Having released a week ago in some international markets, The Suicide Squad premieres in domestic theaters and HBO Max today, where it’s poised to be the weekend’s biggest talking point. It’s currently the best-reviewed installment the DCEU has ever seen, with spinoff series Peacemaker coming to streaming in January 2022, and plenty of talk already making the rounds about writer and director James Gunn’s future with Hollywood’s other marquee superhero franchise.
Obviously, as a big budget superhero blockbuster, The Suicide Squad has at least one scene after the credits, and we’ll be diving into them from here on out, so consider this your spoiler warning. The first sees Weasel wash up on a beach, where the unnerving creature comes to its senses and scurries off into the dense rainforest of Corto Maltese. It doesn’t mean a thing in the long run, but it’s still fun to see the first member of the team to ‘die’ onscreen end up as one of just a small few survivors.
Inevitably, the second stinger ties directly into Peacemaker, which was originally intended to be a prequel. However, Gunn revealed in a new interview that he’s not keen on the idea of diving into the past, and the HBO Max show will instead pick directly up from the events of The Suicide Squad.
“I thought of it as a prequel, and at the end of the day, I’m like, ‘Eh, I hate prequels’. So I just wanted to continue to tell his story, and I thought that I wasn’t really interested in seeing who Peacemaker was before all of this, because he’s a real piece of work. A lot of the other characters get pretty deep change in this movie where they become much different people by the end of the situation then from beforehand, whereas Peacemaker doesn’t; he actually becomes a little worse.
I was just interested to see where he came from, how he became that person and where he could go from there. We’ve got this incredibly great ensemble show, which is not only him, it’s also Jennifer Holland as Emilia Harcourt, who’s in the movie. And Steve Agee is John Economos, so two major characters. And then his friendship with Danielle Brooks’ character, who’s the complete political opposite of him. There’s sort of an All In The Family thing happening with the politics of the show. So it’s really been just an absolute joy to make the TV show.”
It looked as though Peacemaker had met his demise after being shot in the neck by Bloodsport and then having a building fall on top of him, but the post-credits confirms he’s not only alive, but still wanted by Amanda Waller to keep doing what he’s doing, which makes sense when John Cena’s walking contradiction always puts peace and liberty at the forefront of this thinking.