Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaguehas had colossal highs and lows since its announcement and it seems to be lying fairly dormant in an underwhelming plateau during its third season of post-launch content. An Elseworld Joker, Mrs. Freeze, and Zoe Lawton have been recruited to Rocksteady’s current Task Force X alongside Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark, amassing a highly irregular team with only one of its characters originally belonging to the Arkhamverse before the events ofSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice League(unless anyone still considersAssault on Arkhamcanon).
This wasn’t always going to be what theArkhamverse’s Task Force Xlooked like, though, and even the core four Amanda Waller’s ARGUS selects for Brainiac’s Metropolis invasion probably weren’t the first criminals to be enlisted as an expendable Suicide Squad. The beauty of the Suicide Squad premise is that any number of eclectic teams could be fashioned for whatever covert assignments ARGUS needs them for, meaning there’s a possibility that countless other iterations of Task Force X have been initiated in the timeline, and evidence of that goes back toBatman: Arkham Origins.
Rocksteady knew full well what it was doing when it decided thatDeathstroke would beSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s fourth and final playable DLC character. Even if the upcoming fourth season doesn’t feature a ton of actual narrative content, following in the footpath of previous seasons thus far, Slade Wilson’s Deathstroke is a huge draw for the live-service shooter as it is another explicit tether to the beloved Arkhamverse.
Deathstroke first appeared in the Arkhamverse duringBatman: Arkham Origins, and despite only leaving an abrupt mark on the prequel entry it’s undeniable that this is one of the mercenary’s most iconic depictions, as well as one of the most unique boss fights in the series altogether. Moreover, a post-credits scene revealed Waller approaching him in his cell at Blackgate Penitentiary as she’s more or less forcing him to enlist as a Suicide Squad recruit.
This was the first time the Arkhamverse made mention of a Suicide Squad, no matter how subtle and without any clear indication of how impactful or meaningful that would be for the franchise, and thus it’s fantastic that Rocksteady’sSuicide Squadgame will be able to honor that tease more than a decade later.
It would be interesting to learn if Deathstroke has done work for ARGUS prior to his appearance inSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, but regardless it’ll be great to finally play as him again for the first time since hisBatman: Arkham OriginsChallenge Pack. To toss shreds of tinder on a burgeoning flame,Origins’ 2.5D companion piece,Blackgate, would go on to have far more explicit nods to a Suicide Squad being quietly assembled a la the MCU’s early days of gradually establishingThe Avengers.
How Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate Teases a Mid-Continuity Task Force X
IfBatman: Arkham City Lockdownis a distant relative the family chooses not to foster a relationship with,Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgateis the Arkhamverse’s black sheep of a step-sibling.Blackgate’s plot concludes in a halfway intriguing follow-through with a shrunken Bane sapped of Titan, but the more captivating piece of narrative in Armature’s side-scrolling Metroidvania is an omniscient perspective of Waller and Rick Flag monitoring the Blackgate riots and assessing who would make competent recruits.
Here, they observe and recruit Bronze Tiger and Deadshot—theArkhamgames’ Floyd Lawton beforeSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaguecame up with an odd impersonation story, at least—with Batman sneakily landing a tracer on Waller’s helicopter. So, while no studio is likely to make another attempt at a Suicide Squad game any time soon given how poorKill the Justice League’s reception has been, the Arkhamverse has left itself with a ton of room for many more Task Force X tales to tell betweenBlackgateandSuicide Squadwith any miscellaneous assortments of criminals imaginable.
Assault on Arkham’s Canon May Be Questionable, But It Shouldn’t Be
There was a time not long ago whenAssault on Arkham’s lorewas uncontested in how canonical it was in the Arkhamverse. Nonetheless, the animated movie could behave like a re-engineered framework for the Arkhamverse to work with, and the fact that it takes place betweenOriginsandAsylumplants it firmly within a stretch of lore that hasn’t been trodden yet.
The argument could be made thatKill the Justice League’s King Sharkis one of many King Sharks, not unlike howKill the Justice League’s Floyd Lawton was apparently not the only Floyd Lawton—evidence that Rocksteady obviously isn’t afraid to retcon its own lore.
The best course of action anyhow would be for aSuicide Squadprequel to not feature any controversially charged or retconned characters unless anyone willing to develop such a game could actually explain its choices succinctly and commit to them. It’s highly likely that a lesson has been ubiquitously learned and that Batman, as a tried-and-true safe bet, will be the Arkhamverse’s sole focus for the foreseeable future.
Even so, the Arkhamverse has worked tirelessly to lay foundations forSuicide Squadgames and there’s still potential there for exciting narratives to be told. Leaning onAssault on Arkhamfor what it contributes to a fully-fledged Arkhamverse Suicide Squad embedded in the games’ tapestry, possible future games could revive older, more faithful connections to the Task Force X program and depict what it looked like beforeAsylum.
