Warning: SPOILERS for The Suicide Squad.
James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad features four characters returning from David Ayer’s Suicide Squad and they’ve evolved in the years since they first teamed up in 2016. The Suicide Squad is set in the DC Extended Universe but only loosely serves as a sequel to the original. Anyone who didn’t see Suicide Squad or 2020’s Birds of Prey can still fully enjoy Gunn’s rollicking supervillain splatterfest without confusion.
The brainchild of A.R.G.U.S.’s Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), Task Force X (the Suicide Squad’s official designation) is intended to utilize metahumans incarcerated in Louisiana’s Belle Reve prison for black ops missions that serve the interests of the United States government. The DC characters of the Suicide Squad who “volunteer” (or, more accurately, are coerced or blackmailed), can have 10 years erased from their term if they complete a mission and survive. If there’s any attempt at desertion or disobedience, Waller will detonate the nano bomb that is implanted in each prisoner’s neck. A few villains like Slipknot (Adam Beach) and El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) died in Ayer’s Suicide Squad and even more garishly-clad bad guys are massacred in The Suicide Squad. Thus, the very nature of Task Force X is that its characters are expendable, so it was built into audience expectation that most of the original cast may not come back for The Suicide Squad.
The Suicide Squad doesn’t specify when exactly it takes place in the DCEU timeline but contextual clues place it happening after Birds of Prey since Harley Quinn is back in Belle Reve after she was broken out by Jared Leto’s absentee Joker at the end of Suicide Squad. Some of the strangest outlier villains in the DC Universe were handpicked by James Gunn for The Suicide Squad, but for viewers who enjoyed the previous film, it was also fun to see a few other familiar faces return for Gunn’s unique brand of total mayhem. The repeat offenders created a necessary bridge between the two films. However, the four Suicide Squad comeback kids have minor differences from their previous appearances to smartly mark how time and experiences have changed them, and by the end of The Suicide Squad, only two of the originals from David Ayer’s movie are left standing.
In Birds of Prey, Harley Quinn was dumped by the Joker and she was targeted as the most wanted woman in Gotham. But with her emancipation, Quinn redefined herself as an individual. There are many differences between Harley in 2016’s Suicide Squad and 2021’s The Suicide Squad while remaining the same irrepressible antiheroine. Harley even made some friends like Dinah Lance/Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett) and Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), although they aren’t mentioned in The Suicide Squad. At some point after Birds of Prey, Harley ended up back in Belle Reve because she was pinched for having “road rage… in a bank.” Amanda Waller must have wanted to get rid of Quinn, however, since The Wall sends Harley to Corto Maltese with the doomed team meant to be a diversion and cannon fodder.
Birds of Prey‘s director Cathy Yan and James Gunn both downplayed Harley’s sexuality after her eye candy was a selling point of Suicide Squad 2016. Gunn smartly costumes Harley in her signature black and red comic book colors, even when she is forced to trade her leather uniform for a red dress in Corto Maltese. Gunn also eliminates the “Rotten” tattoo on Harley’s right cheek but the killer clown doll is the same Harley Quinn fans know and love. Harley has grown more than surface looks in The Suicide Squad, though. Even after Presidente General Silvio Luna (Juan Diego Botto), the newly-installed dictator of Corto Maltese, wines and dines Harley, she still kills him when he starts talking about ruling with a fascist fist and murdering all who oppose him. As she explains to him as he’s dying, she’s learned from her terrible exes to start paying attention to red flags the next time she meets a guy. Unlike when Harley allowed the Joker to manipulate her in Suicide Squad and even, to some extent, in Birds of Prey, Harley is savvier this time about recognizing a toxic man.
Harley is also no damsel in distress; she always gets herself out of any jam she finds herself in. Suicide Squad 2016 showed Harley fighting monsters by herself and in Birds of Prey, Quinn took on an entire building full of Gotham cops. In The Suicide Squad, Harley is an even deadlier hand-to-hand combatant and she tears through numerous Corto Maltesean soldiers. One major change from Suicide Squad, however, is that Harley now knows how to swim since she couldn’t in the past and had to be saved from drowning by Batman (Ben Affleck) in Suicide Squad‘s flashbacks.
