SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in Season 2, Episode 6 of “Peacemaker,” currently streaming on HBO Max.
James Gunn said in a new interview with GQ magazine that he heard from “a few racists” after “Peacemaker” dropped its bombshell Nazi twist during Season 2 Episode 6. Much of the new season of the DCU series has taken place on Earth X, which fans now know is an alternative universe where Nazi Germany won World War II. So yes, Gunn’s new DCU has a planet out there run by Nazis. The second season of “Peacemaker” is set after Gunn’s “Superman,” with Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor recently making a cameo on the show.
“I really do whatever I want with ‘Peacemaker’ — and I mean, in one respect, I do whatever I want with anything, because I am able to make my own choices and I’m my own boss. But with ‘Peacemaker,’ we really let it go. We take chances. We go to places where I think other people are afraid to go,” Gunn told GQ. “We got a lot of pushback from various sources within the structure, on this episode in particular, and we’re like, ‘Let’s not be bashful about this. Let’s just do the story that we want to do and I don’t want to have to pull punches with it.’”
“And it’s interesting because there hasn’t been that sort of… I have a few racists that have called me polarizing, but I’m okay with being polarizing and letting racists fall to the wayside,” Gunn added. “People have loved this episode the most, so it’s exciting… Listen, we’re dealing with a very sensitive subject. We’re dealing with racism and at the same time, there’s humor in this episode. And so, you’re dealing with something very delicate and yet we’re not being delicate about it — but I don’t think we’re not being delicate in a non-thoughtful way. I think we’re being thoughtful about it.”
Speaking to Variety after the episode aired. Gunn revealed he held his own private test screenings of “Peacemaker” Season 2 to see if anyone would notice some of the tidbits sprinkled throughout the episodes that tease the big Nazi reveal. The most notable tidbit is that Earth X is populated only with white people.
“No one noticed at all,” Gunn said. “And that was people of color, too, by the way. It wasn’t just, you know, the whites.”
Some internet sleuthers did end up noticing the all-white Earth X, however, as Gunn explained: “It’s really hard when you’re online and one person out of the millions of people that are watching the show says, ‘Wait a second, here’s a screenshot of what it’s like in the alternate world, and here’s a screenshot of the background actors in the DCU,’ and you see the difference between them immediately. A lot of people don’t 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.”
“Peacemaker” drops new episodes on Thursdays on HBO Max.
