Full spoilers follow for Peacemaker Season 2, Episode 6 - “Ignorance Is Chris.”
Nazi planet.
The internet called it a few weeks back, and now, as we enter the final stretch of the season, we finally have confirmation that John Cena’s Peacemaker’s happy place, his Best Dimension Ever, is actually a world of Nazis. Or at the very least a country of Nazis. They even have a Nazi American flag!
But that’s not all that happens in “Ignorance Is Chris,” which, after a fairly slow-moving season, finally shifts into high gear in its last 10 minutes, with each of its main characters facing a dramatic and dangerous turn. Let’s start with the buzziest.
Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. had made a deal with the devil now that A.R.G.U.S. is, as he puts it, “partners with Lex Luthor.” Yes, Nicholas Hoult pops over from this past summer’s Superman long enough to hook Rick Sr. up with a way to trace Peacemaker’s dimensional portal. We figured something big was happening this week since HBO didn’t make advance screeners of this episode available for critics, not to mention that James Gunn (who wrote and directed this segment) is doing interviews for “Ignorance Is Chris” as well (more on that this weekend after we talk to him).
Is it just me or does Hoult play Lex here a little colder, a little more serious, a little scarier than he did in Superman? Maybe it’s just the more adult approach Peacemaker as a show affords its characters (amid their silliness), or perhaps it’s a result of Lex’s bitterness after, from his perspective, his trying to save the world from “the metahuman blight” and was instead thrown into Belle Reve for life (or 265 years, whichever comes first) to live among the super-people whom he hates.
So then who is the real villain of this season?“
The thing is, despite all of Rick Sr.’s talk about not wanting to deal with another dimensional rift like what went down in Superman, it’s become increasingly clear that he has a bigger agenda beyond that, and here he confirms to Lex that he has “another idea” for what to do once he finds Chris’ tech. What is that idea? Start placing your bets now, but whatever it turns out to be, the scene between Hoult and Grillo is nicely played, even as it further drives home that Rick Sr. isn’t really the villain of this season as much as he’s operating in that morally grey area that can lead to good people making bad decisions.
So then who is the real villain of this season? Well, I guess it’s the Nazi planet. While Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), upon landing in this dimension, immediately noticed what Chris did not – the lack of people of color – Danielle Brooks’ Ads is of course the one who is targeted as soon as she steps outside of the Nazi Smith house. Things start slowly, with a woman driving by and staring, but soon enough the neighborhood devolves into an Invasion of the Body Snatchers situation as they’re chasing her down the street. That includes Keith (David Denman), Chris’ brother who, like Robert Patrick’s alternate dimension Auggie, has seemed like a pretty lovable guy up until this point. But then he’s yelling “One got out! A black!” Weird how a pretty lovable guy can turn out to be a monster.
