those two stars of the series were originally published by Charlton Comics in the 1950s. DC Comics acquired the rights to the characters when Charlton stopped publishing superhero stories, and eventually integrated them into the mainline DC Universe after Crisis on Infinite Earths. Uncle Sam, the Ray, and others were created by Quality Comics during the Golden Age, and were acquired by DC in the 1950s. In fact, the entire concept of Earth-X and the Freedom Fighters was devised as a way for DC to continue telling stories about those characters.

Gunn certainly loves his deep-cut DC Comics weirdos, and it’s not hard to imagine that he would send Peacemaker to Earth-X just to get to play with some of the oddballs in the Freedom Fighters. Can you imagine how much fun he would have with the perpetually tiny Doll Man and Doll Girl, or with the Human Bomb, whose whole deal is that he can explode and then reconstitute himself?

Secondly, a trip to Earth-X would make sense because Gunn’s DC Universe has been very political in general, and anti-fascist in particular. Amidst all the gore and guts of The Suicide Squad was an allegory about geopolitics, weapons of mass destruction, and American meddling in other countries. The standout scene in Creature Commandos involved G.I. Robot gleefully killing Nazis. Chris Smith’s father is a White Supremacist who calls himself White Dragon and who got shot in the head, after Eagley killed a bunch of other racist terrorists. Even Superman delved into off-site prisons, with Lex Luthor selling cells in his Quantum Folding Chamber to regimes that wanted to make dissidents disappear.

In short, Gunn hates Nazis. And in the DC Universe, no world offers more Nazi punching than Earth-X. So while it may be sad for Chris to discover that his ideal reality is in fact run by racist totalitarians, it will be good fun for Gunn to let Peacemaker and the 11th Street Kids beat up on those fascists. And, for those of us worried that our Earth is starting to feel like Earth-X, it will be cathartic to watch superheroes dispense some two-fisted justice.

New episodes of Peacemaker season 2 stream at 9 p.m. on HBO Max each Thursday night.