A (mostly) brand new roster of scrappy, unstable, and colorful Task Force X supervillains and antiheroes will debut in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. First revealed at the 2020 DC FanDome, the new lineup of intriguing characters promises to join forces to fight the monstrous alien starfish Starro the Conqueror. Although it's certain that the team won't reach the end credits unscathed or in one piece, each member of the team offers a distinct set of sometimes ridiculous abilities and a unique personality that may or may not endanger or enhance the collective mission.
When it debuted back in 2016, David Ayer’s Suicide Squad was poorly received by critics despite its star-studded cast and fresh approach to the superhero genre. The story of the Suicide Squad is one of a team of incarcerated supervillains, called the Suicide Squad or Task Force X, who undertake high-risk black ops missions in exchange for reduced prison sentences and a few extra luxuries in their cells. Their infamous name refers to their government’s belief that their status as villains and convicts makes them expendable and readily available for missions that others would deem as suicide. Though it features some of the same actors and characters as Ayer's movie, like Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn and Jai Courtney's George Harkness a.k.a. Captain Boomerang, James Gunn's The Suicide Squad is basically a soft reboot - which is why it's not called Suicide Squad 2.
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Overseeing the jailbird comic book villains is Viola Davis' Amanda Waller, the government official heading up Task Force X. Joel Kinnaman is back as Colonel Rick Flag, with the unenviable job of keeping the Suicide Squad in line and on task while they're in the field. James Gunn, true to his comedic and absurd style, has opted for a host of bizarre, sometimes ridiculous, and all-around relatively unknown characters for the rest of his new The Suicide Squad team. So, exactly who is onboard the new Task Force X?
Check out The Suicide Squad: Every New Character Explained on YouTube here.
Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie)
Stepping into the role of Harley Quinn for the third time, Margot Robbie stars as the former Arkham Asylum psychiatrist Dr. Harleen Quinzel. The first Suicide Squad movie featured her first interactions with the Joker while he was her patient. After he threw her into a vat of chemicals at the Ace Chemicals plant, she kept an on-and-off relationship with the Clown Prince of Crime until she finally broke up with him. After reclaiming her autonomy in Birds of Prey, Harley Quinn is now even more determined and dangerous than ever before. Although she has no superpowers, despite clips from the movie showcasing some sort of flower power, Harley Quinn's combat skills and unpredictable character remain one of the Squad's most powerful assets.
Bloodsport (Idris Elba)
Though Elba was originally meant to replace Will Smith as Deadshot due to the latter's scheduling conflicts, director Gunn instead chose to have him play Robert DuBois, a.k.a. Bloodsport. At the time of The Suicide Squad, he is serving time in prison for "putting Superman in the ICU with a Kryptonite bullet." The character has had his fair share of incarnations since being created back in 1987, but his origin story saw him driven mad after finding out his brother Micky took his place in the draft for the Vietnam war. Lex Luthor then manipulated DuBois into blaming Superman, before supplying him with a teleporter and weapons. In the 2021 movie, Bloodsport's motivation is to help his daughter Tyla, played by Storm Reid, whose court case is used by Amanda Waller as leverage to convince him to join the team. Trailers have also shown Bloodsport having a close connection with Ratcatcher 2, which is yet to be explored.
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Peacemaker (John Cena)
John Cena stars as Christopher Smith, a.k.a. Peacemaker, a character that Cena himself has described as a “douchey Captain America." Peacemaker is a pacifist diplomat so committed to achieving peace that he is willing to become a vigilante to achieve his goals, going after warlords and dictators. In the comics, he finds out that his efforts are the result of mental illness, caused by the shame and guilt of knowing his father was a Nazi death camp commandant. After The Suicide Squad, John Cena's Peacemaker will star in his own series from James Gunn, which promises lots of misguided violence, plenty of James Gunn's brand of humor, and narrative connections to the larger DCEU.
Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman)
Joel Kinnaman returns as Colonel Rick Flag, leader of the original Suicide Squad. In the first Suicide Squad movie, he is a Special Forces officer and West Point graduate hired by Amanda Waller to monitor June Moone/Enchantress (Cara Delevingne). During the events of the 2016 flick, Flag fell in love with Moone and eventually freed her from the clutches of the ancient goddess Enchantress who was trying to unleash a potentially cataclysmic threat on humanity. Flag also enlisted Katana as his personal bodyguard, but even though Katana's character was wasted in Suicide Squad, the Colonel will not be bringing her on the mission in The Suicide Squad.
Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney)
Another member of the original Suicide Squad, Jai Courtney stars as George “Digger” Harkness, a notorious Australian criminal going by the name of Captain Boomerang. The Suicide Squad movie showed that he was captured by Ezra Miller's Barry Allen a.k.a. The Flash after pulling off a string of jewelry heists. After being sentenced to serve three life sentences, Harkness was forced to join Task Force X. With The Suicide Squad taking a new direction, Harkness's connection to the former Task Force X lineup and The Scarlet Speedster will be retconned, but his personality and weapons of choice will remain the same. However, with Andy Muschietti's The Flash keeping parts of the DCEU canon, Jai Courtney's Captain Boomerang can still cross paths with Ezra Miller's Barry Allen in the future.
The Thinker (Peter Capaldi)
Peter Capaldi is confirmed to star as The Thinker, one of DC Comics’ oldest villains, whose name was used by four different supervillains over the years. His abilities include technologically derived powers of telekinesis and mind control through his “Thinking Cap” — a metal helmet that projects his mental force. The Thinker is meant to be quite a young man, but his brain drains energy from the rest of his body and causes him to age prematurely. The character recently appeared as the main antagonist of The Flash season 4, portrayed by Neil Sandilands. In this soft reboot, The Thinker could play a key role in combatting the mind control of Starro the Conqueror, who is confirmed to be the film's antagonist.
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Sol Soria (Alice Braga)
Alice Braga plays Sol Soria, who is likely to be a gender-swapped version of the comic's Juan Soria, a character who gave himself the ability to unlock any object he touched by injecting nanites into his hand. Despite having a childhood dream to join the Justice League, Juan was denied and his hopes were crushed. Distraught and broke, he went on to rob a bank, only to then find himself stopped by the Justice League. Due to his ability to unlock any lock, he was placed in a hole in Belle Reve before being recruited into the Suicide Squad. Soria's skillset is reminiscent of Suicide Squad's Slipknot — a criminal who could climb anything with his expertly crafted knots. Slipknot infamously died early in the 2016 film, so Soria's fate doesn't look so hopeful.
Blackguard (Pete Davidson)
SNL cast member and comedian Pete Davidson appears as Richard Hertz, a.k.a. Blackguard. Initially a small-time thug, he was recruited by the criminal organization The 1000, to carry out a number of jobs and operations for their nefarious purposes. He usually wears heavy armor gifted to him by The 1000, which allows him to generate a shield and mace made of pure energy. In The Suicide Squad, however, Davidson’s volatile Blackguard mostly uses guns.
Polka Dot Man (David Dastmalchian)
Abner Krill, a.k.a. Polka-Dot Man or Mister Polka-Dot, is a minor Batman villain from the 1960s, who launched a crime wave inspired by dots and spots. He wore a costume covered in polka-dots that could be removed from the suit and would turn into a variety of objects, from deadly weapons to a flying saucer, which he used as an escape vehicle. These weapons are faithfully translated to the screen in The Suicide Squad, and Polka-Dot Man acknowledges how absurd his identity is, but he's still excited about the prospect of being an anti-hero. Trailers have shown his powers in effect, and his desire to become an anti-hero looks to be one of the film's more heartwarming moments, however few and far between they may be.
Savant (Michael Rooker)
Sporting an impressive wig, James Gunn's long-time friend and collaborator from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 and 2 Michael Rooker is announced to appear as Brian Durlin, more commonly known as Savant. The heir to a huge financial fortune, a genius vigilante, and head of a profitable blackmailing business, Savant appears to experience memory lapses because of his non-linear memory, which is due to a chemical imbalance. Savant has been associated with the Birds of Prey in the comics and often wields a pair of batons.
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Mongal (Mayling Ng)
In the comics, Mongal is an alien warlord who, alongside her twin brother Mongul the Younger, was the daughter of the tyrannical ruler of Warworld, Mongul the Elder. She and her brother attempted to kill Superman for dishonoring their father, a confrontation that turned into a bloody battle and ended only when Krypto almost killed Mongul. As an alien, Mongal possesses superhuman strength, agility, speed, and stamina, which allowed her to engage Superman in combat. In the comics, she is eventually killed by her brother, who believed that family was a weakness he could not afford. The Singaporean martial artist Mayling Ng previously played the Amazon warrior Orana in Wonder Woman.
