The animated corner of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters isn’t slowing down. During the World’s Finest panel at Annecy, showrunner Dean Lorey and DC Studios co-chair James Gunn have officially unveiled first-look details and artwork for Creature Commandos Season 2.
Season 2 will continue to follow the core team of monstrous metahumans originally assembled by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) and John Economos (Steve Agee). The first-look assets confirm the survival and return of the central Task Force M mainstays:
David Harbour’s Eric Frankenstein and Indira Varma’s The Bride continuing their complicated domestic dynamic, with the latter leading the squad.
Alan Tudyk’s combustible Dr. Phosphorus, Sean Gunn’s Weasel, and the rebuilt military-bot G.I. Robot will also return.
“He’s got a really strong and emotional character arc this season,” producer Rick Morales said of G.I. Robot. “[Gunn] cares a lot and has really great insights. We sent him a dozen looks and keyed in on these rounder, bigger shapes.”
The animated corner of the DCU is locking in its future. In a fresh update, DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn has officially confirmed that Creature Commandos Season 2 will serve as the immediate next project to release following his highly anticipated theatrical film, Man of Tomorrow, in 2027.
While fans initially expected a quicker turnaround for the black-ops monster squad, the 2027 window establishes a highly specific roadmap for Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters as it transitions into its next phase.
Gunn has been active on social media dropping updates from the set of Man of Tomorrow, confirming that DC’s animation slate is moving forward aggressively. Season 2 of Creature Commandos is being positioned exactly how Season 1 was—acting as the narrative bridge. Where Season 1 launched the DCU before the first Superman film, Season 2 will drop “shortly after” Man of Tomorrow to deal with the cosmic and political fallout of that movie. Interestingly, Gunn previously confirmed that he did not write the scripts for Season 2 due to his intense directorial duties on Man of Tomorrow, handing the creative reins over to a trusted room of writers to keep the fast-tracked production moving.
Showrunner Dean Lorey has already teased what fans can expect from the return of Task Force M.
More G.I. Robot: Lorey explicitly stated that the team lineup from the Season 1 finale will remain “at least somewhat accurate,” but promised that his primary goal for the sophomore outing was to deliver a “beefed-up G.I. Robot” arc.
The Salvation Run Theory: Following Peacemaker Season 2, fans are already speculating that Season 2 could adapt elements of the Salvation Run comic storyline, featuring Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) and the Commandos hunting down rogue metahumans to exile them to a prison planet.
Creature Commandos won’t be lonely in 2027. Gunn hinted that more television projects are coming that year, with the animated Mister Miracle series (adapting Tom King’s run) and Blue Beetle‘s animated continuation tracking closely behind.
Hype for Creature Commandos has remained high because it proves Gunn‘s commitment to treating animation as an equal pillar to live-action. By scheduling Season 2 to immediately follow Man of Tomorrow, DC Studios is ensuring that the overarching narrative of the DCU remains fluid across mediums. The monsters aren’t just filler; they are the connective tissue of this universe.
The roster of Task Force M is officially getting a major power upgrade—and a brand new voice. According to the latest casting updates for Creature Commandos Season 2, Sydney Chandler (Alien: Earth, Don’t Worry Darling) has been officially cast as Nosferata after reading for a key role in Man of Tomorrow.
The character, who was teased in the Season 1 finale as a new recruit for the team, is set to be a series regular in the upcoming season as the DCU explores the more supernatural corners of its mythology. Unlike the hulking monsters we’ve seen so far, Nosferata brings a different kind of undead energy to the team.
In the pages of DC Comics, Nosferata is a vampire created during the 1940s experiments of Project Moreau.
In the DCU, after spending decades as an inmate at Belle Reve, she was recruited by Amanda Waller to join the new iteration of the Creature Commandos led by The Bride. She was first seen playing ping-pong with Doctor Phosphorus in the Season 1 finale. In Season 2, she’ll be a core member of the squad, filling the void left by the death of Nina Mazursky.
Per James Gunn’s rule for the DCU, Sydney Chandler will provide the voice for the animated series and is expected to play the character in any future live-action appearances. Chandler joins an already stacked voice cast, including Indira Varma (The Bride), Alan Tudyk (Doctor Phosphorus), Sean Gunn (G.I. Robot/Weasel), and David Harbour (Eric Frankenstein).
