The Suicide Squad will see most of the original team joining forces with a bunch of new characters, but it might also see a big change in Rick Flag, as he could turn evil. The DC Extended Universe is going through big changes after its first wave of films didn’t perform as expected, most notably Suicide Squad and Justice League. The latter’s underperformance prompted the studio to change their plans for future films, with some previously introduced characters leading their own adventures (as Harley Quinn did in Birds of Prey) and other teams welcoming new characters.
Such is the case of the Suicide Squad, who are coming back in a new film but with a couple of changes. Titled The Suicide Squad, and directed by James Gunn, the film is intended to be a soft reboot and standalone sequel to David Ayer’s 2016 film, bringing back most of the original team (except Will Smith’s Deadshot). Many details about The Suicide Squad are still unknown, but it will see the previous Task Force X team joining forces with a bunch of new characters to bring down Jotunheim, a Nazi-era prison and laboratory in South America which held political prisoners and conducted experimentations. Among the few, proper looks at The Suicide Squad that the audience has gotten is a behind-the-scenes featurette released during the DC FanDome event in August 2020, and a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in it might be pointing at an original team member turning evil.
Although the main villain of The Suicide Squad hasn’t been confirmed, there are some very subtle hints pointing at Starro The Conqueror being the one. In the comics, Starro is an enemy of the Justice League, but his peculiar nature and abilities make him a perfect villain for Gunn’s take on the Suicide Squad. Starro is an alien amalgamate conqueror with a humanoid central mind commanding spores which can generate clones that act to his will. These clones are parasites and can attach themselves to a humanoid’s face, thus taking control of their central nervous system, turning them into “drones”. Now, Rick Flag is one of the returning characters from the first movie, and there are a couple of brief scenes shown in the DC FanDome featurette showing him fighting one of his new teammates (Peacemaker, played by John Cena), which could point at Flag turning evil thanks to Starro.
With so many characters on the same mission, it’s unlikely none of them will be a victim of Starro’s dangerous clones, and Rick Flag could end up becoming one of his drones at some point. Flag’s turn to the “evil side” was subtly teased in the FanDome footage twice, and in both scenes, he’s fighting Peacemaker. This would be a good twist in Rick Flag’s arc as in the first movie he was reduced to the leader of the team who couldn’t really manage them and who had a personal connection to the person they were trying to stop: Dr. June Moore (Cara Delevingne), who was possessed by an ancient evil force that transformed her into Enchantress. By turning him into a drone, Flag would have a bigger presence in the story, instead of just trying to be the voice of reason in a team of anti-heroes who are mostly driven by their guts.
Starro’s presence makes way for a lot of possibilities, more so as The Suicide Squad will have a big team of antiheroes with different abilities (and personalities). Rick Flag being turned into a drone would also add more conflict within the team (and subteams, as seen in the DC FanDome footage), and Peacemaker might be the one who snaps him out of it, bringing an exciting fight (or two) in the process.
