Warning: This article contains spoilers for Peacemaker episodes 1-5.
The excellent superhero comedy series Peacemaker is continuing its roasting of the DC universe with character send-ups from the very obscure, such as Matter-Eater Lad and Bat-Mite, to more mainstream heroes, such as Batman and his wimpy no-kill rule, with the latest example taking aim at none other than Superman himself.
Considered perhaps the most powerful of earth’s superheroes and known for his heat vision, incredible strength, and flying ability, the Man of Steel was apparently not agile enough to dodge a bit of kink shaming from John Cena’s Christopher Smith, AKA Peacemaker, in the latest episode of the HBO Max show.
Warning: From here on out, this article will contain spoilers for Peacemaker episode 5.
The scene in question — in episode five, “Monkey Dory” — occurs when Chukwudi Iwuji’s Clemson Murn gives a long overdue presentation about the nature of the alien threat Task Force X is up against. He explains in a slideshow — complete with cringey visualizations — that the invading aliens known as butterflies take over humans by entering through one of their orifices, possibly including the butt.
When the animation crops up of a butterfly entering someone’s posterior, Clemson, the mission leader of Project Butterfly, clarifies that he thinks “that’s just some, uh, creativity on the part of whomever did the animation.”
When Freddie Stroma’s Vigilante accuses the presentation of “bigotry” for implying that the extraterrestrial parasites would willingly crawl through poop “just cause they’re aliens,” Peacemaker gives his own rebuttal (pun intended).
“Superman’s an alien. He’s got a poop fetish,” the chrome-helmeted antihero says. “He uber-liebes the old scheisse, as I understand it.”
When pressed by Jennifer Holland’s Emilia Harcourt where Peacemaker gets “this nonsense,” the show’s titular government mercenary answers: “Google.” And speaking of the internet, fans online were buzzing with the possibility that Clark Kent cares for caca.
One Twitter user simply posted a frowny face emoji giving a thumbs down at the line, perhaps indicating that he wasn’t down to “yuck” someone else’s “yum,” even if he is a superhero. However, they added that, “The Google line it led up to was kind of funny.”
Other fans found the line absolutely side-splitting, to the point of laughing their own poop factories off.
Even though one DC fanatic called the line “a step too far,” saying “Superman doesn’t have a poop fetish,” they still had to admit it was laugh-out-loud worthy.
The poop fetish line, a leak for which has been circulating online since at least the beginning of the month ⏤ even before episode five was released ⏤ proved to be a sticking point for some Zack Snyder loyalists. Because Warner Bros. is apparently done with Snyder spearheading the DC shared cinematic universe, some advocates for restoring his vision and boycotting DC’s continuation of the franchise (without Snyder) are pointing to the Superman poop fetish joke as just one more reason to petition for Snyder’s return.
No matter what side of the Superman poop fetish debate you land on, it’s objectively hilarious to see people taking the subject matter so gosh darn seriously.
Peacemaker’s fifth episode, in which you will find the controversial doo-doo line and can make up your own mind about it, is now available on HBO Max.