How Peacemaker’s White Dragon Compares To The Comics

Warning: Contains spoilers for Peacemaker episode 4.

In Peacemaker episode 4, “The Choad Less Traveled,” the DCEU TV show reveals the White Dragon armor that indicates how closely the show might be following the original comic character. Located in Peacemaker’s father’s quantum unfolding storage space, the White Dragon armor gets its own pedestal. While Auggie Smith seems to be quasi-retired, it is clear that he still holds his armor in high esteem while working on new equipment for his son.

William Heller, a major white supremacist, was the original White Dragon in DC comics. He originally founded the Aryan Empire and went by the name of William Hell, but later returned as White Dragon in a suit of armor when joined the Fourth Reich. Peacemaker appears to be combining the William Heller White Dragon with Peacemaker’s racist and abusive father from the comics, Wolfgang Schmidt, to have Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick) serve as both the White Dragon and Peacemaker’s father.

As Peacemaker is stealing the spare helmets from his father’s house in Peacemaker episode 4, he is joined by Vigilante as he notices the White Dragon armor that is tonally extremely similar to the comic’s depiction. Much of the color scheme and the shapes have been recreated accurately by Gunn’s team, with the most notable stylistic changes being toning down the size of the cuffs, boots, and shoulder pads, and extending the helmet’s horns to be more defined. These give the suit a sleeker and slightly more realistic silhouette, while also highlighting the evil nature of the character.

While the Peacemaker version of the White Dragon costume looks aesthetically similar to the comic book version, Vigilante highlights a major design change as he points out that the cloth between the pieces of armor provides weak points. William Heller’s armor was almost impenetrable, to the extent that a character called Plastique was only able to kill him once she had managed to make a small hole in the suit. When Amanda Waller first recruited White Dragon into the Suicide Squad, she had his armor set to electrocute him if he disobeyed – a feature that is presumably not included in Auggie Smith’s Peacemaker White Dragon costume.

While the Butterflies are set up as the primary threat in the early episodes of Peacemaker, several clues indicated that Auggie Smith’s White Dragon, potentially under the control of Amanda Waller, might become a bigger issue for Peacemaker. As the White Dragon armor is shown in Peacemaker episode 4, it is almost inevitable that Smith will wear it and fight Peacemaker before the end of the season in a Chekov’s Gun situation. The changes that have been made to the White Dragon costume for the Peacemaker TV series to make it less impenetrable should mean that Peacemaker is on a more even playing field with White Dragon and will be able to beat him, if Christopher Smith is able to get past his own mental blocks about his father.

Peacemaker releases new episodes Thursdays on HBO Max.

About The Author

Faefyx Collington
(489 Articles Published)

Faefyx Collington (They/Them) is a senior features writer for Screen Rant. They’re a British writer of both fiction and non-fiction, focussing on science fiction, fantasy, and mystery for the former and on culture, gender, and current affairs for the latter.
Never content to settle to one thing, Faefyx is also a co-host and producer of the podcast and video series “Unramblings,” and can occasionally be found making music around the internet as well.
Having acquired degrees on both sides of the Atlantic, Fyx has settled (for the moment) in the southern United States where they live with their spouse and an entirely appropriate number of cats.

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