Spoilers for The Suicide Squad and the first season of Peacemaker (2022) will remain unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
"To a new world of gods and monsters!"note
"This is your new Task Force. Let's call it Task Force M. M for 'Monster'. Also known as..."
— Amanda Waller
Creature Commandos is a 2024 animated superhero comedy-drama series based on Creature Commandos from DC Comics. It was developed by James Gunn and is the first installment in the rebooted DC Universe out of DC Studios. Bobbypills (Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix) provides animation for the series, which stars Frank Grillo, Maria Bakalova, Indira Varma, Zoë Chao, Alan Tudyk, David Harbour, and Anya Chalotra. Returning from Gunn’s previous DC productions are Steve Agee, Sean Gunn, and Viola Davis.
After her activities running Task Force X are made public, Amanda Waller (Davis) finds herself forced to assemble a new team for high-risk black ops missions with the proviso of not being allowed to use human inmates. Her solution? Trade coerced supervillains for actual monsters. Under the leadership of Rick Flag Sr. (Grillo), the unlikely team must protect the princess (Bakalova) of a distant European country, Pokolistan, from an invading militia, contending not only with the sorceress Circe (Chalotra) but Frankenstein's Monster (Harbour) himself. The series is considered part of Gunn’s first chapter for the franchise, fittingly entitled Gods and Monsters. It premiered on Max December 5, 2024. A second season is in development
.
Previews: First Trailer
Creature Commandos includes examples of:
- Adaptation Distillation: The team is primarily made up of characters from the Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. series from the New 52 era instead of the original '80s team of monster-themed soldiers.
- Affably Evil: The man who buys G.I. Robot and befriends him is shown to have been a Kindhearted Cat Lover and war memorabilia collector who treats him like a friend and bonds with him over movies, only to end up taking him to a Neo-Nazi meeting; though he seemed a genuinely pleasant person on an individual level, bringing a literal death machine to plot alongside people like that to “save the country” is telling.
- Alliterative Title: Creature Commandos.
- And Starring: Viola Davis (The voice of Amanda Waller) gets the “And” place of honor in the teaser.
- Asshole Victim: A loooot of them, given the team's Tragic Monster bent and trends of Humans Are the Real Monsters, and to make it feel more cathartic when you know they're not butchering innocent people.
- Circe's army is composed of a bunch of drooling neckbeard and incel stereotypes who thirst for her attention, with one of them implying he wants to rape Ilana before he kills her. They end up slaughtered en-masse by the Commandos (mostly G.I. Robot), with the one threatening Ilana and his companion both getting shot dead in self-defense by her.
- Downplayed with G.I. Robot's friend ending up being a Neo-Nazi, who makes the mistake of taking him to a meeting where they loudly and clearly discuss "saving the country". G.I. Robot's programming predictably kicks in and he guns them all down - though because most of them weren't actually a threat (being old, out of shape, handicapped, and just spouting the rhetoric but not actually scheming anything that we know of) he's deemed a murderer for it.
- When Nina and The Bride are laying low in a brothel, two thugs barge in and drag one of the prostitutes upstairs. She slaps one for getting rough, and he responds by hitting her back. When Madam Gyurov tries to boot them out for it, he threatens to rape the woman, then kill them all. When Nina intervenes, The Bride on her behalf proceeds to shoot the smaller brother, then brutalize the bigger one before killing him by ripping his heart out.
- Downplayed again by Dr. Phosphorus, when he gruesomely kills Rupert Thorne and the upper echelons of his crime syndicate, it's hard to not say it's earned both because of what Thorne did to him personally, and just what a monster he is in almost every DC canon. However, unlike the other examples it's a lot harder to root for Phosphorus because he also murdered Thorne's wife and children, and then decided to take over Thorne's empire and continue to create who knows how much suffering and death in Gotham before being stopped.
- Badass Normal: The show manages to hammer down Batman's status as this despite him only being a background character with his takedown of Dr.Phosphorus in the flashback.
- Dr. Phosphorus is a radioactive skeleton that can turn his temperature up enough to the point that merely being near him can melt flesh and steel into slag alike, being the most villainous and destructive member of the Commandos when he cuts loose. However, he made the mistake of becoming the new crime lord of Gotham with his powers after disposing of the previous kingpin Rupert Thorne for the latter framing him for the murder of his wife and child before trying to kill him with his own radiation-powered machine, accidentally giving him his super-powered state, which put him on the Dark Knight's radar. We don't even see how he was taken down, just the lights cutting off before Phosphorus gets scared at the looming figure of Batman staring down at him from the skylight.
