Let's rank all the villains we wish had made it further in The Suicide Squad

Which supervillains most deserved to make it to the second half of James Gunn's blood-soaked spectacle?

By William Hughes, Alex McLevy | August 7, 2021 | 3:00pm

Film Features Suicide Squad

Let's rank all the villains we wish had made it further in The Suicide Squad

The Suicide Squad Photo: Jessica Miglio & DC Comics

We knew, going in, that James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad was probably going to have a pretty high bodycount among the members of its titular team. Gunn made it clear from the jump that he was pulling heavily from the work of Suicide Squad comics writer John Ostrander—who also cameos in the film’s opening minutes—and Ostrander is a man who never met a C-list supervillain he couldn’t kill off within a couple of pages of introduction for splashy and violent effect.

Still, the film’s MacGruber-esque wiping out of apparently major characters (many of whom were featured prominently in its advertising) arrives with a swiftness and a brutality that speaks far more to Gunn’s Troma background than his status as a journeyman employee of the WarnerMedia corporation. (Our own Katie Rife noted as much in her review of the film, aptly describing the opening minutes as “an orgy of bodies being torn to pieces in a wild beachfront massacre.”) But while Gunn’s film is never more energetic than when it’s blowing through more than half its cast in the opening minutes, it did leave us wondering: Could any of these characters have actually gone the distance? And so we’ve gone ahead and ranked everyone who dies in the first half or so of The Suicide Squad—no late-film spoilers here, although early-film spoilers should hopefully be obvious—on a simple basis: How badly do we wish they’d made it off that beach?

7. Blackguard

Look: Did James Gunn stack the deck a little by casting Pete Davidson in the role of Team 1's dopiest traitor? Maybe. But even beyond the “Chad The Supervillain” factor, Blackguard doesn’t have much to offer a team that is, by the film’s own admission, already pretty stacked with “Guys who are good at shooting people.” A little goes a long way with this guy—and by “a long way,” we mean about 10 steps onto a beach, before getting his minimal brains blown out.

6. Captain Boomerang

Honestly, one of the main reasons Jai Courtney’s cackling Captain Boomerang wound up so far down the list was simply because of our appreciation for one of the film’s best rug-pulls. Given carte blanche to keep or dispose of characters from the first film as he saw fit, writer-director James Gunn said no thanks to a star like Will Smith, but kept the guy who throws boomerangs? Surely, there’s a big plan in store for him! Nope: Captain Boomerang is mere cannon fodder, disposed of with even less dignity than Javelin. No need to keep him around; turns out, five minutes of screen time is exactly the right amount.

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5. Mongal

To quote one of the character’s , Mongal is there to expend Maximum. Effort. And she does so in the most joyously kamikaze manner possible, a true leap-before-you-look demonstration of bravado, hurling herself straight onto the bottom of a helicopter and single-handedly wrestling it to the ground. Sure, Mongal may not have thought through the endgame of her strategy, at least not if she wanted to survive. But perhaps it’s better to think of her dying as she lived—giving one hundred and ten percent. If anyone was going to be the truest embodiment of something known as a “suicide squad,” then damn it, it was gonna be her.

4. Javelin

It’s hard to discount Javelin’s most important power, i.e., “being charming German comedian Flula Borg.” Which might help explain why his big pointy stick ends up being so surprisingly prominent throughout the entire film, even if its narrative importance also underscores why it’s not a huge loss for him, personally, to ignominiously bite it in a hail of gunfire. (The stick seems to be a lot more useful than he is, especially in the hands of one Dr. Harley Quinn.) Still, we can only imagine how much fun Borg would have had jamming out in that big mid-movie dance sequence, if only he’d made it that far.

3. Savant

In an opening sequence designed for bait-and-switchery, Michael Rooker’s master killer is the bait-and-switchiest villain of them all, going from uber-calm viewpoint character to panicked escapee in the course of a few quick minutes. Savant’s Bullseye-esque aiming abilities and general Michael Rooker-ness would have made him a welcome survivor, though, maybe bouncing his veneer of “professionalism” off of Ratcatcher 2's sweetness, or Peacemaker’s blind loyalty. Still: Somebody’s got to pop their brain bomb to show that Amanda Waller means business, and if it’s our initial “protagonist,” so much the messier.

2. Weasel

Yes, yes, we’re well aware that this character should be exempt from this list, based on the small technicality that he’s actually still alive. But think about it: When the movie proper ends, everybody’s second-favorite anthropomorphic animal (King Shark still wins handily) has been dead the entire time. So the get-out-of-the-morgue free card he receives happens after we’ve watched the film. Hence, Weasel—the plane-falling, non-swimming, instantly dying bundle of fur and oversized eyeballs who walks away with our hearts. Okay, maybe he shouldn’t have murdered all those children, but hey, we didn’t see any of that.

1. T.D.K.

Ah, The Detachable Kid. Not since the heyday of the swordsman casually shot down in Raiders Of The Lost Ark has there been such a delightfully vast disparity between impressiveness and effectiveness. TDK’s ability to telepathically sever his limbs and have them float, wraithlike, through the air is a visually jaw-dropping superpower. And what does he do with it? Ineffectually slap away at his gun-wielding enemies. It’s one of the best death payoffs in a sequence chockablock with them—yet it made us wish he was there foreverafter, uselessly flapping his arms away at any threat that arose, a superhero Baxter to the end.

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