James Gunn has offered a pretty funny and brutally honest explanation for why David Ayer‘s 2016 film Suicide Squad probably won’t be considered canon in the new DC Universe. Apparently, bringing that movie’s entire history into the DCU would create a continuity nightmare that Gunn would rather avoid.
During the debut episode of The Suicide Squad: Is It Canon? The Official Podcast, Gunn was asked whether Harley Quinn’s history with Rick Flag and Captain Boomerang in his 2021 film The Suicide Squad was meant to carry over from Ayer’s original movie.
Gunn explained that the characters can have a shared history without needing everything from the 2016 film to have happened.
“I don’t think it needs to be. See, that’s the thing where, you know, I think that we can say that these characters work together in the past that Harley’s been doing, you know, Suicide Squad missions for a while.”
He continued: “We know Task Force X has, you know, existed for a while, and we don’t necessarily need to say all that stuff because then, if you say that’s Canon, we’re screwed.”
The original Suicide Squad wasn’t just a standalone adventure featuring a bunch of criminals working for the government. It was firmly connected to the old DCEU, and making it canon would bring along some baggage.
The 2016 movie starred Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Will Smith as Deadshot, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, and Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang. The story followed a team of imprisoned villains recruited by Viola Davis‘ Amanda Waller for a dangerous government mission.
It also featured Ben Affleck as Batman, directly connecting the film to the larger DCEU. That creates some obvious problems for Gunn’s rebooted universe, especially when it comes to characters like Batman, the Joker, Deadshot, and Katana.
If Ayer’s film officially happened in the new DCU, Gunn would have to account for those characters and their connections to a cinematic universe that he’s moving away from.
Instead, Gunn seems happy to keep certain elements of the characters’ histories while leaving the specific events of the earlier movie behind. Harley Quinn, Rick Flag, and Boomerang can all have worked together on previous Task Force X missions without those adventures having to match what audiences saw in 2016.
Gunn also acknowledged that characters from Ayer’s film could still appear in the DCU with new storylines, which leaves the door open for familiar faces to return without being tied to their original DCEU versions.
The whole thing is just weird. Ayer’s Suicide Squad can’t be canon because it would create continuity problems, but Gunn’s The Suicide Squad gets to be partially canon even though it features several of the same characters and builds on their history together.
So we’re basically picking and choosing which parts of the old DC Universe happened and which ones didn’t. I get that Gunn wants a fresh start without being tied to everything that came before, but the rules feel a little convenient when his own movie gets a pass. At this point, DC canon seems to be whatever Gunn needs it to be for the story he’s telling.
