The following post contains SPOILERS for The Suicide Squad. You have been warned. This is your warning. Beware. 

2016’s Suicide Squad had a hugely important post-credits scene for the DC Extended Universe. It featured Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller and Ben Affleck Bruce Wayne engaged in a candid dinner conversation. After the events of the movie in Midway City, Waller says she’s nervous that her position as the director of Task Force X could be in jeopardy. Wayne promises to protect her if she “delivers” something he wants, at which point she hands him a top secret document containing information on the future members of the Justice League.

“You look tired,” Waller tells him as he leaves. “You should stop working nights.” “You should shut it down,” Wayne replies. “My friends and I will do it for you.”

The scene leads directly into 2017’s Justice League. Now why the government would create its own team of heinous super-villains before it at least attempted to create a group of powerful heroes to work on its behalf has never been successfully explained by anyone. Basically, the scene was a ham-fisted attempt to tie all of DC’s big blockbusters into a single cohesive universe. On that front, at least, it did its job.

James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is a different sort of DC movie. It does feature some of the characters from the original film, including Davis’ Amanda Waller. But the returning villains barely acknowledge the events of the 2016 movie, and they certainly don’t care about anything else that’s happening elsewhere in the DC Extended Universe. There’s an offhanded reference to Superman winding up in the ICU after Bloodshot (Idris Elba) shot him with a kryptonite bullet, but that doesn’t mean the next Superman movie is gonna open with Henry Cavill leading the hospital. (Or that it will even star Henry Cavill at all.)

As a result, The Suicide Squad’s post-credits scenes don’t tease much of anything beyond the little corner of the DCEU that Gunn has carved out for himself with this movie. If you’ve followed the news updates around The Suicide Squad, you know Gunn immediately followed it with a TV miniseries about the character played by John Cena, a deranged, ultra-patriotic hero known as Peacemaker. Not surprisingly, the post-credits scene establishes the premise of the show.

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Even though it appeared that Peacemaker was killed by Bloodsport during the Suicide Squad’s final battle with “Project Starfish,” he turns up after the credits in a hospital — alive, but hooked to a variety of life-support machines. Amanda Waller’s underlings from Task Force X arrive at the hospital to observe him, and announce that they need to get him healthy because Peacemarker is once again needed to “save the f—ing world.” That cliffhanger will lead into the Peacemaker TV show. Gunn wrote all eight episodes of the show, and directed five of them, including first three.

That is actually the second and far more consequential of the two Suicide Squad credits scenes. In the first one, the film returns to the Corto Maltese beach where the members of the movie’s first Suicide Squad died — except for Weasel, who suddenly stands up and wanders off, apparently no worse for wear in spite of the fact that it looked like he drowned. Apparently, Weasel’s are very resilient animals.

James Gunn’s Peacemaker is expected to premiere on HBO Max in January of 2022.

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