What's Going On In Peacemaker's Alternate Reality, Exactly?

I have a theory.

Image credit: Curtis Bonds Baker/HBO Max

[The article below contains major spoilers for Season 2, Episode 3 of Peacemaker. Decoding TV has not received screeners for any episodes of Peacemaker Season 2 so the following only contains speculation of what is happening this season but if you consider fan theories/speculation to be spoilers, you should probably skip this article.]

Shortly before the conclusion of this week’s episode of Peacemaker, “Another Rick Up My Sleeve,” Chris Smith echoes The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy when he states to himself and the audience, “Best. Universe. Ever.”

He’s, of course, talking about the alternate universe that he discovered branching off of his quantum unfolding storage area in the season’s premiere episode, shortly before he accidentally killed his alternate self from that universe. It’s the same universe where Chris has essentially discovered his dream, perfect life, one where he didn’t accidentally kill his brother Keith in their childhood, his family unit is intact and healthier than ever, they are respected as the world’s top heroes, and he had a longstanding relationship with Emilia Harcourt, who recently rejected his courtship in his home universe, but here is looking to rekindle things.

Could things be so simple for Chris that he could return to his home universe, bid that life adieu, take his best friend Eagly with him, and choose to settle down into this perfect life for himself?

Of course not. I’ve watched this show before, and I know that showrunner James Gunn has no interest in giving Chris and his found family the easy way out of healing from their trauma and making up for their past sins. It’s also the case, across nearly all fiction, that utopias are never what they appear to be, and often only present to us the thinnest veneer of the “perfect society” before revealing the deep, dark reality that hides just underneath.

Heck, Gunn has even played with this idea before in a number of his films, most notably in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, where Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) finally meets his long-lost father, suitably named Ego, and played by the ultimate actor you’d want for a paternal figure, Kurt Russell. Not only did Ego sport a rockin’ beard and charisma for days, but as a Celestial, he wielded planet-shaping abilities. Ego revealed to Peter that even he, as his son, had more power and importance to the galaxy than he could have ever imagined. No longer was he an orphaned child turned space pirate, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s version of a god.

Of course, it was all too good to be true. Peter was ready and willing to throw every other part of his life away, including his found family, to embrace Ego and his idyllic vision until he discovered the truth behind Ego’s actions and intentions. As it turned out, Ego planned on remaking the entire universe by triggering an “Expansion,” an omnicidal extinction-level event that would terraform every world into an extension of himself, while also eradicating each planet’s life, and he needed Peter’s powers to help him do it.

He was a universal version of Galactus that appeared over a decade before the MCU’s Fantastic Four would even consider the threat of one planet being destroyed. Even Thanos would blush at Ego’s plan, which was set to double the death toll of the Blip. It didn’t end well for Ego, as the Guardians set about blowing up his brain, but for Peter, it meant rejecting the illusion of perfection that his father presented to him.

I suspect the same thing is bound to happen to Chris during Season 2 of Peacemaker, not just because this storytelling trope has become a staple of the genre and Gunn’s work, but also because of the dark, complex themes of the show, as well as an alarming number of clues in Episode 3 that the alternate dimension that Chris declares as the “best ever” is actually something far more sinister. It would be utterly naive to assume that a quick and easy solution to all of Chris’ problems is not only attainable for him, but actively thrown at him. Neither life nor Peacemaker works that way.

Putting Together the Clues

Image credit: Curtis Bonds Baker/HBO Max

So, with that in mind, what exactly do I think is going on in Peacemaker Season 2’s alternate, “perfect” universe? There’s actually a lot to cover here, much of it speculative, but once you begin to pierce the veil, it’s actually surprising just how much there is to unpack.

Let’s start with the immediately noticeable differences between the two universes, which I’ll call the DCPrime and DC2. I’ve listed all the notable differences for Chris, his family, his role as a superhero, and his relationships. But, we need to ask, how did this come to happen? Is this like a Marvel What If… ? scenario, where a slight change in a universe’s timeline causes a ripple effect that changes the world in both profound and unnoticeable ways?

If that’s the actual model for how the multiverse works in the DCU, I suspect the most logical place for that change to occur to cause this splinter universe is with the death of Chris’s brother, Keith. In the DCPrime, the Smith brothers’ father, Auggie, pitted them against each other in a “no-holds-barred” fight for the entertainment of his Aryan Empire, which he ruled as the masked villain White Dragon. Entirely by accident and egged on by his father, Chris punched his brother and triggered a fatal seizure. It’s the defining moment that pushed Chris down the path to become the Peacemaker, and the one he’s been seeking forgiveness for since the beginning of Season 1.

But let’s imagine that didn’t happen. Instead of killing Keith, the two beat the shit out of each other and continued to be raised under the tutelage of their white supremacist father and his vision of a perfect America. I’ll explain why this is a vital thing to presuppose in a minute, but it's easy to imagine how different Chris’s life would have been as a result of this one change. I am supposing that all of those changes are what we are seeing reflected in the DC2 universe.

The clue that tipped me off to this, if my theory is correct, came to me during Episode 3’s Peacecycle sequence, where Chris drives through town on his missile-bound, bass-boosted, star-spangled motorbike, as throngs of his adoring public cheers him on, including both a child who cries at the sight of him and a woman who flashes her breasts at him. It’s a packed sequence, set in the impossibly beautiful, fake American city literally named Evergreen. There are dozens of extras, storefronts with hilariously basic names like “Fairy Tales,” “Polly Ester Sachs,” and “Hair and Now.” But there is something deeply wrong with this picture in the form of what we don’t see.