Season 2 is currently in active production, with Gunn confirming that animation is underway. While a release date hasn’t been locked, the show is expected to return to Max in late 2026 or early 2027, picking up after the events of Peacemaker Season 2.
Beginning in 2024, James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Studios will launch the DC Universe. In an effort to make more cohesive shared universe, the DCU will connect streaming series, video games and films through narrative threads. Though Gunn and Safran are building a new, interconnected continuity, there will still be DC projects produced outside of this continuity (such as Matt Reeves Batman Epic Crime Saga) under the Elseworlds banner.
What’s next for DC Studios? Who’s recently joined the cast of your most anticipated series or film? Where can you find the teasers and trailers? Look no further, true believers. Everything you need to know about the future of the DCU has been collected for you here. Click on each logo to learn what we currently know about the upcoming DCU projects.
Chapter One: Gods and Monsters
Elseworlds
Projects set outside of the main DCU continuity, the Elseworld projects allow artists to tell stories without attempting to weave them into the DCU’s narrative tapestry.
DC Studios’ Creature Commandos opened with two strong, action-packed episodes that introduced Task Force M and an all-new DCU rich with history and the sort of lived-in vibe that allows for other stories to exist in just about any corner. By setting stories in a universe where Eric Frankenstein has been stalking The Bride for a century, James Gunn has provided room for other character’s stories to have existed as well. And in Episode 3, “Cheers to the Tin Man”, Gunn took advantage of another long-lived character’s story to potentially set the stage for the DCU’s first super team.
Used to convey the history of G.I. Robot, the third episode of Creature Commandos introduced Doctor Will Magnus into the DCU continuity. Twenty years after the end of World War II, G. I. Robot finds himself in the possession of Magnus, a self-described AI specialist who hopes to study the robot in an effort to build the next wave of automatons. As the flashback to this time period comes to a close, Magnus is shown looking at a chalkboard that includes a set of symbols familiar to fans of DC Comics: the Metal Men.
Created in 1962 by writer Robert Kanigher and artist Ross Andru, DC’s Metal Men first appeared in 1962’s Showcase #37 and have evolved and survived throughout all the publishing houses new initiatives. Named after the metals from which they were built, Gold, Iron, Lead, Mercury, Platinum, and Tin also embodied the properties of the elements from which they were created. The team has served as heroes since the Silver Age of DC Comics and now can exist as such in the all-new DC Universe.
Though there’s been no indication from DC Studios’ co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran that a Metal Men project is in the works, one doesn’t necessarily have to be in order for the team to play a role in the DCU. While there’s no need for Magnus to have survived into the present day, his automatons could have and could show up in any number of upcoming projects.
As set photos from Superman have established, the DCU is already full of heroes who h whom the public is familiar. In a world where Hawkgirl, Metamorpho and a Guy Gardner are already active, it wouldn’t be shocking to learn that in-universe inhabitants are already familiar with the Metal Men. Of course, given their own rich comic book history, should someone present Gunn and Safran with a solid pitch, a Metal Men project could easily be used to flesh out the history of any number of years between the 1960s and 2020s. And therin lies the power of Gunn’s decree to tell stories for the sake of stories rather than for an overarching shared narrative. Given the success of Creature Commandos, an animated Metal Men streaming series would most likely be greeted warmly by fans.
The first three episodes of Creature Commandos are now streaming on Max.
While it certainly would not be fair to pigeonhole James Gunn, it is reasonable to say the DC Studios’ co-CEO finds comfort in a certain creative wheelhouse. Though the projects that make up his filmography span multiple genres, Gunn has unabashedly declared his love for superheroes and defended the prolific rise of their place in Hollywood’s pecking order against those who disdainfully regard them as unimaginative pop culture sedatives. From Scooby-Doo, to Guardians of the Galaxy to The Suicide Squad, Gunn has demonstrated an adroit understanding of how to curate the interpersonal dynamics of a team of characters in a way that allows for each member to be integral to the team while also having an individual arc.
Gunn was indubitably firmly within his creative wheelhouse while crafting the DC Studios’ animated streaming series Creature Commandos and the result is a frenzied and brilliant opening act for the all-new DC Universe.
