James Gunn Explains Inspiration Behind Shocking 'Peacemaker' Episode Six Ending
Image Source: DCU Wiki
Season two of Peacemaker further explores the titular character, Chris Smith, as he faces his past and what his future could be. The Quantum Unfolding Chamber plays a larger role this season, serving as the means for Chris to hop over to what he thinks is his ideal alternate Earth. Following the latest episode, Ignorance is Chris, fans finally have confirmation about which alternate Earth the man had found, and in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, James Gunn explained where the idea for this plot direction came from. Fair warning, spoilers for the episode are present ahead.
Gunn first tackled the technical name of the other Earth, clarifying, "People don't name their planets other than Earth, so to them it's Earth, just like to us and the DCU it's Earth.” He continued, “I don't think people think of their planets as having numbers, but yeah, I call it Earth-X." While it’s not quite official in terms of what the characters themselves would call it, for all intents and purposes, the alternate universe Chris stumbled upon is Earth-X.
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Image Source: DCU Wiki
Gunn is firm about his literary inspirations for the crafting of Earth-X, explaining, “Honest to God, it's not from the comics. It's from Philip K. Dick's Man in The High Castle, which is a book I've always really liked…It's about an alternate Earth where the Nazis won World War II, and that was more what inspired me for this. It just seemed to be a natural outcome of Chris dealing with his personal journey.” The director continued, “He goes and he gets everything he desires, but it is a monkey's paw…it really is worse than our Earth. It is. He's finding out the complexity of all that. Everybody thinks that means everybody there is a Nazi, everybody there is bad, but you find out that things are not that simple in the next episode.”
This episode of Peacemaker ended on a tense cliffhanger with Leota Adebayo running away from a group of angry white supremacists, led by the alternate Keith. There are two episodes left in the season; the follow-up episode, Like a Keith in the Night, will be released on October 2, 2025, while the finale, Full Nelson, will be released the following week. This season’s plot leads into the Superman (2025) sequel, Man of Tomorrow (2027). Both Peacemaker and Superman (2025) are available to stream on HBO Max.
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