Peacemaker Season 2 Gives The Show's Best Villain A Surprising New Twist

This article contains spoilers for "Peacemaker" season 2, episode 7 — "Like a Keith in the Night"

Chris Smith's (John Cena) father, Auggie (Robert Patrick, who gave /Film an exclusive interview on playing a horrible human being), is a stupendously bad man. In "Peacemaker" season 1, he's a terrible parent and an unrepentant white supremacist who leads a neo-Nazi hate group as a supervillain known as the White Dragon. In season 2, he's reintroduced in an alternate universe as a somewhat more mellow and loving guy. However, the big "Peacemaker" season 2, episode 6 reveal that his reality is the Nazi-controlled Earth-X seemingly throws all that out of the window. Since the main universe Auggie was awful, surely the one who's actually a notable superhero in a Nazi world is doubly so?

As it turns out, this isn't quite the case. Perhaps the biggest surprise of "Like a Keith in the Night" is that the "Blue Dragon" version of Auggie turns out to be a shockingly sensible and chill dude who simply tries to make the most of the world he's stuck living in. He seems to hold no contempt toward people of different ethnicities and chastises his other son Keith (David Denman) for doing so. He loathes being called a Nazi. He's openly hostile toward and uncooperative with this world's corrupt police force, and is fully willing to let the 11th Street Kids return in their world even after learning that Peacemaker has killed Peacemaker-2.

The Auggie reveal is a true bombshell, especially because the eternally slow on the uptake Peacemaker barely has time to understand that this version of his father is not a Nazi before it's too late: The second Auggie relays this information with a big speech, Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) turns up and stabs him multiple times in the neck.

Vigilante is unaware of Auggie's true nature and genuinely thinks that the 11th Street Kids are in trouble, so it's hard to hold the situation against him. However, it forces Peacemaker to relive the trauma of losing his father  — in fact, doubly so because he now knows for sure that this version of his dad was a considerably better person than the one he grew up with. 

What's more, Peacemaker also has to endure seeing his friends brutally attack and injure Keith, who in his own universe accidentally died by his hand when they were still young. The experience clearly does a number on the already volatile Chris, who heartbreakingly begs everyone to stop hurting his brother, and insists that he's the real problem because his presence keeps hurting Keith. 

Not many people have seen their family die (or nearly die, since Keith survives the attack) twice, and Chris is visibly shaken by the experience. He does seem to understand that the situation is complicated and that his friends were meaning well, since he explicitly protects them at the end of the episode and shoulders the blame for his interdimensional actions. Still, the psychological damage the episode's events pile on him is no doubt immense, and he hasn't even found out yet that Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) was fully willing to shoot Keith in order to protect Chris. It's unlikely that the "Peacemaker" season 2 finale can avoid addressing all this, and it's scary to think what it may do to the budding relationship between Chris and Emilia — two damaged people who can't seem to help but sustain even more hurt regardless of what they do. 

"Peacemaker" season 2 is streaming on HBO Max.