This article contains light spoilers for Peacemaker season 2 episode 2 and Superman.Midway through the latest episode of Peacemaker, Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) has an unpleasant encounter with her ex-wife Keeya (Elizabeth Faith Ludlow). For a series as strange and over-the-top as Peacemaker, the substance of the argument is surprisingly relatable. The two bicker about their new status quo, unspoken feelings, and unrealized plans.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});It’s that last point that Keeya evokes when she accuses Adebayo of recklessly changing their lives. “We were supposed to go to Gotham,” she snaps.That statement does not sound relatable at all, at least to anyone who has seen or read a Batman story. In the pages of DC Comics and in nearly every adaptation of the Dark Knight’s adventures, Gotham City is practically a hellscape, a nightmare of corrupt officials, organized crime, random violence, and an insane asylum with a revolving door.Why in the world would Keeya and Adebayo plan to go to Gotham? And why would Keeya be upset that she can’t go there?The Peacemaker argument isn’t the first time we’ve seen someone willingly go to Gotham in James Gunn new DCU. During the climactic scene of Superman, citizens fleeing the destruction of Metropolis are seen getting off on a highway exit leading to Gotham City. Even if Metropolis is about to be split in half by the rift caused by Lex Luthor’s Quantum Folding device, one would think that people would still avoid a city that has a place literally called “Crime Alley.”Could it be that James Gunn has something different in mind for the Gotham City of his rebooted DC Universe? While Bruce Wayne’s home city has so many problems that Batman often gripes about having to leave it on Justice League business, it has been portrayed in very different ways over the years. The Golden Age comics treated Gotham like any other major city, one that had a criminal element and genuinely good people. When sci-fi creeped into Batman’s Silver Age stories, Gotham became actually clean and futuristic in some places, mirroring the forward-facing Metropolis.That really started to change in the Bronze Age, with Frank Miller drawing from hardboiled detective fiction to make the Gotham of Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns into a cesspool. From the thug who randomly kills the Waynes to the upper classes who exploit the city to the mutants who take over in the near future, Gotham has become an incurable hotbed of crime. By the time we hit Modern Age stories such as The Court of Owls, writers treat Gotham as a the incarnation of evil itself.While the gothic designs of the 1990s Batman movies and the art deco qualities of Batman: The Animated Series make Gotham visually appealing, these works maintained the comics’ overall cynicism. Robert Pattinson may talk about wanting to inspire the people of his city in The Batman, but the movie just spent hours showing the depths of Gotham’s corruption.But as Gunn has pointed out time and again, The Batman has become an Elseworlds movie, set in a different type of world and thus has a different type of Gotham City. The fact that he’s bringing Robin back to the movie universes, in both the live-action movie Batman: Brave and the Bold and the animated film Dynamic Duo, suggests that Gunn is willing to interject some fun and lightness back into the Dark Knight’s world.Could it be that Superman and Peacemaker are pointing to a brighter, happier Gotham?Maybe, but those two entries are counter-balanced by the one look we’ve already had at the new DCU’s Gotham, the deeply unpleasant Doctor Phosphorus origin in Creature Commandos. Voiced by Alan Tudyk, the glowing green skeleton monster is easily the most morally ambivalent member of the titular team.In the show’s sixth episode “Priyatel Skelet,” we see how the gentle Gotham scientist Alex Sartorius was transformed into Phosphorus. It was gangster Rupert Thorne who murders Sartorius’s family and exploits the scientist, eventually leading to his mutation. In retaliation, Sartorious takes the name Doctor Phosphorus and brutally kills Thorne and his family, becoming the next crime boss of Gotham, until Batman (seen only in silhouette) arrives and takes him down.Creature Commandos gives us a Gotham not unlike those seen in most Batman adaptations, a Gotham that no one would want to visit, not even if they’re running from a world-destroying rift. So is Gunn putting together a more complicated version of the city, one with its tradtional bad parts, but also with some good parts, not usually seen on the page and screen?Thanks to Adebayo breaking up her relationship, we probably won’t know for sure until Brave and the Bold hits theaters.Peacemaker airs new episodes every Thursday at 9 p.m. on HBO Max.The post Peacemaker Hints That the New DCU Has a Very Different Gotham City appeared first on Den of Geek.