As the second season of HBO Max’s Peacemaker unfolded, fans of the DC series started to make a curious observation. They noticed that Peacmaker’s “best dimension ever” was just a little off, with nary a person of color in sight. While many fans — particularly those familiar with comics — began to suspect that this alternative world was actually the bleak Earth-X, episode 6 “Ignorance Is Chris” confirmed the awful truth (and spoiler warning, if you haven’t seen the episode, now’s a very good time to look away.) The dimension in which Peacemaker was thriving was actually a dystopia run by Nazis, as evidenced by this world’s version of the American flag that featured not the stars and stripes, but chilling swastika instead.
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There’s a lot to unpack about that revelation — and the various things that went down in the episode as the rest of the 11th Street Kids came to the same awful realization, but for fans wanting to further explore this idea of dystopia while the comics are great — Earth-X is one of the more grim, but interesting alternative universes in the DC Multiverse — there’s actually another television series you should check out that has interesting tie to Peacemaker: Prime Video’s The Man in The High Castle.
The Man in The High Castle Is An Overlooked Dystopian Masterpiece
Debuting in 2015 and running for a total of four seasons on Prime Video, The Man in the High Castle is a dystopian alternate history based on Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel of the same name. The story is set in a version of reality where the Axis powers won World War II with the United States (and indeed the rest of the world) becoming divided into sections controlled by either the Nazis or the Empire of Japan. The series has an ensemble cast that shows the different experiences of those living under Japanese and German rule as well as the resistance to both regimes, which are themselves caught in Cold War-esque tensions with one another.
The series received critical acclaim upon release and the first season was among Prime Video’s most streamed at the time. The series remained positively received across all four seasons, taking on a sci-fi turn near the end with the opening of a portal to other universes offering a shift in power and a bit of hope. While the series was a hit at the time, it’s largely gone forgotten in recent years, but deserves another watch thanks to its detailed and immersive narrative as well how well it handles the timelines of real-world history even in this “what if” sort of reality.
The Man in The High Castle Also Has a Unique Connection to Peacemaker
Outside of The Man in The High Castle being a great series for fans of dystopian fiction, there’s another key reason DC fans might want to check it out. Peacemaker series creator James Gunn recently explained that the inspiration for the dystopian “best dimension ever” in Peacemaker came not from DC Comics, but from Dick’s The Man in The High Castle novel.
“It’s from Philip K. Dick’s Man in The High Castle, which is a book I’ve always really liked,” Gunn explained. “I’m a huge Phil K. Dick fan, and that was the first book of his I ever read. It’s about an alternate Earth where the Nazis won World War II, and that was more what inspired me for this.”
There’s also a little bit of a visual connection between the HBO Max series and the Prime Video series as well for fans to notice: the American flag in both series are very alike, with the stars of the American flag replaced with the much more sinister and foreboding swastika.
Peacemaker season 2 is now streaming on HBO Max. You can watch all four seasons of The Man in The High Castle on Prime Video.
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