Before encumbering himself with the unbearable weight of the responsibility of introducing the next iteration of Superman to the world, Gunn chose to dive down a very particular and peculiar rabbit hole with Creature Commandos. Intended as an opportunity “for people to just take a little nibble [of the all-new DCU] and see what it tastes like,” the seven-episode animated series assuredly accomplishes its goal. To introduce a brand new interconnected universe through the lens of monstrous outcasts is quite a bold statement on Gunn‘s part made even more outlandish by delivering it via animation. However, Creature Commandos, scaffolded by Gunn’s credibility in the superhero genre, arouses such powerful feelings of pity and sympathy for the members of Task Force M that despite teasing and referencing the inceptive DCU, fans will find themselves so entirely entranced by its cast of rejects that they’ll almost certainly be asking for more adventures…for the characters that survive.
Set two years after the events of The Suicide Squad, Creature Commandos leads off DC Studios’ lineup with gratuitous sanguination and fornication while delivering soul-crushing suffering to each member of the team. Led by sublime voice performances by Frank Grillo, Indira Varma, Zoe Chao and Alan Tudyk, the series lands firmly in the Goldilocks zone between obscene and acceptable, quite honestly giving everyone watching it what they want and everyone starring in it what they deserve…almost. There are no innocents, spare one, and somehow Gunn makes these monsters more human than human.
Screenshot
Rather than bludgeon the audience with obscenely overt cameos, Easter eggs and other references, Gunn tacitly adopted an almost Tolkien-esque approach to world-building his burgeoning DCU in Creature Commandos. Through the use of Lost-like flashbacks, each commando gets his or her own story, revealing a rich and robust world already fully developed and lived in. Outside of the members of Task Force M, plenty of other characters, such as Pokolistan’s Alexi, might make for interesting main characters in their own stories. References to larger lore are subtly sprinkled into the story, allowing the audience to understand that Batman has been active for at least 15 years, there are some strange goings on in Themyscira and there are plenty of other key locations and characters that could be explored down the road, though those stories could be set in the past, present or future of the DCU.
While concerns that the series would ultimately be derivative of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy or The Suicide Squad are understandable and not entirely unfounded, Creature Commandos stands firmly apart from his other works. To boot, Creature Commandos may be Gunn‘s most mature and evolved creation to date; it’s comedic and tragic and bolder than anything Gunn has done. While fans may be holding out hope for the return of Harley Quinn, they may find that Gunn, who has continued to strengthen the female leads in his projects, has crafted his most complete and compelling female yet in The Bride. In fact, the character may be a metaphor for the tumultuous road Gunn‘s career has traveled. If Gunn, as the overseer of the all-new DCU, can continue to curate stories that convey the same passion, maturity and appreciation for the source material as Creature Commandos, the auspicious start that it provides for the DCU will certainly grow into something deserving of the incredible and lasting influence of DC Comics.
About Creature Commandos
Creature Commandos, produced by DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation, tracks a secret team of incarcerated monsters recruited for missions deemed too dangerous for humans. When all else fails… they’re your last, worst option.
The seven-episode series stars Indira Varma as The Bride, Zoe Chao as Nina Mazursky, Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., Alan Tudyk as Dr. Phosphorus, Maria Bakalova as Princess Ilana, Anya Chalotra as Circe, Sean Gunn as GI Robot & Weasel, David Harbour as Frankenstein and Viola Davis as Amanda Waller.
Creature Commandos is written and executive-produced by James Gunn. Based on DC characters and produced by DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation; additional executive producers include Peter Safran, Dean Lorey, and Sam Register; Rick Morales serves as a supervising producer.
The first two episodes of Creature Commandos will debut Max on December 5th with new episodes streaming every Thursday through January 9th.
The all-new DCU kicks off on December 5th when DC Studios’ animated streaming series, Creature Commandos, debuts on Max with a two-episode premiere. Created by DC Studios’ co-chair James Gunn, the series tracks a secret team of incarcerated monsters recruited for missions deemed too dangerous for humans. The seven-episode series stars Indira Varma as The Bride, Zoe Chao as Nina Mazursky, Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., Alan Tudyk as Dr. Phosphorus, Maria Bakalova as Princess Ilana, Anya Chalotra as Circe, Sean Gunn as GI Robot & Weasel, David Harbour as Frankenstein and Viola Davis as Amanda Waller.
Even though it’s the first project of the new DCU, recent comments by Gunn have made it clear that a pair of projects he created and directed prior to the birth of DC Studios are also canon to the new continuity…at least kind of.
“I think of [The] Suicide Squad and Peacemaker as pretty unreliable memories of what happened in the DCU.”
