{"id":45981,"date":"2025-09-27T07:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T07:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/45981\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T07:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T07:42:10","slug":"lex-luthor-cameo-nazi-twist-no-superman-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/45981\/","title":{"rendered":"Lex Luthor Cameo, Nazi Twist, No Superman Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in Season 2, Episode 6 of \u201cPeacemaker<\/a>,\u201d currently streaming on HBO Max.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Season 2 of \u201cPeacemaker,\u201d the titular shoot-first-ask-questions-later hero Christopher Smith (John Cena) has been enchanted by an alternate universe in which he had never accidentally killed his older brother when they were kids. On this Earth, Chris, his brother Keith, aka Captain Triumph (David Denman), and their father Auggie, aka Blue Dragon (Robert Patrick), aren\u2019t just a happy family, but a trio of beloved superheroes. The alternative version of the love of Chris\u2019 life, Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), is emotionally well-adjusted and capable of maintaining a romantic relationship. Life seems so great on this alt-Earth, and Chris\u2019 own life seems so terrible, that at the end of Episode 5, he abandons his world and chooses to move to the alternate one. (It helps that Chris already killed his alt-Earth doppelg\u00e4nger in Episode 1.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet, for many viewers, something about this world has always felt\u2026off \u2014 and not just because Cheerios is spelled Cheeri-ohs. In Episode 6, \u201cIgnorance Is Chris,\u201d we finally learn just how off, after Harcourt, Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) and Economos (Steve Agee) \u2014\u00a0who call themselves the 11th Street Kids \u2014 all venture into the alt-Earth to convince their Peacemaker to come home. (Because this is \u201cPeacemaker,\u201d en route, they wind up getting splattered with Vigilante\u2019s stash of recovered contraband cocaine.)<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce they arrive, they quickly get split up. Harcourt convinces Keith to take her to A.R.G.U.S. headquarters, where en route, she begins to notice that there are no people of color anywhere in town. Vigilante is delighted to find his alt-Earth doppelg\u00e4nger, who is exactly like him in every conceivable way except one: Alt-Vigilante calls Peacemaker his \u201carchenemy.\u201d Meanwhile, Adebayo and Economos stay behind at the Smith family compound with no clear sense of what to do, so Adebayo decides to explore the neighborhood. As she walks around, people stare at her in shock and disgust, until Keith passes by, slams on his breaks, and screams, \u201cOne got out! A Black!\u201d Adebayo starts running for her life as a mob of Nazi Americans chase after her.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt this same moment, Peacemaker \u2014 after he and Harcourt finally have a tearful heart-to-heart about their feelings for each other \u2014 takes a closer look at the American flags that line the desks at alt-A.R.G.U.S. To his horror, he discovers that, instead of stars, there\u2019s a swastika. On this Earth \u2014\u00a0which, like in the DC comics, \u201cPeacemaker\u201d creator and DC Studios co-chief James Gunn<\/a> refers to as \u201cEarth X\u201d \u2014 Nazi Germany won World War II.<\/p>\n

\n\tGunn, who wrote and directed the episode, guarded this twist so closely that he declined to send it out to press for advance review. But he did do his own private test screenings of Season 2 to see if anyone\u00a0noticed that\u00a0Earth X\u00a0was populated only with white people\u00a0before the big reveal\u00a0in Episode 6.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNo one noticed at all,\u201d he tells Variety. \u201cAnd that was people of color, too, by the way. It wasn\u2019t just, you know, the whites.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe internet being the internet, however, some fans had correctly guessed this twist was coming after sharing Harcourt\u2019s observation about the population\u2019s whiteness \u2014 matched with the fact that on the main Earth, Auggie was a virulent white supremacist known as the White Dragon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s really hard when you\u2019re online and one person out of the millions of people that are watching the show says, \u2018Wait a second, here\u2019s a screenshot of what it\u2019s like in the alternate world, and here\u2019s a screenshot of the background actors in the DCU,\u2019 and you see the difference between them immediately,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of people don\u2019t go online to talk about television. So I got a lot of comments of people that were freaked out. But a lot of people knew it was coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGunn talked with Variety about the experience of shooting this episode during the 2024 presidential election, why he brought Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) onto the show, why Superman<\/a> won\u2019t join him and how Lex\u2019s cameo connects to the 2027 feature film \u201cSuperman: Man of Tomorrow.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\tSo, Nazis.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, Nazis!<\/p>\n