TDK (Nathan Fillion)
TDK has been confirmed to be short for The Detachable Kid, which in turn is another name for Arm-Fall-Off-Boy. He has the ability to detach his own limbs and use them as blunt weapons, though it is unclear how he originally acquired this strange power. His ability proved unimpressive, and he was rejected by the Legion. A recently released clip from the film has shown that this ability will likely be just as useless on the big screen, though it will no doubt prove to be a moment of great hilarity before the chaos resumes once more. The character will be played by Nathan Fillion, known for his leading roles in cult television shows Firefly and Castle. Like Michael Rooker, Fillion is a friend and long-time collaborator of director James Gunn, who featured him as an alien in Guardians of the Galaxy.
Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior)
Portuguese actress Daniela Melchior portrays Ratcatcher 2, presumably related to the Batman villain Ratcatcher, whose ability was controlling and communicating with rats. Originally called Otis Flannegan, he developed his criminal alter-ego as Ratcatcher and trained hordes of rats to kill and torture before he was stopped by Batman. It is possible that Ratcatcher 2 could be Flannegan’s daughter, his protegée, gender-swapped parallel, or perhaps even a superfan of his. Pre-release trailers showed Ratcatcher 2's abilities in full view, and have gave fans a glimpse of her more vulnerable side during conversations when core team member, Idris Elba's Bloodsport, promises to get her out alive. What these conversations could mean in context is anyone's guess, but perhaps a moment of somber reflection and closeness that the film could build on throughout.
King Shark
King Shark is a shark-human hybrid. It was believed initially that King Shark would be voiced by comedian Steve Agee, but the first trailer for The Suicide Squad revealed that Sylvester Stallone is in fact voicing the towering and terrifying hybrid. Also known as Nanaue, King Shark’s father is the Shark God. Due to his physiology, he is able to live indefinitely underwater with superhuman strength and durability, as well as a phenomenal appetite for humans. Despite his intimidating appearance and abilities, King Shark is innocent to a fault, anotherkey element to his character. He's often depicted as a hammerhead shark in the comics, but King Shark's new The Suicide Squad design gives him a great white-like appearance. Interestingly, Suicide Squad director David Ayer has previously explained that King Shark was originally meant to appear in his 2016 movie but, because this would only have been possible as a fully CGI character, he was replaced by Killer Croc. With Aquaman getting a sequel to his solo movie, it's possible The Suicide Squad's King Shark will cross paths with the King of Atlantis in the future.
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Weasel (Sean Gunn)
James Gunn’s brother Sean Gunn is set to appear as the motion-capture character Weasel, a man-sized anthropomorphic weasel. In the character’s first incarnation as John Monroe, Weasel was a man who did not perform well in academia, and so took on the costumed identity of a weasel to brutally murder those he believed threatened to take his tenure. In The Suicide Squad, Weasel is an actual mutant weasel who possesses superhuman strength and speed. At first, the team doesn't really know what creature he is and even confuse him with a werewolf, but soon get to have more respect for him once they learn that he has killed 27 children. Sean Gunn previously played the motion capture for Rocket Raccoon as well as Kraglin in his brother's Guardian of the Galaxy movies.
Javelin (Flula Borg)
Javelin, played by Flula Borg in The Suicide Squad, is a former German Olympic athlete who, for unknown reasons, turned to a life of crime. He created an arsenal of weapons based on javelins and went up against Green Lantern when he stole a prototype jet-powered solar Ferris Aircraft, defeating him. Javelin was later captured, however, and recruited to the Suicide Squad. Pre-release trailers hinted that this character wouldn't last long and that Harley Quinn may have something to do with his untimely demise.
Amanda Waller (Viola Davis)
Viola Davis reprises her role as Amanda Waller in The Suicide Squad. Waller, the commanding officer of Task Force X, is a powerful political figure involved in several espionage and law enforcement agencies. Throughout her comic book, animation, and live-action appearances, she has advocated for and created the Suicide Squad based on her belief that powered individuals presented a threat to humans. Without any superpower or special ability herself, Amanda Waller's greatest weapon is her influence and unwavering determination, which have helped her face the most dangerous individuals on the planet and manipulate them to work for her. It's safe to say that without Amanda Waller, any Suicide Squad lineup would do justice to their name before their mission even started.
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