- One of his Rogues Gallery, Clayface, turns out to have pulled a Kill and Replace on Themyscira expert Aisla MacPherson, as part of Circe's backup plan to provide somebody who would corroborate her claims of the Bad Future that necessitated Princess Ilana's death. Batman has regularly faced and defeated Clayface before, but the amorphous shape-shifter proves a near-unbeatable threat to Flag and Eric, despite Flag being a good fighter himself and Eric being a Lightning Bruiser, beating the former badly enough he needs a hospital and only losing when Eric exploits his ability to absorb electricity against him.
- Bittersweet Ending: At Season 1's end, the Bad Future that Circe predicted will no longer come to pass thanks to the Bride seeing through Ilana's deception and dealing with her personally, but Nina was killed by Ilana in a botched assassination, and there's no telling what the resulting power vacuum in Pokolistan might lead to.
- Black Comedy: Being a show written by James Gunn, are you really that surprised?
- Broad Strokes: Although The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker are set in the now-defunct DC Extended Universe, Creature Commandos, which serves as the first installment of the brand-new continuity, makes several references to their events: the first episode mentions Task Force X's mission in Corto Maltese to destroy Project Starfish, the death of Rick Flag Jr., the accusations that Weasel murdered twenty-seven children (The Suicide Squad), and Leota Adebayo's exposure of human rights violations by her mother Amanda Waller (Peacemaker season one); Rick Flag's death is brought up again in the second episode. James Gunn has repeatedly stated that The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker will receive the Broad Strokes treatment in the new universe, with some of their events (primarily unrelated to the DCEU) being canon to the DC Universe. Notably, the Superman seen in Circe's vision is the David Corenswet incarnation of the character, despite Henry Cavill's Superman having previously appeared (albeit as a Fake Shemp) in the first season finale of Peacemaker.
- The Cameo: In addition to the characters mentioned below in Early Bird Cameo, Circe's vision in Episode 4 also has quick appearances from Peacemaker and Vigilante.
- Company Cross-References: Clayface is shown playing Mortal Kombat 1, a product of WB’s NetherRealm Studios, in Episode 5. Crosses into Recursive Fiction territory, as the game features the DC hero Peacemaker (who makes a cameo appearance in Episode 4) as a Guest Fighter.
- Continuity Nod:
- In the first episode, Amanda Waller mentions that Rick Flag's son was killed during a mission in Corto Maltese, as seen in The Suicide Squad.
- A major plot point is that Waller has been forced to use non-human prisoners after Task Force X was revealed to the public by her daughter Leota during the first season finale of Peacemaker. Likewise, John Economos is shown using a crutch due to the injury he sustained while helping fight off the Butterfly aliens in the Peacemaker finale.
- Creator Cameo: An animated version of James Gunn appears during his written/created by credits during the theme song.
- Disney Death: G.I. Robot comes back rebuilt with a bulkier body when The Bride is introduced to the Creature Commandos' new wing at Belle Reve, four episodes after Circe took him offline.
- Early-Bird Cameo:
- In "Chasing Squirrels" Sergei, revealed later to be Ilana's second Dragon appears briefly, spying on the team. In that same episode inmates Khalis and Nosferata appear briefly; they reappear in the season finale as part of The Bride's team.
- Circe's vision from Episode 4 has cameo appearances from the new Superman, Mister Terrific, and Hawkgirl, who wouldn’t make their first official appearances until Superman (2025) the following year, Supergirl, whose film isn't releasing until 2026, Batman and Robin, whose movie still doesn't have a confirmed released window as of writing, Booster Gold, who has a TV series planned. Wonder Woman, Starfire, Captain Atom, Kid Flash, and Gorilla Grodd also appear despite not having confirmed film debuts yet.
- The third episode introduces Sgt. Rock, well ahead of his planned feature film.
- Batman makes a more direct appearance in the flashback in Episode 6, being the one who implicitly took down Doctor Phosphorus and led to him being imprisoned in Belle Reve.
