And Just When We Thought We Had It: Gunn’s Latest ‘The Suicide Squad’ Comments Make the Canon Issues Even More Confusing

Remember the recent canon debate related to the timelines of Creature Commandos and Peacemaker Season 2 in relation to Superman? Yeah, the one related to Frank Grillo, his hair, and when is each of these projects set… the one we reported about several days ago, when Gunn’s comments seemingly cleared things up.

Yeah, after Gunn clarified some things on Threads, the fans were put at ease and just when we thought we finally had it, Gunn decided to complicate things once more with his comments and now – once again – we are faced with a conundrum as to what is canon in the DCEU and what is not.

The issue arose from a long interview that Gunn gave to Collider, in which he discussed several important aspects of his upcoming universe, as well as the canon status of some of the previous works, i.e., how all the stories will tie together into one fixed narrative unit. Want to know what he said? Keep reading!

Collider‘s Steve Weintraub spoke to Gunn about the upcoming projects, some continuity issues, as well as the future of the DCEU and its derivative projects. Among the issues tackled in this interview was the canon of the DCEU and here is what Gunn said:

A lot of people are wondering what’s canon in the new DC. As far as I can tell, it’s The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker . Is that true? What can you guys say about that?

GUNN: Well, it’s whatever we mention in anything. [Laughs] Listen, Peacemaker is pretty easy. Peacemaker Season 1 is basically canon outside of the appearance of the Justice League at the end, which you’ll see something about that in Peacemaker Season 2. Suicide Squad is probably a little bit looser.

We know that Rick Flag Sr. is angry because his son was killed by Peacemaker, so we know that situation happened in the past, we have something to refer to to think of what it might be like that that happened, but that exists as canon because it was mentioned in Creature Commandos , not necessarily because it existed in Suicide Squad . I think of Suicide Squad and Peacemaker as pretty unreliable memories of what happened in the DCU.

James, you wrote Creature Commandos before as a spec thing and before you knew you were gonna be the co-head of DC.

GUNN: It wasn’t exactly a spec thing. I talked to Peter Girardi from Warner Bros. Animation, and he was like, “You should do something in animation.” He says, “What do you want to do?” And I’m like, “I think I wanna do Creature Commandos.” So, I went and wrote the episodes. So, it was sort of spec, but it wasn’t really.

Once you got to be the co-head of DC and you realized what your eight to 10-year arc was gonna be, did these scripts change at all as a result of what you realized was gonna happen?

GUNN: Minimally, but not a lot. A lot of what DC is, and the fun for me, really, is in the world-building, not just the story-building. I don’t think of DCU as being, “Oh, this is a story we’re telling over multiple films and TV shows about one big bad.” I don’t want to have to do, as an audience member, the homework to have to see every single thing. 

It is more of a connected universe that exists within one place, which is the DCU, which will have differences depending on who the artists and the directors and the production designers are that are making the shows.

Source: Collider

Now, while Gunn was more or less explicit in his comments this time, this causes additional trouble, as the canon situation is now even less clear. But, as soon as the DCEU starts properly, we will definitely have more information, so stay with us until then!

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