The Suicide Squad boasts a Col. Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) with a different attitude tweaked from his previous appearance in 2016. Physically, Flag is the same capable soldier, although he’s clean-shaven in Gunn’s film as opposed to having facial hair in Suicide Squad. Gunn also took inspiration from the comic book version of Rick Flag and dressed Kinnaman in the character’s signature yellow T-shirt (emblazoned with a bunny for comedic effect) and black shoulder gun holsters.
The biggest change in The Suicide Squad‘s version of Flag is the special forces operative is no longer romantically hung up over June Moon/The Enchantress (Cara Delevingne). Enchantress isn’t mentioned at all in The Suicide Squad and Flag has moved on. Flag is also old friends with Robert Dubois, a.k.a. Bloodsport (Idris Elba), which is a big reversal of how antagonistic Flag was with Deadshot (Will Smith) in Suicide Squad before they earned each other’s respect. In The Suicide Squad, Flag is more at ease leading supervillains in field ops, and, understandably, Flag is much friendlier with Harley Quinn, and to a lesser extent, Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), since he worked with them in 2016. This is a more easygoing Flag who is quicker to crack a deadpan joke than before.
Flag is still loyal to a fault to Amanda Waller but she made him lead the diversionary mission to Corto Maltese, probably knowing he’d be killed–or even hoping he would be, suspecting he’d not go along with her plan if he knew her true goal of the mission. Still, Flag survived and ended up becoming allies with the military resistance looking to overthrow Corto Maltese’s dictatorial regime. Flag working with rebels instead of true blue American soldiers is another change. Unfortunately, John Cena’s Captain America clone, Peacemaker, kills Flag when the career soldier stands up to Waller and is determined to tell the world the U.S. government was responsible for Project Starfish in Corto Maltese. His defiance of a direct order shows how much Rick Flag really had changed, with him admitting he was sick of being used by the U.S. government.
Digger Harkness, a.k.a. Captain Boomerang, didn’t change too much between films, although he only briefly appeared at the beginning of The Suicide Squad before he was killed off on the beach in Corto Maltese. Perhaps the biggest change made by The Suicide Squad is that Boomerang isn’t obsessed with the pink unicorn stuffed animal he carried around in Suicide Squad 2016. Naturally, Digger and Harley Quinn are friendly and affectionate with each other after having survived the mission of the original Suicide Squad movie together. Otherwise, Boomerang looked and acted the same as before; he was still provoking the other members of Task Force X and when he used his boomerangs, it was to lethal effect. Unlike Harley, it doesn’t seem like Boomerang ever escaped Belle Reve in the years between films but his number was finally punched in The Suicide Squad.
Not only did Amanda Waller not change at all in between films but Task Force X’s director arguably got even worse in The Suicide Squad. Waller was always ruthless, but in Gunn’s film, she had no problem with threatening to send Bloodsport’s teenage daughter, Tyla (Storm Reid), to prison, knowing she’d likely be killed, just to get the mercenary to lead the Suicide Squad. Waller also had no qualms about sending out a team of decoys to get massacred in Corto Maltese, but she was also willing to kill them all herself for disobeying orders.
The Suicide Squad‘s biggest change in Waller is reflected in how those around her interact with her. In Gunn’s movie, her staff finally turns on her in order to help the surviving members of Task Force X defeat Starro and save Corto Maltese. This was both a reversal of and a payback for how Waller shot and killed her support staff in cold blood in Suicide Squad. This time, John Economos (Steve Agee) and Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) lead their coworkers into subduing Waller, which is the right thing to do. Even though they fear Amanda Waller’s retribution, it was a sign that Waller had finally gone too far and had become a flat-out supervillain. Waller is one of the most despicable and ruthless people in the DCEU and she continues to be the same person in The Suicide Squad that she was in 2016–but, arguably, even worse.
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