Once one person notices, “Hey, wait a second, why are these all white background actors in one place, and then a very diverse crowd in the other place? They shoot in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s not a place that’s known for there being no Black people.” And the minute you see that, you’re like, “Oh, shit. Yeah, he’s in a not so great place.”
I have to admit it, too: I watched the first five a month or so ago, and I didn’t notice anything about alternate-earth scenes until people started pointing it out online. I was thinking we were headed for a Mad Men situation, where Chris finally has this life where he’s loved and respected, but he’s gotten it by stealing another man’s life. Maybe that’s what exactly what you wanted us to think.
Yeah, I mean I think it’s complicated. And I think people think now it’s cut and dried and [Chris’s father] Augie’s a Nazi and this and that, and I mean you’re going to get the next episode—it’s not cut and dried. People are complex, people are people, and I probably shouldn’t have even said that sentence, but you’re going to get to the next episode and it’s not so cut and dried.
There are more shoes to drop in the next two episodes.
Yeah. I mean, a lot of shoes about Earth X drop, and then the season sums up in eight, which is the other episode that I really, really am proud of, and a lot of the emotional center—the relationship between Peacemaker and the 11th Street Kids and the relationship between Peacemaker and Harcourt, that all comes together in episode eight.
So. We’re calling it Earth X, then? That’s official?
Sure.
Obviously, DC does not hold the copyright on the idea of, “Oh my God, it’s a Nazi Earth…”
I mean for me, when I was writing it, I was thinking of The Man in the High Castle, the Philip K. Dick novel, that is my alternate. I’m a big, huge Philip K. Dick fan, grew up reading all of his books, and I think one of the fun things about doing this season is it does have a lot of [hesitates] Dickian…
Can’t avoid it. You just got to say it.
…in terms of the alternate worlds and the magic of all that, and The Man in the High Castle was the first book I ever read by Philip K. Dick, and it’s about an alternate world in which the Nazis won World War Two.
Right. And it’s fifteen years later and people have lived with the set of conditions that creates. They’re just living their lives.
We all see things in the political systems that we live in that are horrifying or awful to us. As an individual, in a world in which everything is connected and we’re barraged with the macro every day, what is each of our individual moral responsibilities, not only to the world, but to the people around us that we love and to ourselves? How do we each find a balance with resigning ourselves to some things which we can’t change? If you’re in a Nazi world, you can’t necessarily…because I’m not sure the Sons of Liberty who are out killing people at the DMV are doing the right thing that’s going to actually be effective.
