The 11th Street Kids find out the truth and immediately work very hard to survive it.

It’s almost impossible to believe this episode is under 45 minutes as it’s so packed. Starting with the crowd pleasing tie ins first, we get our second Superman character, and first actual Superman movie set, as the wonderfully odious Sydney Happersen returns. Flag and Bordeaux use him and Luthor’s mothballed command centre, to track down the rift and from there, Chris and the kids. It’s a nicely handled moment and it’s also smart writing.  This is how you do crossovers, organically and sensibly.

It also provides a background of tension for the whole episode. We known ARGUS are on them even as the 11th Street Kids struggle to get out of the alternate Earth alive. The ways they do that provide the episode with some much needed humour too. Economos’ pathological inability to lie under pressure is hilarious and Eagly’s refusal to be anything other than an eagle (and not say, a sentient Eagle god) makes for a great running gag with John tied to a chair. Best of all is the reveal in the opening seconds as Harcourt notes the copies of Mein Kampf on every desk in ARGUS and the HITLER MURAL that Chris somehow just never noticed. Bless him.

That comedy swings neatly into some crunchy action and the show’s best use of the alternate Earth to date: that this Auggie is a man trying to do his best in a terrible system. His chastising of Keith for joining the mob hunting Adebayo down opens the door to a fascinating take on the character. Robert Patrick excels at playing thoroughly bad guys but he may be even better at playing conflicted ones. This Auggie is complex, difficult, trying his best. He’s still wrong but unlike core Earth Auggie he knows that.

This idea of nuance becomes vital to the show. We see it in the touching and instant friendship that forms between Adebayo and Judomaster, who saves her in the most violent way possible and then proceeds to bond with the only other person of colour in this particular hell. They’re funny, cautious and all too aware of the danger they’re in. A danger that dwarfs their precious enmity and propels Judomaster into being something close to an ally.

Vigilante approaches nuance the same way he approaches subtlety: not at all. Freddie Stroma has terrifyingly good fun as both versions of Vig and that lack of nuance on his part leads to the single best moment in the show to date. At the exact moment Auggie has helped them get home, the Vigilantes and the police descend on the house. Vigilante kills Auggie, the gunfight wipes out most of the police (including a surprise return face from season 1!) and Keith loses it. He’s seen a man with his brother’s face take his spot. He’s seen his father killed. He’s had enough and the fight that ensues shifts from action to desperate, panicked savagery. Keith’s a big guy in a power suit and the 11th Street Kids hold him down and kill him by inches as he does the same to them. And Chris, who has just lost his father for the second time, watches his brother and the only other people he loves ripping each other apart and SCREAMS.

It’s ugly, and shrill and real. You see Cena’s face contort with abject horror as all the pressure he’s been under since The Suicide Squad breaks him. He’s disgusted with himself, with what he’s turned his friends into. He’s not exhausted, he’s done. The comforting binary of his old life replaced by the terrifying reality of nuance. The words of the theme song this season echo loudly through the subtext. There’ll always be another war to fight. But for Peacemaker to literally make peace with himself, he has to lose.

So he does. He surrenders when they get back to their Earth and the episode finishes with him being driven away by ARGUS. It could be a season finale but somehow there’s one episode left.

Verdict: I have no idea what’s going to happen (aside perhaps from Keith rampaging across to our world) but I’m absolutely thrilled to see how this show brings it into land. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart