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Pacifist Started his second season on HBO Max with a story featuring an alternate universe. Christopher Smith Aka Peacemaker discovers another world in the dimensional pocket that his father, Auggie, is used as a place for weapons development. In the world alternately, Chris is beloved as a hero, he has a loving relationship with his father, and his brother is still alive instead of dying at Chris’s hand.
Yes, the DCU begins and a multilateral alternative reality is already being played. Many people may groan in that concept thanks to a particular Mickey Wonders make it bad, but Pacifist Season 2 was needed only one chapter to show that she already has a better understanding of multilateral stories than Marvel’s cinematic universe.
The two types of multilateral story
Let’s get as reduced as possible and boil multilateral stories into two categories: gimmick fun and character exploration. Now, nothing is essentially wrong about using multilateral stories to have gimmick fun. I like wacky variants of comic book characters as much as the next loser. However, the Marvel cinematic universe has weighed much more to the multilateral as a gimmick than something substantial to its characters.
That’s where we reach the second kind of multilateral story: a way to explore a specific character by comparison. Pacifist Season 2 makes the core of its multilateral story. Chris can see the opportunity for what appears to be a dreamy life. He has a loving family who fights crime together and is celebrated by the public. It’s a window into a world where it can be everything he always wanted to be.
This is the kind of multilateral story that has a real emotional resonance. The only time for Marvel’s cinematic universe to control this with the multilateral is with the character of Peter Parker/Spider-Man played by Andrew Garfield. Garfield’s character gets a moment of redemption when he saves MJ, a sentimental piece of redemption for his inability to save Gwen Stacy in his own universe. Other than that? The Multiverse in Marvel (not the Spider-Verse movies, those are their own thing) read as a large corporate movement for restarting rather than a real reason to tell a story.
That’s why the DCU starts things early with a multilateral story is the right call.
In front of the curve
The Mcu He took over a decade before he surrendered to the need for a multilateral story. Now, that attitude becomes a general part of the general story for the Marvel cinematic universe. And frankly, he reads as despair to many people. It does not come across as creatively as much as it is brand -induced.
While Pacifist Season 2 dives the DCU straight into a multilateral story and uses it to report a character -driven emotional narrative. It also means that the idea of universe is not alternating in some grand, crucial concept in the DCU. James Gunn Has done a great job establishing a welcoming wonder in the DCU where bonkers concepts can easily be integrated into stories because they serve the best characters instead of the plot. I love the scene in Superman Where Clark and Lois have a meaningful conversation while the Justice gang fights a dimensional impart in the background.
That kind of receiving nature out of the gate toward Zany sci-fi Concepts such as multilateral or dimensional Imps are what helps the DCU feel fresh. He trusts the audience to buy into these concepts without feeling the need to overuse them. So I love to see where Pacifist Season 2 goes with its multilateral story because this is the first time in a while the concept is used for its characters instead of being a gimmick.
