Way back, all of four years ago in 2021, James Gunn’s first foray into the DC Comics cinematic universe hit theaters and HBO Max simultaneously with The Suicide Squad. That was followed up by the debut of Peacemaker Season 1, also on HBO Max… And then a lot of life happened in between, including Gunn becoming the head of DC Studios, the DCEU getting rebooted with the new DCU, and now Peacemaker Season 2. The only thing is, a crucial plot point from The Suicide Squad has become vitally important to the second season of the series. So since it’s been a few years… Why did Peacemaker kill Rick Flag?
Great question. Excellent question. You are smart and beautiful. But if you haven’t recently revisited The Suicide Squad, here’s what went down, and how it connects to Peacemaker Season 2.
Why Did Peacemaker Kill Rick Flag Jr. In The Suicide Squad?
Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, in retrospect, was sort of a dry run for what he would do with the DCU. Rather than a complete reboot or a direct sequel to 2016’s much-maligned Suicide Squad, the 2019 film was a murky in-between area, where it brought back some of the best elements of the first movie and ditched the rest — while not explicitly contradicting anything, either. In this case, that included the upright Rick Flag Jr., played by Joel Kinnaman, as well as Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Viola Davis as the morally murky Amanda Waller, and — briefly — Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang.
Unlike the first movie, though, Gunn’s take paid off on the premise of a do-or-die black ops squad, killing off most of the team we meet in the first scene, including Captain Boomerang, and not stopping there. One of those deaths late in the movie was Rick Flag, who ends up going toe to toe with Peacemaker during a climactic fight scene.
The reason? The team has been sent to Corto Maltese ostensibly to destroy Jötunheim, a massive facility that houses “Project Starfish.” But when they arrive there, Flag discovers that rather than a project run by a foreign government, this has been the work of the US government the whole time. 30 years earlier, a NASA crew captured an alien nicknamed Starro the Conqueror. The massive starfish expels smaller versions of itself, locking onto victims’ faces and taking over their minds. Under the watchful eye of the Corto Maltese government, The Thinker (Peter Capaldi) had been experimenting on human victims for three decades, keeping Starro under lock and key. And all this was fine until the Corto Maltese government was taken down in a coup.
So Waller sent in Task Force X (the actual name for The Suicide Squad), not to stop an alien threat or hobble the new Corto Maltese regime, but to cover up the US’s involvement in Project Starfish, since the new regime wasn’t an ally of the United States. Discovering this, as well as that there was info to blow this all wide open on a computer drive, Flag promised to reveal Waller’s schemes — and the horrific, 30-year history of Project Starfish — to the world because it was the right thing to do.
Only thing is, Waller had plans on plans, and she had directed Peacemaker to make sure nobody left Corto Maltese alive with that information. An important part of this equation, beyond Peacemaker being a dutiful soldier, is that Task Force X (other than Flag) all have bombs in their heads. So they need to do what Waller tells them to do, or they die.
Flag and Peacemaker fought, Flag wrestled Peacemaker to the floor, and grabbing a loose, sharp bit of tile that broke in the fight, stabs him in the heart. “Peacemaker,” Flag says with his dying breath. “What a joke.”
To be fair to our eventual streaming TV show hero, Peacemaker didn’t want to kill Flag, respected him, and felt awful about it… Though he also tried to kill Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior) before Bloodsport (Idris Elba) shot him in the throat, so maybe don’t feel too bad for Peacemaker.
What Does Rick Flag’s Death Have To Do With Peacemaker Season 2?
As I mentioned above, there’s some tricky continuity stuff going on with Peacemaker, in that it was in this weird halfway point between the DCEU (the previous iteration of the DC cinematic universe) and being its own thing. Now, Season 2 of the series is firmly in the new DCU that includes Creature Commandos and Superman. But! In the premiere, we’ve already gotten an explicit mention of the death of Rick Flag, thanks to his dad, Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo).
Grillo has already played the voice of Rick Flag Sr. in Creature Commandos, and then in live-action in Superman. In Peacemaker Season 2, he’s been promoted to the head of A.R.G.U.S., the organization previously run by Amanda Waller. And while he’s monitoring Peacemaker due to some weird energy fluctuations that seem similar to when Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) opened a portal in Superman, destroying half of Metropolis — spoiler alert, but Peacemaker is opening a portal — the investigation also seems extremely personal. Flag Sr. clearly wants revenge for his son, not just to shut down whatever Peacemaker is doing portal-wise.
And in fact, without spoiling anything, let’s just say that the death of Rick Flag is not just connected to his father; there are other repercussions and reverberations throughout Season 2 (at least in the five episodes provided to critics, the final three have been held back for spoiler reasons). The whole plot of Season 2 is Peacemaker trying to escape the sins of his past into another dimension, so it stands to reason that one of his biggest ones, killing the upright Rick Flag Jr., would be heavily featured, down to seeing the scene where he was killed.
So what does Rick Flag Jr.’s death have to do with Peacemaker Season 2? Everything.
Peacemaker Season 2 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
Peacemaker season 2 will officially premiere on HBO Max on Thursday, August 21. The season will be eight episodes long, with one episode premiering per week.
Here’s the full list of episodes in Peacemaker Season 2, with premiere dates:
- Thursday, August 21, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 1
- Thursday, August 28, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 2
- Thursday, September 4, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 3
- Thursday, September 11, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 4
- Thursday, September 18, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 5
- Thursday, September 25, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 6
- Thursday, October 2, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 7
- Thursday, October 9, 2025: Peacemaker, Season 2, Episode 8 *Season Finale*
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