MOVIE NEWS – Joel Kinnaman has confirmed that he is no longer coming back to the DC Universe as Rick Flag Jr., which means one of the best-known characters from The Suicide Squad now appears to be definitively done. Even though the actor showed up again in Peacemaker Season 2, the situation now looks much more like a final callback than the start of a proper return.
James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad helped set the stage for the new era of DC storytelling before Gunn himself was promoted to co-CEO of DC Studios alongside Peter Safran. The 2021 movie worked as both a partial reboot and a sequel, while also bringing back some of the cast from David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad. It featured nearly two dozen major characters overall, even if many of them were wiped out during the opening stretch of the film. Released in August 2021 in the middle of the COVID-19 era, the movie ended up arriving right before DC’s larger direction changed permanently under Gunn’s leadership.
Among the dead in The Suicide Squad was Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flag Jr., who served as the commanding officer of the titular team in both films. Kinnaman was one of only four actors to appear in both the 2016 and 2021 movies, and Rick Flag Jr. went out during one of the sequel’s most dramatic moments. He was killed in a fight against Peacemaker after trying to expose the U.S. government’s involvement in Project Starfish. Even though he later showed up again in a surprise appearance in Peacemaker Season 2, it remained unclear for a while whether Kinnaman’s time in the DC Universe was really over after only three appearances.
Now the actor has provided the clearest answer yet. Speaking with ScreenRant’s Liam Crowley on Coffee Chats, Kinnaman was asked directly whether audiences had seen the last of the former fighter pilot in the DCU. His answer was blunt: I would say so. That line alone is enough to make the situation feel pretty final. It is an especially telling statement because Rick Flag Jr. had already received a dramatic end in The Suicide Squad, and Peacemaker briefly reopened the conversation by bringing back another version of him.
That return, however, was not a conventional resurrection. Kinnaman appeared in Peacemaker Season 2, Episode 3 as a different version of Rick Flag from the alternate Earth-X reality. In that world, he was shown in a relationship with Jennifer Holland’s Emilia Harcourt, and Kinnaman himself reflected on the character as a kind of softer, alternate-universe Rick, a version he and James Gunn apparently joked about together. None of that changes what happened to the main-timeline Rick Flag Jr., whose death still appears to stand exactly as it did in the film.
Honestly, that is not particularly shocking. Rick Flag Jr.’s death was one of the most important and emotionally charged turning points in The Suicide Squad, and Peacemaker Season 2 only reinforced that by making it a major story driver for Rick Flag Sr. Frank Grillo’s character has made it a personal mission to go after Christopher Smith because of Kinnaman’s death. That makes Kinnaman’s alternate-universe cameo feel much more like a swan song than a setup for another large return. The DCU seems to have moved the Flag legacy forward, but not through Rick Flag Jr.
That is where Frank Grillo comes in. Rick Flag Sr. is now becoming a much bigger piece of the DCU overall, with appearances already logged in Creature Commandos, Superman, and Peacemaker Season 2. On top of that, he is confirmed for a key supporting role in 2027’s Man of Tomorrow, where he will be involved in the conflict alongside Superman and Lex Luthor against the threat of Brainiac. So while Joel Kinnaman appears to be done, the Flag name is clearly not leaving the DC Universe anytime soon – it is simply continuing under a different generation.
Source: MovieWeb
