If there’s one thing that we can all say for sure about director James Gunn’s political beliefs, it’s that he hates Nazis. I wasn’t sure how he was going to incorporate that into the second season of Peacemaker, but viewers are pretty sure he’s found a way.
As someone who has a very high tolerance for James Gunn’s whole thing—Troma Entertainment levels of gore, dumb dirty jokes, extremely chatty characters, endlessly rehashing complicated feelings about your dad—I’ve come to understand that his politics are pretty simple. He doesn’t like that Louis CK jerked off in front of a lot of women, he loves animals, and he fucking hates Nazis. In Creature Commandos, a cartoon he wrote after being given the keys to the DC cinematic universe, he dedicated an entire episode to the origins of GI Robot, a robot who was designed with the sole directive of killing Nazis. And kill Nazis he does!
How does this connect to Peacemaker? Peacemaker, played by John Cena, keeps trying to make amends for the kind of man he was raised to be. His dad was a white nationalist—and Peacemaker killed him at the end of the last season. However, at the start of this season, Peacemaker found a portal to a seemingly perfect universe where his dad and also his deceased brother Jason are still alive, and the three of them are heralded as heroes. In this universe, Peacemaker might be able to get together with a version of Amelia Harcourt, who wants nothing to do with him in his original universe despite their intense sexual tension and mutual affection for each other. Peacemaker repeatedly calls this universe the “best universe ever,” and so far, it seems like it is—were it not for one detail.
Any universe where Peacemaker’s dad, an open white supremacist, is heralded as a hero is probably one I, and plenty of other people, would not be welcome in. More than that, I was struck by the way Peacemaker’s brother pronounced the name of the city “Blüdhaven.” Most of the time, characters in the DC Universe pronounce this city’s name as “Bloodhaven,” hilariously. But Jason pronounced “Bluthaven,” which is closer to how it would be pronounced in German, and, well….
Most telling for me, though, is the absolute lack of people of color. It’s actually chilling once you start to notice it. As Peacemaker ventures out into this alternate universe, I was not able to spot a single Black, Latino, or Asian person, nor any other race other than white. In fact, there doesn’t appear to be any extras who are people of color, something corroborated by an extra who posted to the show’s subreddit.
“Everyone I remember seeing was at least white-presenting,” a background actor wrote on Reddit. “I think the Nazi/white supremacist dimension theories have credibility.”
There are some other little tells that something is at least off with this universe. Jason doesn’t know who the Kardashians are—perhaps because OJ Simpson never existed, meaning that Robert Kardashian would never have been catapulted to national recognition for representing Simpson at his murder trial. Amelia Harcourt also appears to not know what the phrase “what’s happening?” is a reference to. What’s Happening!! was a sitcom about a Black family from the 1970s, and a landmark in terms of depicting Black families on television. Weirdest of all, the show goes out of its way to not show the audience a hot dog vendor. Like, it feels bizarre to watch the lengths that the show goes to in order to shoot around this hot dog vendor’s body. Is it because many people who own and operate food trucks in real life and in filmed media are often not white? Who’s to say, but it’s fucking strange.
This is all the more notable because the rest of Peacemaker is almost self consciously racially diverse. Peacemaker’s best friend is Leota Adebayo, a Black lesbian played by the hilarious Danielle Brooks. This season has added two more characters of color in ARGUS agents Langston Fleury (Tim Minear) and Sasha Bordeaux (Sol Rodriguez), who also team up with last season’s Judomaster, a Vietnamese character played by Nhut Le. The universe that Peacemaker comes from has its characters of color front and center, impossible to ignore, which makes their absence feel even more conspicuous in the alternate universe.
Of course, having something be subtly wrong with an alternate universe that appears perfect is just sensible writing for the journey that Peacemaker has gone on in these two seasons of television. Peacemaker has already rejected his father’s teachings once, but he’s still looking for the easy way out in terms of making amends for the harm he has caused. It would be easy to escape to this seemingly perfect universe—but if fan theories are correct, it would mean rejecting the humanity of Leota Adebayo, who has stood by his side and always believed in him, even when he was at his lowest. In Peacemaker’s quest to be a better man, can he reject a world where his happiness would come at the expense of people like Adebayo? It’s a test of character that would demonstrate how far Peacemaker has come from his first appearance in The Suicide Squad, where he declared “I cherish peace with all of my heart. I don't care how many men, women and children I kill to get it.”
Peacemaker fans will learn if their suspicions about this alternate universe are correct tonight, as Adebayo is poised to go there for the first time—we’re all going to find out if this is a white supremacist universe pretty fucking quick. As for me, I’m hoping Gunn can squeeze in another appearance from GI Robot.