\t\tCould you talk about how you decided to hide this twist sort of in plain sight? It seems like you wanted to put the audience in Peacemaker\u2019s mindset?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIn very plain sight! You know, Peacemaker is not a bad guy. He\u2019s not a racist, but he does have this sort of narcissistic tendency to judge moments based on how he\u2019s being treated and judged. He\u2019s able to go to this other planet and not notice at all that, \u201cHey, wait a second\u2026\u201d I mean, you think we\u2019re blind for not noticing it on a TV show with clips that are 30 seconds long; he didn\u2019t notice it walking and driving around that everybody was white. Whereas Harcourt, who\u2019s more attentive to details, and probably more sensitive to that sort of thing anyway, notices the minute she\u2019s out in public. She\u2019s looking around, going, \u201cWhat the fuck?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut part of it is us, you know? Honest to God, I don\u2019t think I would have noticed if I was in a bubble and not talking to people online about the show. And I think that is something that we maybe can all think about.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou said on the official \u201cPeacemaker\u201d podcast about this episode that the first scene outside of Vigilante\u2019s house was shot on Halloween of 2024. How present in your mind was the presidential election while you were shooting this episode and the episodes that are to come?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI shot the scene where the cocaine splashes over everyone the morning after the presidential election. But when I\u2019m writing a show like this, I am telling a story, first and foremost. I\u2019m never thinking, \u201cOh, I\u2019ve got to prove a point about something.\u201d But undoubtedly, there are things from our actual world that influence what I\u2019m writing. Obviously, Adebayo\u2019s situation at the end of the episode, from one perspective, is the most important thing. But at the end of the day, the show is about the 11th Street Kids and their relationships with each other and what they get from each other and how they change each other. Probably the biggest scene in the show was the scene between Peacemaker and Harcourt in the interrogation room. In a lot of ways, that\u2019s the heart of the show. It isn\u2019t about Earth X. It\u2019s about them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd people are also going to find out next episode, that Earth X is not simplistic. If we were raised in Nazi world and accepted that as being OK, how would you think? We get a little bit more of that with specific characters next episode.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tSpeaking about the next episode, Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) visits Lex Luthor in Belle Reve prison and strikes a deal with him in exchange for help finding Peacemaker. Should we expect to see David Corenswet as the Earth X or Earth 1 versions of Superman on the show?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNo. In fact, David was very upset that Nick got to be on the show, and he didn\u2019t. It just didn\u2019t work. I needed Lex in the show to serve a specific purpose. And actually, what Lex and Rick Flag are up to affects very much what happens in an aspect of \u201cMan of Tomorrow.\u201d So all of that is connected. But this relationship between Rick Flag and Lex Luthor is a potentially negative thing for Superman and all meta-humans.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou were writing this season while you were also working on \u201cSuperman,\u201d so did you know where you wanted to take the Lex storyline for \u201cMan of Tomorrow\u201d already?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tTotally, yeah. I didn\u2019t know some things about it, but I knew what the overall story of the DCU was. That was something I pitched to [Warner Bros. Discovery CEO] David Zaslav before we even took the job. I\u2019m like, here\u2019s the story. There\u2019s going to be this movie, this show, this movie, this show, and those things all fit in in different ways. Some things came, like \u201cClayface,\u201d that we didn\u2019t expect, and other things have been a harder road to travel. But the general outline of that overall story is what we are following through \u201cSuperman,\u201d \u201cPeacemaker,\u201d \u201cMan of Tomorrow\u201d and beyond.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow much of Earth X will play a role in the DCU moving forward?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNot much. It\u2019s not a major part of the storytelling. That\u2019s about Peacemaker.<\/p>\n

\t\tTo go back to my earlier question, you obviously wrote this show not knowing what the outcome of the presidential election was going to be. But how has it been for you, knowing that this twist was coming, and watching the real world edge closer to Earth X more than anybody would have anticipated?\t<\/p>\n

\n\t[Long pause] I think I don\u2019t know how to answer the question. Obviously, there are many things in the world I\u2019m not happy with. I\u2019m not so narcissistic as to think of the world in relationship to my TV show. I mean, there\u2019s weird things with this show. There were weird things with \u201cSuperman.\u201d Absolutely 100% of that movie was written and done before anything ever happened between Israel and Palestine, and everyone continues to refuse to believe that that\u2019s not what it\u2019s about. It\u2019s not. It just isn\u2019t. You can take whatever you want from that, to mean what you want, but I didn\u2019t write it to be a stand in for Israel and Palestine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tDo you feel the same way about this season of \u201cPeacemaker\u201d?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI mean, you\u2019ll see some things next episode where, of course, there\u2019s parallels. We\u2019ve seen more racism lately, right? Is that because there\u2019s more racism or because it\u2019s more OK to be out in the open? It\u2019s probably the latter. That\u2019s obviously fucking discouraging. And if my stupid TV show has anything to do with people being like, \u201cOh, maybe I should be more aware of my prejudices,\u201d great. But that isn\u2019t what I write the show for. I write the show for the emotional angle, just like I wrote \u201cSuperman\u201d to be about kindness. If there was a sociopolitical aspect of \u201cSuperman,\u201d it\u2019s that there has been an absence of kindness and understanding and loving a human being, no matter what their thoughts or feelings are.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEverybody\u2019s a fucking antihero. Everybody\u2019s too fucking cool. What about not being cool? What about being a nice human being to someone? Why is that considered old-fashioned and Pollyanna? I want to be Pollyanna. I love that aspect of myself. I believe in the goodness of the human spirit. I think a lot of the people that are doing things I don\u2019t like, I think that they are essentially good people. They just have weird ideas about things, and I think that we can communicate with those people. Maybe I\u2019m naive, I don\u2019t know, but that\u2019s who I am.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in Season 2, Episode 6 of \u201cPeacemaker,\u201d currently streaming on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,3991,409,111,139,69,5529,3997],"class_list":["post-45981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-james-gunn","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-peacemaker","tag-superman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}