Warning: this article contains spoilers for Peacemaker and The Suicide Squad.
James Gunn is now clarifying why an extended scene was included in Peacemaker‘s recap of its predecessor, The Suicide Squad, but was cut from that film.
Gunn is the showrunner of HBO Max’s Peacemaker series and the director and co-writer behind the story that set it up, the excellent DC film The Suicide Squad. In fact, in Peacemaker’s first episode, there was a recap of The Suicide Squad that included a deleted scene we didn’t get to see in theaters.
Warning: from here on out, this article will contain spoilers for Peacemaker and The Suicide Squad.
At the end of The Suicide Squad, a mutiny occurs to overthrow the order of Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller when some of her government employees knock her unconscious and assist Task Force X in saving the people of Corto Maltese from the kaiju beast Starro the Conqueror. Amanda’s original order was to kill off the disposable antiheroes by activating the bombs that had been implanted at the base of their skulls in order to secure the cover-up of the U.S. government’s involvement with insidious experiments conducted on political prisoners of the island government.
In the film, we see Steve Agee’s John Economos and Emilia Harcourt’s Jennifer Holland back working at their station while Amanda recovers with an ice pack to the head. However, the fate of the government employee who actually knocked Amanda unconscious was nowhere to be seen — until now.
In the Peacemaker recap of The Suicide Squad, we finally get the reveal that Tinashe Kajese’s Flo Crawly, who did the head-clunking that enabled the mutiny, was actually forcibly arrested at her desk.
This was shown in the Peacemaker series, and not The Suicide Squad film, to explain Flo’s absence from the show, as Gunn explained in a Peacemaker Watch Party by ComicBook.
“This scene with Flo Crawley was cut from The Suicide Squad but explains that she actually goes to prison, which is why she isn’t a part of the team,” he said.
It’s arguably a logical cut from the film since it puts Amanda, the villain, at a low point and ends the movie on the heroes, including her rebellious government employees, being at a high point, a crowd-pleasing formula for any superhero movie.
If you want to see the continued adventures of John Cena’s Christopher Smith, AKA Peacemaker, from The Suicide Squad, a surprise antagonist of that film, check out the first three episodes of Peacemaker on HBO Max now. Subsequent episodes will be coming to the streaming service once per week, on Thursdays.