Creature Commandos is the official kickoff for James Gunn’s new DCU. After years of the so-called DCEU (DC Extended Universe) belly-flopping at the box office, Gunn has taken over and is reimagining DC properties for a new era. Except as Creature Commandos begins the DCU, a fresh, new cinematic superhero universe, it includes elements of the DCEU, as well. And you know what? That’s so DC.
To be clear, as we’ve already covered you don’t have to have watched previous DC Comics-based properties to understand Creature Commandos, most of what you need is in the series itself. But along for the ride are Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, who has previously played the character in Suicide Squad, The Suicide Squad, Black Adam, and Peacemaker. Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. is the father of Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flag Jr., who was killed in The Suicide Squad, and boy is he sad about it. And the plot of Creature Commandos pivots directly off the end of Peacemaker Season 1.
Normally when it comes to rebooting a cinematic universe, you’d imagine it being clean and easy, though even the MCU has been bringing back oldies but goodies. Think the parade of Fox characters (plus Wesley Snipes’s Blade) in Deadpool & Wolverine, or Professor X (Patrick Stewart) popping up in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But the MCU was 14 years in when it started to beat that cameo drum; the DCU is kicking it off right out of the gate.
There’s a school of thought that could say this is an albatross hanging on the DCU, tying it directly to projects that dragged down the whole enterprise. And while it’s TBD on that front — after all, we’re 24 hours in on the release of the first two episodes of the series, not quite long enough to have any sort of hindsight — it is Gunn using his own, critically acclaimed projects that are generally liked and did solid numbers for Warner Bros. Discovery. This (so far) is using the elements people liked from the DCEU, while ignoring the stuff that was mixed to outright bad.
But more to the point, this is exactly how DC reboots its comics on a regular basis. Back in 1985, the publisher realized things were getting unnecessarily complicated with the multiverse, and released an event series by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez titled Crisis on Infinite Earths. The 12-issue series, which changed everything in comics (this is not hyperbole), ended with one, distinct DC universe and what the writers, editors and artists at the time considered the ideal forms of the heroes and villains going forward. And it was a fresh start, with nobody remembering the previous multiverse.
With one exception: Psycho-Pirate, a character central to the event, who retained the memory of everything that happened before. And over time, elements that were washed away from the DC universe were brought back, remembered, expanded upon, until it became unwieldy, and was again rebooted in 2004 with Zero Hour, which left mostly everything the same with some subtle simplifications. Following Flashpoint in 2011 came The New 52, another reboot that kept some elements, and jettisoned others. And since then, most of DC’s reboots have taken the form of publishing initiatives, often with the characters aware their universe has changed and moving forward from there.
That includes the recent DC All In refresh, which led to a new universe called the Absolute Universe, which is running side by side with the main DC Universe and is connected by a little tear in the fabric of reality in the middle of the Justice League headquarters. Meaning while Absolute Universe is its own thing, the previous thing still exists, and at some point they’ll likely crash together and then the whole thing will have to be rebooted again, and…
Confused? That’s fine, that’s what the reboots are for, I guess. But the point here is that whether it’s good or bad, the way James Gunn and company are rebooting the DC cinematic universe is indeed the most DC way of doing it possible. And in fact, it seems that the original plan was to have Ezra Miller’s The Flash movie reboot the DCEU in this exact way, though the eventual outcome of that — Miller is The Flash, Jason Mamoa is Aquaman, George Clooney is Batman — doesn’t seem to be on the docket at all (see above re: jettisoning the bad).
Instead we’re getting a brand new take on superheroes that may or may not require a little knowledge of what came before. That’s how DC Comics does it, and it looks like DC Studios is doing it that way, too. And hey, if DC Studios has to have its own Zero Hour event in 10 years? I wouldn’t be surprised. That’s the DC way, baby! Reboot, rinse, repeat.
Where To Watch Creature Commandos:
Creature Commandos Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
The first two episodes of Creature Commandos premiere Thursday, December 5 at 3 am ET / Midnight PT on Max. One episode a week premieres after that, leading to the season finale on January 9, 2025.
Here’s the full list of episodes in Creature Commandos, with premiere dates:
- Thursday, December 5, 2024: Creature Commandos, Episode 1: “The Collywobbles”
- Thursday, December 5, 2024: Creature Commandos, Episode 2: “The Tourmaline Necklace”
- Thursday, December 12, 2024: Creature Commandos, Episode 3: “Cheers To The Tin Man”
- Thursday, December 19, 2024: Creature Commandos, Episode 4: “Chasing Squirrels”
- Thursday, December 26, 2024: Creature Commandos, Episode 5
- Thursday, January 2, 2025: Creature Commandos, Episode 6
- Thursday, January 9, 2025: Creature Commandos, Episode 7
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