Peacemaker May Have Just Revealed the Map to the New DCU Multiverse

This article contains spoilers for Peacemaker season 2 episode 5.

Even though Quantum Folding Chambers appeared in both the first season of Peacemaker and in Superman, James Gunn has been clear that their application in the show’s second season has much greater significance to the rest of the new DC Universe. Thus far, the chamber has mostly been used by Chris Smith (John Cena) to visit another, better world. However, at the end of episode five “Back to the Suture,” the 11th Street Kids go to follow him, with A.R.G.U.S. agents not far behind.

The 11th Street Kids can join Chris thanks to a strange case left behind by the mysterious alien, seen in the previous episode, who had the bad luck to appear in front of Auggie Smith, thus giving the racist dope the technology to cross the multiverse. In episode five, we see Harcourt open up the case, revealing a series of concentric circles with orb-like lights on them.

Neither Harcourt nor any other character has identified the case, but DC Comics readers cannot help but see a similarity between the concentric circle design of the open case and a recent addition to the DCU multiverse. It looks like the Map of the Multiverse that Grant Morrison introduced in the 2015 one-shot The Multiversity Guidebook. In the pages of the comics, the Map shows the 52 alternate Earths all orbiting around the House of Heroes—a home base for the reality-watching Monitors—with a red space called the Bleed in between.

Of course, the Multiverse has been a long-standing tradition in DC Comics, ever since the legendary story “The Flash of Two Worlds” (1961’s Flash #123, by Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino) established that the Silver Age Flash Barry Allen lived on Earth-One and the Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick lived on Earth-Two. The Multiverse allowed for DC to tell a variety of different stories and to allow characters acquired from other companies to keep their own continuity. When DC decided to streamline its continuity with the 1984-1985 event Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Multiverse was destroyed, leaving the universe with one Earth and a single, coherent(ish) continuity.

To the surprise of no one, DC couldn’t keep strict continuity, and alternate realities and conflicts continued to exist. So in the 2005 company-wide event Infinite Crisis, Superboy Prime punched reality and Shazam villain Mister Mind became a cosmic moth with reality shaking wings (Infinite Crisis stinks as a story, but those two parts ruled), and the Multiverse returned. Specifically, 52 different Earths, to match with the company’s arbitrary decision to make 52 the most important number.

While DC did immediately identify some of the alternate Earths (for example, Earth-3 was the home to evil versions of the Justice League), they refrained from setting rules on most, wisely leaving room for later creators. However, in their delightful metatextual crossover Multiversity, Grant Morrison revealed most of the 52 worlds. Some of these they showed in stand-alone stories published under the Multiversity headline; Peacemaker fans in particular may want to to check out The Multiversity: Pax Americana, in which Morrison and Frank Quitely use Peacemaker, the Question, and others to riff on Watchmen. However, most of the worlds received no more than a designation and a blurb.

The Map is still used in current DC Comics continuity, and the recent Dark Nights: Metal events revealed a Dark Multiverse printed on the backside of the Map. However, the Dark Nights events also ended by reestablishing the concept of Hypertime, in which reality is always in flux and all stories are always already in continuity. Hypertime doesn’t necessarily mean there must be more than 52 worlds, but it certainly opens the possibility for moving beyond the Map.

But that’s not a headache that James Gunn has, at least not yet. As he told Den of Geek, Gunn considers himself “a balanced canon guy,” and he’s more concerned with telling a story than justifying the world around it. But he’s also been very open about his love of Grant Morrison, so it makes sense that he would look to the Scottish scribe as a guide for handling world-bending stories.

Given Gunn’s comments that there are at least 100 alternate universes, it wouldn’t be too surprising if the case is indeed a Map of the Multiverse and that we’ll see Harcourt and the 11th Street Kids journey to Earth-20 and encounter Pulp Novel versions of DC Heroes or maybe even the Marvel analogues living on Earth-8. Or it’s just as likely that Chris or Adrian will drop the case and shatter the device, making the whole thing a big joke. Which is exactly what we love about Peacemaker.

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