“Escape from Nazi Earth” may seem like an unlikely scenario to find a grace note, but Gunn and director Alethea Jones (who also helmed “Back To The Suture”) find one. Set to First Signal’s “Still Pretending,” the ensuing chase sequence follows Chris and Harcourt on the Peace-Cycle, tailed at a distance by the alt-Evergreen police. The scene is, thrillingly, hopelessly romantic and tender. Look at them: two battered renegades who’ve sought meaning in chaos and found it in one other, squeezing each other close as the center closes in. Naturally, their moment can’t sustain, but a last-minute rescue from an unlikely duo—the Blue Dragon (Patrick) and Captain Triumph (Denman)—buys them a momentary reprieve. “The two of you want to live? You come with us now,” the Dragon growls. Keith, fuming under his Triumphant armor, keeps to a simmer.
The episode pauses to accommodate its latest DCU cameo: Sydney Happersen (Stephen Blackehart), last seen as the lone voice of reason during Lex Luthor’s (Nicholas Hoult) scheme to kill Superman (David Corenswet). Happersen knows his way around interdimensional portals, but, as Superman made clear, his preference is to keep them shut. “I don’t mean to be antagonistic, but what’s my reason for helping you?” he asks Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) and Agent Bordeaux (Sol Rodríguez). With one casual mention of Luthor’s name, Happersen falls into line and instantly pings an open portal in Evergreen. “I may keep you around,” Flag tells the mustachioed physicist.
And then the show moves to Ads and Judomaster, who hash out their current predicament over a game of “Scrobble” (see the stray observations below). The conversation drifts into some nice character development for Ads, with the pair discussing her disintegrating marriage with Keeya (Elizabeth Ludlow), which awaits her once they return to Earth-Prime. Judomaster correctly identifies the problem (it’s Ads) while she, in turn, broaches Judomaster’s limited perspective on Chris. “He’s the sweetest guy,” she says of her best friend. “You just have to open your mind a bit.” This is a point of contention for Rip Jagger: Chris wanted to live on Nazi Earth, which Ads and Rip both note isn’t worlds apart from the reality they call home. They’re two ordinary people (or as “normal” as folks get in the DC Universe), treated as misfits regardless of where they stand.
Back at the Smiths, Chris is forced to own up to the mess he’s made, which stirs in Keith a newfound rage that surprises even Auggie. (“You were always the level-headed son,” August had reminded him earlier.) Once Chris lays out his rationale for infiltrating this world, along with the fate of his alternate self (wisely skipping the grisly disposal of the body back in episode two), a knock on the door brings the alternate version of Detective Larry Fitzgibbon (Lochlyn Munro) into the emotionally charged fray. From here, it’s easy enough to spot August’s conflicted feelings on this matter. He’d rather lie to the cops, deny that he’s keeping Chris in the house, and initiate a standoff than turn him over. But why?
It’s jarring to see August Smith be the reasonable man in this situation. He’d sooner send the 11th Street Kids back to where they came from than invite more bloodshed into his home; and he’d rather face the hard truths about his son with Keith than prop up a lie that sanctifies his death—or fuels revenge. He even takes exception to Harcourt calling him a Nazi. “I didn’t create the problems in my world, missy,” he says. “I applaud you if your world is perfect and you fight every injustice you ever see. Is that what you do?” (Note her lack of a response.) He’s the opposite of Auggie-Prime. While he may be complicit in the evils of the world, doing nothing as people who look like Adebayo and Judomaster are rounded up and hidden from this god-fearing society, evil doesn’t dominate his heart as it did his double.
For all the good it does him, as in comes Vigilante-Squared, who viciously dispatches the Blue Dragon, rallies the Kids, and leads a charge for the Quantum Closet. Keith powers through a wall and halts their escape and would have finished Chris right then, had Chris’s friends not turned on him. Eagly claws at his head; Economos, Ads, and Harcourt pin him down; and Vigilante starts working his blade through Keith’s armor, all as Chris looks on in horror. “Stop!” he cries. “What the fuck is wrong with all of us?”
Gunn has never shied from twisting the knife at the most emotionally devastating moment, but “Like A Keith In The Night” hits differently. It’s the composition of Keith’s imminent slaughter: in front of Chris, who, in the moment, recalls what it looked like when he, as a kid, punched Keith to death. His friends are there to protect him, and they’ve just proven that they’re willing to commit extreme acts to do it. Love, in this context, is mangled into the gnarly murder-rampage that has defined Peacemaker’s career and his life. “This is me,” he says, cradling his older brother. “It’s not your world that’s wrong, or mine. It’s me!” He is certainly missing the forest for the trees—like he overlooked the pervasive Nazism in his Happy Place—but that’s Chris in a nutshell: a jingoistic dummy, a walking disaster trained for death but led by his heart. And it’s led him here, where he watches his family die once more.
Chris spares Keith out of grief, and the Kids finally make good on their escape from Earth-X, but not before Harcourt attempts a coup d’état on Captain Triumph. “I can’t have you coming after him,” she says, finger on the trigger—and she would have pulled it, if not for Fitzgibbon and his advancing forces. The Kids return to Earth-Prime, where Rick Flag and A.R.G.U.S. promptly take him into custody. He goes quietly. Judging by the look on Chris’ face, he may be ready to sit out the rest of existence in a Belle Reve cell. Only one problem remains: Keith Smith. He will not forget the death of his brother or his father, the scars inflicted by the 11th Street Kids or the gun Harcourt put in his face. But should Captain Triumph cross into Earth-Prime to claim his revenge, will he also remember the man, briefly his brother through a cosmic fluke, who wept into his chest and saved his life?
Stray observations
- • A killer joke: Vig’s doppelganger (also Stroma) learns there is a reality where America and its allies won World War II. “You must live in a utopia!” he squeaks. Vig: “Um…”
- • Stephen Blackehart, in all likelihood, will resurface in Man Of Tomorrow. I hope he does!
- • I’m devastated. It’s great to see Lochlyn Munro again, but the nature of Earth-X denies us a cameo from Annie Chang’s Detective Song.
- • More bad things about Earth-X: the Cheet-Os are spelled Cheet-Ohs and are not as good. Scrabble is Scrobble, but it seems to play the same.
- • Robert Patrick got his “come with me if you want to live” moment.
