Peacemaker’s White Dragon Changes Highlight An Iron Man Problem

Warning: Contains spoilers for Peacemaker episode 7.

In confrontation with White Dragon has been teased since his introduction through his antagonism of Peacemaker. The final appearance of Peacemaker’s father serving as a criticism of comic book characters is ultimately on-brand for the James Gunn adaptations.

Peacemaker episode 4 showed the DCEU TV shows a relatively comic-accurate adaptation of White Dragon’s (Robert Patrick) costume with a few changes. While the appearance seemed accurate when the suit was not in use, the episode 7 portrayal of the character revealed how much Peacemaker had altered the suit. While White Dragon’s armor in the comics protects him, it has been much upgraded in the DCEU, tying in with Auggie Smith’s new engineering skills that allow him to create the Peacemaker helmets, and the suit now provides enhanced strength and the ability to fly.

The new White Dragon suit powers and the way that they are portrayed in Peacemaker episode 7 draw unignorable parallels to the way that Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit functioned in the MCU. The comparison between the two could not be accidental, and while placing a rampant white supremacist and bigot in a suit so similar to Iron Man could seem like a generic jab at the character, it points out a larger issue with Iron Man. In his first outing, Tony Stark took most of his missions in the middle east and the majority of the people that he killed were non-white characters that the movie used as unnamed fodder for his suit. Putting White Dragon in a suit that mimics the MCU Iron Man portrayal really drives home how Iron Man represented (most likely ignorantly) white supremacist and colonialist tendencies.

With Peacemaker, James Gunn has clearly enjoyed himself by mocking and critiquing DC characters. This has ranged from his gentle ribbing of DC for having such strange characters as Bat-Mite, making jokes about the sexual exploits of the Justice League, and questioning whether Guardians Of The Galaxy movies.

A part of the reason for Iron Man’s racism issue comes down to when it was made. During the 1980s, most villains were Russians because it was during the Cold War and the United States was politically against the Soviet Union. In 2008, the U.S. political concern was centered on the middle east in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks which led many American movie villains to come from the middle east. Peacemaker had already made a nod to this problem in episode 1 when Peacemaker is talking to Jamil (Rizwan Manji), the janitor, who suggests that Peacemaker needs to kill a higher proportion of white people.

Next: Peacemaker Fixed A Plot Hole By Creating 2 More

Peacemaker releases new episodes Thursdays on HBO.