- First Contact Faux Pas: Played for Laughs. Alexi tricks Rick that he just insulted his country with his bow and must die for it.
- Foreshadowing: In "The Iron Pot", Clayface is clearly not putting in a lot of effort into acting like MacPherson even whilst maintaining the deception that she's still alive, acting unprofessionally enough towards her students that Flag and Eric both comment on her odd behaviour for a professor. This is despite the fact that one of his main character traits is his Pride in being such a talented actor to mimic others' mannerisms, with his shapeshifting being only versatile assistance to this. He furthermore never actually bothered to hide MacPherson's corpse, leaving it sitting in her bedroom chair with a visible blood trail leading to it and only drawing the curtains to hide immediately prying eyes. In the finale, it's revealed that the real intention behind his actions was always to have Clayface be "discovered" impersonating MacPherson, as this would convince Waller that she'd been deceived about the verification of Circe's visions and draw heat away from his real employer, Ilana.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: All of the Commandos outside of Flag Sr. and Nina have this to some extent, but G.I. Robot takes it to comedic extremes by being a robot who literally only thinks and talks about killing Nazis.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: A running theme of the show. It pulls no punches when showing just how cruel, ignorant, unforgiving, and downright evil humanity tends to be. It's especially present in Weasel and Nina's backstories. Zig-zagged as, counting Rick Flag Sr., there are purely good and decent human beings in the show, but a majority of them are just pure assholes.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Amanda Waller notably resembles her live-action actress, Viola Davis.
- In Name Only: Sort of. The Creature Commandos team often changed depending on the era of comics you read but this series team in particular is a unique blend of characters from the comics and some that are from the The Suicide Squad. It keeps the comics’ original premise of a superhero team of monsters led by a human leader, but this team in particular consists of Rick Flag Sr., Weasel, The Bride of Frankenstein, a fish-woman named Nina, the glowing skeleton Doctor Phosphorus, and G.I. Robot.
- Kill and Replace: Clayface did this to MacPherson on Ilana's orders, knowing that Waller would call off her assassination if she felt she was duped.
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Nina embodies the light feminine archetype with her shy, kind, and universally friendly demeanor, while the gothic Bride contrasts her as the dark feminine, with her cold, cynical behavior and gothic style.
- Loophole Abuse: When Flag tells Waller that he believed the government shut down the Task Force X Program, Waller notes that this was specifically meant to prohibit the use of human prisoners, so the Creature Commandos are an exception.
- Mythology Gag: During Circe's vision in the fourth episode, Superman's torn cape is shown fluttering in the wind, a visual callback to The Death of Superman.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Rick Flag Jr.'s death in The Suicide Squad is shown to be canon in this universe, and his father is clearly struggling two years later.
- Police Are Useless: Double Subverted. That the police leapt to conclusions about Weasel and assumed he killed those children was understandable given the information they were going off of. However, the fact they opened fire on him when he very clearly was carrying a child with him without any regard for that child’s safety (or even bothering to see if she was still alive) - not so much. This indirectly causes the young girl’s death when Weasel’s injuries force him to drop her right as a part of the building collapses on her.
- Played straight with the death of Nina's father. It's Disproportionate Retribution at best, as pushing one of the officers on the scene onto the ground when he runs over to comfort Nina prompts the cops on the scene to fatally shoot the clearly unarmed man who is not posing a threat instead of using less lethal means to detain him.
- Post-Credits Scene: Played for Laughs, as the advertised post-credits scene that ends the first season is an unsurprisingly still alive Eric recuperating with another old Pokolistani woman who took him in (and spied for him in the cottage across from the abandoned Frankenstein estate and eating soup made of literal bird shit.
- Purple Is Powerful: The Amethyst Knights, Pokolistan's elite soldiers, wear purple-hued Powered Armor with purple-colored energy blasters built into the wrists. Circe's magic also tends to have a purple hue to it.
- Pygmalion Plot: Victor Frankenstein would end up falling in love with The Bride after creating her (regardless of his living family). Unfortunately, his other creation, Eric, really didn't appreciate The Bride being with someone who wasn't him.
- Royal Inbreeding: When they enter Ilana's palace, Flag and the Bride notice that the portraits depict deformities resulting from inbreeding among the royal family of Pokolistan.The Bride: Looks like the gene pool was above ground and inflatable, if you know what I mean.
