Ever since the trailers first dropped for The Suicide Squad teasing Starro the Conqueror as a villain, fans have assumed the ending was going to be explosive–and, unsurprisingly, James Gunn delivered. With final moments that feel more like a Kaiju movie than a superhero story, The Suicide Squad is full of carnage and chaos that levels whole city blocks, as well as a massive body count of both anti-heroes and villains. So what actually happens at the end of the movie?
Let’s break it down. Major spoilers below.
After the remaining members of Task Force X finally infiltrate and destroy the Jotunheim fortress, things promptly go awry when Starro the Conqueror is set free, leaving the entire island of Corto Maltese in his mind controlling crosshairs. Waller insists that the remaining Squad members leave Starro to his business, as this is no longer the mission and not their concern (the fact that Starro can spawn a seemingly infinite number of mind-controlling clones and could, theoretically, take over the planet doesn’t seem to be on Waller’s radar at all..
The Squad, however, refuses Waller’s order, seeing that Starro is targeting helpless civilians. This nearly gets all of their heads exploded for insubordination–but Waller’s comms team intervenes, knocking her out with a blow to the head to prevent her from detonating the bombs.
The ensuing battle only claims one Squad casualty–Polka-Dot Man–before Starro is brought down and Corto Maltese is saved. Then, rather than hand over the information stolen from Jotunheim to the press, Bloodsport decides to use it to blackmail Waller into ensuring the surviving Squad members’ safety and freedom. If anything happens to them, the information they gathered will go public. The gambit works and Waller agrees to ensure Bloodsport, Ratcatcher 2, King Shark, and Harley’s extraction from Corto Maltese. Presumably, they all head back to lead relatively normal lives and have their prison sentences expunged, though we don’t actually get to see what they get up to after they board the chopper home.
But wait, there’s more. First, we have a brief gag scene in the mid-credits where we learn that Weasel, the semi-sentient humanoid weasel who “drowned” at the very start of the movie actually survived. He wakes up on the beach and toddles off into the woods, presumably to live out the rest of his days in the Corto Maltese jungle. It’s unlikely we’ll ever see Weasel again (he doesn’t even speak) but, hey, the opportunity is there at least. Maybe he’ll get his own spin-off.
The real meat and potatoes post-credits scene comes at the very end, where we learn that Peacemaker–assumed dead in Jotunheim after Bloodsport shot him in the throat–actually survived and was extracted from the rubble. Waller was able to bring him back to the states and get him into a hospital where he is definitely worse-for-wear but still alive. Apparently, as revenge for their mutiny in the operations room of the Corto Maltese mission, Waller has assigned two of her technicians to Peacemaker’s case, though it’s left unclear what the mission they’ll be supervising actually is–other than “saving the f***ing world,” as they so eloquently put it.
We know that Peacemaker is getting his own spin-off TV show on HBO Max, so this is undoubtedly set up for that. It’s interesting to realize that the show will not be a prequel, but details of the plot are still totally unknown. It certainly seems like the bad blood between Peacemaker and Bloodsport isn’t going to go anywhere, but who can say if we’ll see them meet up to fight again for this project, or if Peacemaker will be pointed toward other targets.
The Peacemaker show is set to debut on HBO Max in January 2022. The Suicide Squad is currently in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
