Somewhere, a Sarah Lawrence admissions officer is gloating.

Jordan Peele, the writer, director, and producer responsible for three blockbuster feature films, has four Academy Award nods—and one win—and who has reinvented horror for the modern age, had a humbler vision for his career when he set off to college.

“I started out as a puppeteer,” the Sarah Lawrence graduate told an audibly surprised Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett on a recent episode of their Smartless podcast. “It was my cheeky, liberal arts answer to what my major is,” he said, describing the virtuous appeal of a thankless but beautiful artform. As he explained his teenage plan—study sculpture, theater, kill it on the puppet circuit—the three cohosts began to guffaw openly. Peele joined in on the joke. “Hey, I was a real Bohemian mo’fu’.”

All blessings to anyone who saw such potential in the puppetry and waved that young man in. While it didn’t stick, his preternatural ability to build all-consuming worlds has only grown.

Nope, his latest box office smash, is both a tribute to and commentary on spectacle, an extraordinary visual experience that takes a familiar fear, aliens, and turns it into a cautionary tale with a wholly modern message. In spoiler-free terms, to pull it off, Peele seems to have considered every possible narrative scenario and stretched them as far as they can go until they snapped. Then he kept on stretching, until it feels like you’re in his head watching him do it.

It seems to be how he works.

Peele honed his horror-writing discipline as part of the groundbreaking sketch comedy duo Key and Peele. “It’s all a rhythm. I find horror and [sketch] comedy are sort of baked into one another,” he says. “It’s about grounding and absurdity…taking a swing at something that’s kind of going to make you fucking terrified and making it real.”

But many of us walk through the world terrified of different things, don’t we?

Peele’s first film, Get Out, was written during the Obama administration. In the film’s commentary track, he explained it was designed to be his artistic answer to “this post-racial lie” that the election of the first Black president meant that racism was handled. To do it, he had to present white people as the monsters that history has proven they’re capable of being. But how? “Honestly, it’s just life,” he told Bateman. “This nugget of fear of being the Black guy in a white space, where you’re feeling the attention, and it’s not good.” And that’s the work: If the fear that’s captured his imagination isn’t something he’s seen in a film before, he starts stretching. “If I can capture that fear, then I can make a horror movie out of it.”

Get Out was the cinematic deep dive into the racist white id that everybody needed yet nobody knew they wanted. Except they did and made it one of the most financially successful films of 2017, earning $255.7 million worldwide on a budget of just $4.5 million. And while it put Peele on the map as a solo talent, it also launched the career of Daniel Kaluuya, whose character not only survived the horror, but was allowed to be fully human—tragic backstory, cute dog, and delightful best friend—and unapologetically Black.

Peele even rewrote the ending to match the times. In this original ending, Chris, played by Kaluuya, goes to jail for killing his white tormenters.

“By the time it was ready to produce, it was a new moment…people were woke, addressing racism,” says Peele. “And they needed a hero.” So, he gave them one. And by doing so, opened the door for other, equally authentic Black characters who were fighting the kinds of societal demons lots of dominant culture folks don’t really think much about.

By the time Us came out in 2019, Peele was prepared to let the film, which was about eerie dopplegängers who terrorize a family, do more of the talking. “This movie is about this country,” Peele said at the SXSW film festival. “We’re in a time where we fear the other, whether it’s the mysterious invader that we think is going to come and kill us and take our jobs, or the faction we don’t live near, who voted a different way than us. We’re all about pointing the finger. And I wanted to suggest that maybe the monster we really need to look at has our face. Maybe the evil, it’s us.”

With Nope, expect Peele to say even less. (Here’s one clue: “nope” is an acronym. Look it up.) The film itself is the statement, he says. “It’s a big budget flying saucer movie with Black people in the lead,” he told the Smartless audience. “There’s no need to push the conversation further.”

Black people in the lead is also a clue.

Peele’s production company, Monkeypaw Productions—which is “committed to groundbreaking storytelling, visionary world-building, and the unpacking of contemporary social issues”—has cranked out a portfolio of film and television hits that bring much-needed depth to Black and underrepresented characters even though they always in danger, girl. (It even has a vice president of culture and impact, whose team creates social campaigns around the themes of the films.) Many of the projects Peele has helped produce—like the HBO series Lovecraft Country which was tangentially about Jim Crow, the 2021 remake of Candyman which was tangentially about gentrification, and the Spike Lee film, BlackkKlansman which was directly about the klan—include Black characters with imagination, quirks, agency, complex longings, and rich intellects who navigate situations which necessitate they fight for causes bigger than themselves. Just like Peele and the many professionals he collaborates with. They are also allowed to be more than their trauma. They are also allowed to be beautiful. They are often allowed to be funny. And we are required to respect them.

As Peele is now respected.

Peele’s next project is the Netflix animated stop-motion film Wendell & Wild, which he co-wrote, and finds him reunited with his comedy partner, Keegan-Michael Key. Anything after that? Wait and see, he said at the Nope premiere. I expect that in an age of erasure, where essential history is being destroyed by conservative gatekeepers, politicians, and book-burning school boards—acts capable of terrifying lots of people, including Peele—a new nugget of fear is sure to take root in his psyche. We could sure use an avenging, time-traveling, shape-shifting librarian right about now.

But whatever he decides, it will definitely come in his signature style of horror, comedy, and Peelean puppet-mastery. “I will stay within this realm that I love, which is, I think, the only way I know how to view the world and how to tell stories at this point.”

Ellen McGirt @ellmcgirt Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com

This edition of raceAhead was edited by Ashley Sylla.

This is the web version of raceAhead, Fortune’s daily newsletter on race, culture, and inclusive leadership. To get it delivered daily to your inbox, sign up here.

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