“Well, it’s whatever we mention in anything,” said Gunn while explaining what events from his DCEU projects should be considered canon to the DCU. “Listen, Peacemaker is pretty easy. Peacemaker season 1 is basically canon outside of the appearance of the Justice League at the end, which you’ll see something about that in Peacemaker season 2. [The] Suicide Squad is probably a little bit looser. We know that Rick Flag Sr. is angry because his son was killed by Peacemaker, so we know that situation happened in the past, we have something to refer to to think of what it might be like that that happened, but that exists as canon because it was mentioned in Creature Commandos, not necessarily because it existed in [The] Suicide Squad.”
Though it may be a bit confusing, certainly nobody has thought about it more than Gunn and we’re willing to roll with the looseness for now. To that end, it sounds as though there’s a little homework to do before jumping into Creature Commandos. Even though the two-episode premiere is just a week away, you still have time to prepare by checking out the projects included in THE ULTIMATE LIST OF WHAT TO WATCH BEFORE CREATURE COMMANDOS!
Tier One
Tier One projects are the bare minimum, non-negotiable prep you’ll need to do to fully enjoy the latest, greatest project you’re going to watch. In this case, there are none of those.
Tier Two
The Suicide Squad (2021)
Gunn’s first project for Warner Bros. Discovery, The Suicide Squad was released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO in 2021 while theaters were still bouncing back from the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s unfortunate that more people didn’t see it in theaters, or at all, because it’s a damn good movie despite working with a roster of characters most people hadn’t heard of before the film came out and probably still don’t know.
As Gunn pointed out, Frank Grillo‘s Rick Flag Sr. has a massive chip on his shoulder as a result of the events in this film. There are also plenty of other references to The Suicide Squad in Creature Commandos and at least one other member of the squad may make a surprise appearance at some point. However, there’s enough exposition in Creature Commandos to help catch up the uninitiated which means The Suicide Squad is not a must watch…just a should watch.
Peacemaker, Season 1 (2022)
Spinning out of the events of The Suicide Squad, Season 1 of Peacemaker picks up right where the film left off. Recovering from injuries that should have killed him, John Cena‘s Christopher Smith finds himself working against his will for Amanda Waller’s A.R.G.U.S.. While the series will be (mostly) canon to the DCU, it’s hardly required viewing to enjoy and understand Creature Commandos. Outside of a brief appearance by series regular John Economos, voiced by Steve Agee, and a reference or two to the events of Season 1, Peacemaker is really just going to help you understand Amanda Waller a bit more and why A.R.G.U.S. is in the position it’s in.
Before it even begins, the new DCU is causing confusion among fans. Set to kick off on December 5th with the animated Max streaming series Creature Commandos, DC Studios’ new attempt to bring the characters and stories of DC Comics to life already has quite a few projects lined up for fans over the next few years. However, according to DC Studios’ co-chair James Gunn, a pair of projects that were relased prior to the creation of the studio should be considered canon, too…kind of…for the most part.
In an interview with IGN, Gunn muddied the timeline waters of the all-new DCU by explaining that the events of a pair of projects he created will be considered canon to the new connected universe.
“Now in Creature Commandos, you’ll hear them talk about things that happened in [The] Suicide Squad or Peacemaker,” shared Gunn. “Well then, those things automatically become canon.”
Released in 2021, The Suicide Squad introduced John Cena‘s Peacemaker to fans as part of a second team of degenerates sent by Amanda Waller to Corto Maltese. The events of The Suicide Squad, including the death of Rick Flag at the hands of Peacemaker, serve as the set up for Season 1 of Peacemaker, an HBO streaming series that debuted in 2022 and saw Cena return as the offbeat character. With Amanda Waller, who was featured in both projects, and Rick Flag’s father both appearing in Creature Commandos, and again in Season 2 of Peacemaker, a clear line of continuity can be established from one project to the next. Until it can’t.
As it turns out, not ALL of the events of Season 1 of Peacemaker are to be considered canon to the new DCU, which hasn’t started yet but did start in 2021 with The Suicide Squad. “The truth is almost all of Peacemaker is canon with the exception of Justice League… which we will kind of deal with in the next season of Peacemaker,” said Gunn of the shadowy appearance of the Snyderverse’s team of heroes.
Given Gunn’s creativity and the time he’s had to solve the issue of decanonizing a scene he wrote, explaining away the Justice League shouldn’t be much of a problem…at least until it happens.
