Fortnite Removes Controversial Peacemaker Dance Emote After Show’s Major Plot Twist

Photo: HBO Max

James Gunn introduced Peacemaker with a show-stopping musical opening in which the entire cast executes a deliberately theatrical, 1980s rock‑tinged dance while keeping stone‑faced expressions. A clip of that routine set to Wig Wam’s “Do Ya Wanna Taste It” has racked up more than 20 million views on YouTube. For season 2, Gunn aimed to capture similar momentum with a fresh intro choreographed to Foxy Shazam’s “Oh Lord.”

Fortnite briefly joined the frenzy in August by rolling out a Peacemaker cosmetics bundle and a “peaceful hips” emote that mirrors the opening’s opening beats and moves performed by John Cena. On Sept. 28, Epic Games announced it was disabling the emote and issuing refunds while it investigates whether the choreography unintentionally invokes troubling imagery after the major twist in season 2, episode 6, “Ignorance Is Chris.”

Ed. note: Major spoilers ahead for Peacemaker season 2, episode 6, “Ignorance Is Chris.”

The sequence itself subtly echoes plot threads from season two: Peacemaker travels to an alternate dimension where his brother Keith (David Denman) and father Auggie (Robert Patrick) remain alive, and both show up in the intro alongside an alternate Emilia Harcourt. Episode 6 confirms what fans long suspected — this other reality is Earth‑X, a DC continuity in which the Nazis prevailed in World War II.

That revelation prompted closer inspection of the choreography. Though many of the performers execute odd, deliberately rigid moves, there’s a brief passage where Cena’s arm motions form a shape resembling a swastika before he launches into hip thrusts and spins with Holland. That exact moment was captured in the Fortnite emote, so it’s understandable why Epic moved to remove and refund the item rather than risk players reproducing a symbol tied to extremist ideology.

There’s also an instant in the opening where Cena flexes one arm and extends the other in a motion some viewers read as evocative of a Sieg Heil salute. Members of the Earth‑X cast replicate the swastika‑like gestures in their turns, which has led observers to speculate that choreographer Charissa Barton may have deliberately encoded visual hints about the season’s twist into the routine. If the choreography was intentional, Epic’s cautionary response appears defensible.

Source: Polygon