Ranking Every Death in The Suicide Squad
James Gunn’s highly anticipated The Suicide Squad is now out in theaters and available on HBO Max. One of the things about this film that excited me the most was how much freedom Warner Bros and DC gave to Gunn. He’s gone on record saying that they give full reign over the cast of characters and permission to kill off anyone he wanted to. It gets bloody, real fast.
If you want to read a non-spoiler review of the film and why it’s worth your time you can do so. But right here, right now, we’re going to be discussing something even more important…who dies in the Suicide Squad, how do they die and where does it rank!
That’s right, we’re ranking all the major deaths in The Suicide Squad on a 1 to 10 scale and in no particular order. If you don’t care about spoilers and want to know who lives in the Suicide Squad and who dies, read on.
Spoiler Warning: This is your LAST CHANCE to turn back if you haven’t seen the movie yet. There are spoilers, major spoilers. I am about to spoil literally every major character death. DO NOT READ if you haven’t seen The Suicide Squad yet.
Blackguard: Snitches Get Stitches
Or at least they get their faces blown off, even stitches won’t help fix that up. Played by Pete Davidson, Blackguard goes down very early and is the first real death. As the Squad pulls up on the island of Corto Maltese for their stealth mission, Blackguard walks right out in the open claiming to be the one who ‘called to warm them’.
The small army laying in wait doesn’t seem to care and someone just removes Blackguard’s face from the front of his skull. You kind of see it coming a mile away. Death Rating: 410
Mongal: Too Hot To Handle
From what I can gather Mongal (played by Mayling Ng) is just the female version of Mongul who is one of DC’s most powerful alien villains. How she ended up on the Suicide Squad, no clue. But when Blackguard bites the dust and the Squad goes to work, she jumps onto a Helicopter and brings it down, wiping out tons of soldiers (and one Squad member) in the process. Unfortunately, she’s pinned under the chopper and when it goes up in flames, she goes along with it. For as strong as she seems, can’t lift a helicopter? Death Rating: 710
Javelin: Throw Away Character
Flula Borg plays another character I had never heard of and that’s OK because he doesn’t stick around very long. In fact, he doesn’t even do a whole lot except bring in a piece of plot that he hands off to Harley after he’s shot full of shrapnel…or bullets? I can’t even remember, it happened so fast. He died trying to tell Harley something but didn’t get all the words out. Sorry, Jave, you won’t be missed. Death Rating: 210
Savant: Dead in the Water
I saw another article theorizing that Michael Rooker as Savant wouldn’t die because James Gunn already killed him in his other superhero movie, Guardian of the Galaxy Vol 2 (spoilers). Well, he’s not so lucky. In fact, he has probably the lamest death in the whole movie.
After watching the rest of the squad get wiped out from the shore of the beach, he just starts swimming away screaming. Amanda Waller tells him to turn back or face the consequences…which is death, but he keeps swimming. In his defense, he was dying either way, on the beach to the bullets or in the water to the brain bomb. Death Rating: 110
TDK: Don’t Get Attached
Nathan Fillion as TDK or The Detachable Kid or Arms Fall Off Boy is one of the deeper cuts in the film. I love Nathan Fillion, but he wasn’t destined to make it very far in this film. His power is to detach his arms and then just slap people with them. It’s not a very good one.
He dies from loss of blood and the addition of many bullets to his arm and eventually his body as well. He dies sad and pathetic, but you at least get a laugh from his terrible detachable powers. Death Rating: 4/10
The Thinker: Pulled Apart
Peter Capaldi played the Thinker, the mastermind behind over 30 years of research and experimentation on Project: StarFish. Unfortunately for him, as the film enters into its 3rd act and Starro the Conqueror is released from his prison one of his first acts is of vengeance against the good Doctor (see what I did there?).
Using its long tendrils it grabs the Thinker, pulls him into its lair, and gives him a good long stare before pulling him apart in four directions and then splattering him against a window. Death Rating: 910
Captain Boomerang: Won’t Be Coming Back
One of the original Suicide Squad members, Jai Courtney meets an unfortunate end in the opening slaughter. When Mongal brings down a chopper, Boomer is part of the collateral damage. He’s always been a silly kind of rogue, but he had his charms. It’s the only death out of the start of the movie that really got me, punctuated by Harley (Margot Robbie) shouting out, “Boomer!” as she watches her friend get butchered. Death Rating: 510
Polka-Dot Man: Hit the Spot
One of the most surprising performances of the movie was David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man. Leave it to James Gunn to bring in some of the dumbest comic book characters ever conceived and show you what makes them special. Polka-Dot Man holds his own both in combat and within the narrative, he’s a tragic, heroic figure with mommy issues and it’s maybe the saddest death in the film.
After using his Polka-Dot Powers against Starro and literally shearing off one of its limbs he exclaims, “I’m a superhero!” before Starro pancakes him with one of its other limbs. RIP Polka-Dot Man. Death Rating: 810
Rick Flag: Heartbroken
During the final act of the movie, Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and Peacemaker (John Cena) come to blows over whether or not the data they recovered on Project: Starfish should be made public. With the US Government’s involvement in the Project, Flag wants to blow the whistle. Peacemaker knows it would cause more harm than good, so they fight to the death.
Just as Flag is about to choke the life out of Peacemaker, he stabs a shard of porcelain into Rick’s chest then slams it in further, cutting Flag’s heart in two. It was one of the deaths that genuinely surprised me, Flag was one of the good ones. Death Rating 710
Starro the Conqueror: Ol’ Rat Eye
Now we get to the giant, blue, cosmic, psychic starfish, Starro the Conqueror. In the time he’s on-screen, being the kaiju monstrosity he is, he wracks up a hell of a body count, from baddies to civilians. He takes machine gun fire, he takes cannon blasts, King Shark chews on him, and more. But nothing seems capable of taking him down until Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior) brings the full force of her powers against him.
With hundreds of thousands of rats climbing all over him, Harley Quinn uses Javelin’s javelin to piece Starro’s eye. As she’s floating around in his ocular fluid, the rats begin to spill in as well. They swim around and start to bite and chew through the ocular nerves in the back of the eye. Some even start to crawl inside of the veins and nerve endings. It’s…very gross and very disturbing. But in the end, Starro the Conqueror falls to Task Force X. Death Rating 1010
The Suicide Squad was written and directed by James Gunn. It stars Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Viola Davis, Daniela Melchior, and more. It premieres in theaters and on HBO Max August 6.
Be sure to follow CheckpointXP on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!
Feature Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures/™ & © DC Comics