Creature Commandos kicks off the all-new DCU–or does it?–on December 5th while Season 2 of Peacemaker will begin streaming in August 2025.
Fans are about to get their first look at the all-new DCU when the seven-episode animated series Creature Commandos debuts on Max in December 5th. Written by DC Studios co-chair James Gunn, the series “tracks a secret team of incarcerated monsters recruited for missions deemed too dangerous for humans” and will introduce the world to a shared universe already populated with heroes and villains.
Announced by Gunn and co-chair Peter Safran as part of the initial DC Studios’ slate reveal in January 2023, Creature Commandos kept pace during production to meet its intended target date as the DCU’s first project. Superman, starring David Corenswet as the new Man of Steel, was always meant to follow Creature Commandos and is on track to do so. However, following that, the release order of the rest of the slate was always a bit murky, though it has started to take shape over the past several months.
As always, Gunn has been active in social media and shared updates on the work taking place behind the scenes to get the DCU up and running. As part of those updates, the co-chair revealed that some projects that were part of the original slate reveal are taking longer to develop while others that were not announced are moving ahead. Now, in an interview with IGN, Gunn laid out exactly what fans can expect over the next two years, including the first hint at when Lanterns will hit HBO.
“It’s really Creature Commandos, Superman, Peacemaker, Lanterns, Supergirl,” said Gunn. “And then some things people don’t know,” he teased. Asked to clarify if Lanterns would stream ahead of the June 26, 2026 release of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, Gunn replied “we’ll see when it comes out, but they’re around the same time.” Spring/Summer 2026 it is!
December 5, 2024-Creature Commandos (streaming on Max)
July 11, 2025-Superman (in theaters)
August 2025-Peacemaker, Season 2 (streaming on Max)
Spring/Summer 2026-Lanterns (streaming on Max)
June 26, 2026-Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (in theaters)
With Gunn providing a glimpse of what to expect over the next two years, it may be a while before fans learn the identities of the unknown projects he teased. With no updates on announced projects such The Brave and The Bold, The Authority, Booster Gold and more, it’s clear that expectations should be for only a couple of DC Studios’ releases per year for the foreseeable future.
James Gunn and Peter Safran set themselves the titanic task of creating an all-new, all-different DCU from the rumble of the previous iteration. To do so, the DC Studios co-chairs had to ensure that their projects looked and felt as different as possible from their predecessor…and by launching the new shared universe with a canonical animated series, they’ve done just that.
Written by Gunn, the seven-episode streaming series Creature Commandos will provide what he calls “a little nibble” of what to expect from the DCU, allowing fans to “see what it tastes like.” Now fans finally know when they can expect the hors d’oeuvres.
Gunn took to social media to reveal that Creature Commandos will debut on Max on December 5th.
In an interview with EW, Gunn explained that part of what drew him to Creature Commandos was how far removed it was from the “mainstream” DC Comics series that most folks know and love.
The thing I’ve always loved about DC Comics was that you had your mainstream comics that always ran, but they also had these tonally different comics like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and All-Star Superman. It was different from Marvel in that way. That’s something that I really want to retain within the studio, that every project is going to bring a different vision by the artists who are creating it.
-James Gunn, EW, September 2024
And for Gunn, dealing with “different” has proven to be his wheelhouse in superhero fare so far. While working with Marvel Studios, Gunn bravely launched a Guardians of the Galaxy franchise full of misfit comic book characters that general audiences had never heard of before and turned them into household names. While fans might see some similarities between the Guardians and the Commandos, Gunn cautions that this isn’t just an animated Guardians redux. “I’m used to dealing with oddballs and irregular types and weirdos,” said Gunn. “That’s what Guardians is, and Creature Commandos is kind of like Guardians without the sentimentality. The Guardians are all really good characters at their heart, and that just isn’t necessarily the case with the creatures.“
While kicking off an all-new, all-different shared universe with an animated series filled with characters that only hardcore fans of DC Comics will know and that may not prove as loveable and Rocket and Groot might seem risky, Gunn is confident that Creature Commandos will effectively set the table for the DCU. “Superman is the true start of everything, it’s a humongous epic. This is a way for people to just take a little nibble and see what it tastes like,” Gunn says. “There are a ton of fun references to other DC stuff, a bunch of hints for things that are coming. So I think it’s just an extraordinarily fun way to start.“
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