Peacemaker's latest episode, "Ignorance Is Chris," featured a shocking twist that caused an associated dance in Fortnite to get pulled off the platform.
What happened?
In season two of the HBO Max series, Peacemaker/Chris Smith (John Cena) decides to live in an alternate universe where his family is alive and celebrated as heroes. His friends decide to follow him and bring him home. With everyone on the alternate Earth, some unfortunate truths are revealed.
[Spoiler alert for episode six of Peacemaker's second season ahead]
In Peacemaker's sixth episode of season two, Chris realizes he's living on Earth X, a reality where Nazis won. While DC fans are praising the episode for its shocking twist, Fortnite is facing backlash.
In Fortnite, you can play as Peacemaker, and the character's "Peaceful hips" dance emote matches his dance from the show. The dance occurs in the intro to Peacemaker's second season, in which the cast dances “Oh Lord” by Foxy Shazam.
Turns out, some of those dance moves were hinting at the show's big twist, just like in Season 1. At times, Peacemaker's arm movements look like a swastika:
Fortnite removes Peacemaker emote
While this might make sense in the context of the show, Epic Games is not happy about it being in Fortnite.
Following extensive discussion after episode six aired, Fortnite issued an apology this week regarding Peacemaker's emote and announced that they would be removing the dance option from the game.
"We're disabling the Peaceful Hips Emote in Fortnite as we inquire into our partner's creative intentions in this collab emote. Assuming it's not coming back, we'll issue refunds in the next few days. Sorry folks," they wrote. You can view their post below:
Fans react to the Peacemaker emote
Interestingly, most fans of Fortnite don't seem too upset by the Peacemaker dance.
While it's surprising Epic Games was not informed about the meaning behind the dance, most commenters think it's hypocritical for Fortnite to remove Peacemaker's emote when other problematic figures like Kanye West are still featured in the game.
"...You JUST added a KAYNE EMOTE BRO LET IT SLIDE ITS A GOOD EMOTE," one fan wrote.
Others are bringing up d4vd, whose abandoned Tesla was recently found with the dead body of a teenager named Celeste Rivas Hernandez in the trunk.
Other game players are bringing up Elon Musk, who was in the news earlier this year for doing a Nazi salute.
Another gamer pointed out that other dances have similar arm movements, including the classic "Monster Mash."
It's important to note that not everyone is defending the emote. Some folks are expressing their concern about having to pay for a Nazi-related dance.
One fan wrote to Peacemaker creator and DC Studios head James Gunn, but did not get a reply.
"I get that you are subversive, and I respect that. I am also 100% certain that your intentions with the story are good," they said. "But, not everyone knows you — we paid for a Nazi dance we didn’t know about, which is a little gross, and it isn’t great."
Meanwhile, other fans are suggesting a new Peacemaker emote entirely.
Peacemaker Season 2 currently releases new episodes on HBO Max on Thursdays.
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