I’ve watched the scene several times to confirm it, but throughout both the motorcycle, A.R.G.U.S. headquarters, and Chris and Milia’s date, not a single person of color appears as a featured, supporting, or background actor. This immediately stood out to me, not only as an American citizen, but also as someone who has admired how naturally Gunn has brought diversity to his projects through his casting. For a whole series of sequences in this episode, in a show where the protagonist’s father is a white supremacist, to suddenly abandon its approach to casting its world seems to me to be more than just a suspicious oversight.

Suddenly, the entire puzzle unlocked for me. What if the core change in the DC2 was that Chris never killed Keith, which allowed their superpowered family to stay together as the superteam, Top Trio, and to use their power, technology, and violent intent to reshape this world in their image as a white supremacist “utopia”? It would certainly explain why everyone in Evergreen is white. Additionally, with that understanding, so many other smaller details, meant to be taken at face value, take on a completely different context.

When DCPrime Chris wakes from his drunken stupor at the beginning of the episode and goes to dress himself, he’s taken aback not only by the copious amount of pills in the DC2-Chris’s drawers, but by his fashion sense. He jokes to his brother, “Why do all my clothes look like the Kardashians’ furniture?” Keith responds, “Who are the Kardashians?” We are meant to laugh, “Surely, this is the perfect universe if reality television doesn’t exist!” But, wait… could it be that they never rose to prominence because they are of Armenian heritage?

As Peacemaker rolls down the street on his Peacecycle, while wearing his Peacemaker helmet, he passes by a mural of the Top Trio, resplendent in their red, white, and blue costumes and surrounded by stars, but fully masked. I found it odd that heroes as seemingly beloved as the Top Trio would be depicted with their masks on. Notice then that despite the throngs of adoring public that surround Peacemaker on his bike, once he takes his mask off for his date with Milia Harcourt, he’s never approached by anyone. It’s clear then that the Top Trio aren’t recognized for their civilian personas. Moments later, when the Sons of Liberty attack the park and DMV, Chris rushes into action, and a cop asks DC2-Harcourt, “Is that Peacemaker? Why doesn’t he have his costume on?”

Why hide their identities if they are so beloved? What threat could they possibly face as civilians if they are such heroic figures? Instead, consider if they aren’t seen as heroes but as a superpowered force of violent enforcement for a white nationalist status quo. It’s easy to see parallels in American history from the masked robes of the KKK to the face masks of the ICE agents who are currently invading our cities. When Keith joins in the fight against the Sons of Liberty, he does so with no care for the damage he causes and the civilians below the helicopter he blows up over their heads, an approach to public safety that Gunn’s Superman would never tolerate.

We are meant to assume that the Sons of Liberty are the villains in this universe, but even their depiction has uncharacteristic humanity given to it. We learn that their introduction, an explosion in a public park, is the result of an accident, as their teammate Jerry (likely named after Jerry Ordway, who co-created the comic book version of this anti-governmental force) trips and falls on his explosive vest. Then, as Chris systematically and brutally kills them with their own weapons, we are shown moments of humanity between the team, as they turn back to the bodies of their fallen comrades.

Early in the episode, Chris talks to Keith about the blood he found in their “library,” which Chris mistakenly calls the “trophy room.” On the surface, it's meant to indicate just how unfamiliar Chris is with this world and how difficult it will be to pose as his alternate self. But even this distinction has a sinister difference. For Chris, these trophies are an indication of his personal worth and value. Yet, to Keith, they are established as part of academia or of greater importance to society than personal effects. They are items that belong in a “library,” or place of record.

It’s also essential to look beyond the surface differences between the two Chrises and their relationships to this alt-version of Harcourt. We learn that this DC2-Chris is just as tormented as his DCPrime-self, except that he hides his traumas and addictions in the form of pills in his drawers and withholds these struggles from his family, who continually ask if he’s back on pills again. Even Milia, the nickname for DC2-Harcourt, admits that “he’s changed” when she’s on a date with Chris, but it turns out that the DCPrime Chris is actually an improvement on the arrogant, cheating Chris who broke Milia’s heart. The DC2 Chris never went through the trauma of his brother’s death, and so he may not have publicly spiraled in the same way the DCPrime Chris did, but he also hasn’t begun a journey of healing his trauma and toxic masculinity like our Chris. As such, this Milia is actually open to pursuing a relationship with Chris if he can provide the emotional openness and consistency he previously couldn’t or didn’t feel compelled to offer.

If you piece all of these things together, you can see a very compelling world that’s been slowly established through small clues that we are meant to accept through the limited lens the show has provided us. I have serious doubts that Gunn would present an all-white society as a perfect utopia, without revealing the devastating consequences of putting a racist like Auggie Smith in charge of a militarized superteam of star-spangled vigilantes. There’s a very apt and obvious metaphor to explore in a show that presents two different Americas: one, an imperfect world where even a mind-controlling alien species, The Butterflies, can’t save us from self-destruction, or one where the world is perfect for a small segment of society, and everyone else lives in abject fear of the power they wield.

I can’t say with any certainty that this theory will prove accurate, or that all these details are correct, but I do feel confident in saying that in short order, Chris will be calling this world the “Worst. Universe. Ever.”

Dan Gvozden is a film and comics critic who lives and works in Baltimore. If you enjoyed this review, check out his Spider-Man podcast, The Amazing Spider-Talk.