- Ruritania: Pokolistan is an obscure small Central European country plagued by poverty and cultural stagnation, lagging behind by at least two decades. Its people are depicted wearing simple, ragged clothing, and the capital city resembles a medieval town perpetually shrouded in darkness. In stark contrast, the royal family’s castle is a fairytale-like structure, portrayed as the only place bathed in sunlight. And the ethnicity of the people seems to have Slavic roots.
- Sequel Hook: The first season ends on Economos showing The Bride that Task Force M has been expanded, hinting at the further adventures of the Creature Commandos.
- Shout-Out:
- The Bride's backstory is similar to the version seen in the obscure 1985 film The Bride (including the Pygmalion Plot), albeit with the major differences that she reciprocates Victor's desires for her, and as a result the Creature murders him out of jealousy rather than killing him in self-defense to save her from Victor's Attempted Rape.
- Since Seven Soldiers, DC's Frankenstein gained some non-Universal design overlap with the another expy of the Monster from Darkstalkers, Victor. The show leans into this, giving his coat an orange trim and his skin more prominent patches of tones including the Black Jack-inspired one across his face.
- In "Chasing Squirrels", Rick Flag Sr. chastises Amanda for agreeing to listen to Circe, saying that she's pulling a Jedi mind trick.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Episode one confirms that Task Force X was shut down by Congress. As one would expect, the use of an unsanctioned Task Force comprised of mostly criminals, especially the inhuman treatment and threat of death on the criminals, wasn’t considered a good idea by Congress, thus forcing Waller to form the Creature Commandos as a replacement.
- Take That!: Circe’s militia, the Sons of Themyscira, is comprised of slow-witted men’s rights activists following her for the chance to travel to the all-female Themyscira.
- Those Wacky Nazis:
- In the teaser trailer, the Commandos are facing off against modern Nazis. Having been built to fight the Nazis during World War II as he mentions, G.I. Robot's over the moon.
G.I. Robot: It's been oh so long since G.I. Robot has sent Nazis back to hell!- During the montage showing Eric going after The Bride throughout the centuries. In 1941, Eric appears to have sided with Germany of all factions just to go after her.
- G.I. Robot’s final owner prior to his incarceration brought him to a neo-Nazi meeting, somehow being none the wiser to his companion's favorite activity.
- Title Drop: Each episode has a subtle one where a character will say the episode's title as part of a casual conversation.
- Tragic Mistake: Edward Mazursky loved his daughter, Nina Mazursky, more than anything in the world; when Nina was born with a respiratory birth defect, her father Edward used all his science skills to save her life by first constructing a breathing apparatus, then transforming her on the genetic level into a fish hybrid so she could breathe - however, Nina's mother, Lily, abandoned them both due to the level of physical and emotional care that Nina would need and left to stay with her mother with the implications that she abandoned the two of them to live with her mother. Eventually, Edward sent Nina to a private school to help her socialize with other kids. That turned out to be the biggest mistake of Edward's life, which eventually ended with both his and Nina's deaths:
- Nina was bullied and ostracized at school to the point where she ran away to live in the ocean outside Star City, thinking that she was a burden to her father. Eventually, she was captured, and when her father came to try to help free her, he was killed by an overzealous police officer.
- Nina was then imprisoned for no known crime. It was heavily implied that she was imprisoned for merely being a mutant, with the implication that she wasn’t entitled to the same rights as normal people. She was ultimately forced to join a task force of monsters, even though she was not trained in any sort of combat or subterfuge.
- Her tragic life culminated with Nina dying on a mission where she was supposed to have the advantage (assassination from underwater) but failing again due to her lack of training and weapon experience, with the only positive thing being that her teammate who befriended her and genuinely cared about her avenges her death (and subsequently prevents the apocalypse).
- Overall, it would've been better for Edward if he had just kept homeschooling his daughter Nina... or just kept Nina away from the world until it showed it could accept her as she was.
- Troubled Backstory Flashback: Every episode (except the first one) goes back and forth between the present day and the past of whichever character is getting the day in the limelight treatment.
- Western Terrorists: The Sons of Themyscira are made of a group or activists led by Circe. They're known (in-universe) for starting terrorist attacks in Pokolistan.