The more James Gunn talks, the more confusing the all-new, all-different DCU becomes. Before the new shared universe kicked off with the animated streaming series Creature Commandos, the DC Studios’ co-chair had already muddied the waters by explaining that certain pre-DCU events would ultimately become canon in the new DCU.
“Now in Creature Commandos, you’ll hear them talk about things that happened in [The] Suicide Squad or Peacemaker. Well then, those things automatically become canon,” said Gunn in a November 2024 interview with IGN.
And as additional DC Studios’ projects have been released, quite a few more things that happened in The Suicide Squad have been talked about and even seen on screen, leading to some speculation that Gunn’s admittedly arbitrary and amorphous canon guidelines may have been flexible enough to fully integrate his 2021 project into the DCU. Well…nope.
Only CC forward is pure canon; Peacemaker is almost entirely consistent with that canon other than the Justice League; The Suicide Squad has a lot of consistencies but I think of it as an imperfect memory.
-James Gunn
In a new interview with THR, Gunn explained that canonicity as it relates to The Suicide Squad “brings up more questions than answers,” and that is “not DCU.”
“People are always asking me about stuff from The Suicide Squad, and The Suicide Squad is a difficult thing because it is not DCU,” said Gunn. “But there aren’t too many things in it that aren’t [DCU]. Unlike Peacemaker season one–which is completely DCU, besides the ending and one or two mentions of different things–The Suicide Squad brings up more questions than answers.”
The truth is that canon doesn’t matter…until, of course, it does..and at some point, it might. And so while the entirety of The Suicide Squad is not canon, parts of it certainly are. In both Creature Commandos and Season 2 of Peacemaker, the death of Rick Flag Jr. at the hands of Christopher Smith during the mission to Corto Maltese has been addressed, leading THR to wonder whether or not Smith’s Task Force X teammates might come after him upon learning he’s alive. According to Gunn, that’s not a story he’s interested in telling.
“Now, I’m not saying that those characters won’t reappear. I’m just saying that I am [already] dealing with Peacemaker’s guilt over killing Rick Flag Jr. and his repercussions for that,” explained Gunn. “And that story is being told through his relationship with Rick Flag Sr. To tell it through Bloodsport, who was friends with Rick Flag Jr., would be an emotionally diminished story compared to the one I’m telling now. So it doesn’t interest me at all.“
The mention of Idris Elba‘s Bloodsport is interesting given that Gunn has claimed that he’s “always looking for a place to put Bloodsport.” However, it sounds as though once he finds that place, it won’t include much in the way of dealing with Peacemaker killing Bloodsport’s “friend”…which would seem weird. Whatever the case, it’s likely that with Gunn looking to continue carving out a nice-sized role for Peacemaker in the DCU, we can all look forward to more canonical inconsistencies.
Source: THR
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