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Assorted enemies that Task Force X is assigned with capturing and/or killing.


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Midway City crisis

    Enchantress 

Enchantress

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/23_14.jpg
(Moonspeak) "Now they worship machines, so I will build a machine that will destroy them all!"
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/enchantresssecondform.png
"The sun is setting and the magic arises. The Metahumans are a sign of change!"

Species: Inter-dimensional mystical entity

Affiliation(s): Advanced Research Group Uniting Superhumans (A.R.G.U.S.) (formerly)

Portrayed By: Cara Delevingne

Voiced By: Jessica Ángeles (Latin-American Spanish), Maribel Pomar (European Spanish), Miyuki Sawashiro (Japanese), Nastassja Girard (European French), Geneviève Déry (Canadian French), Carol Crespo (Brazilian Portuguese)

Appearances: Suicide Squad

"Why are you all here? Because the soldier led you? And all for Waller. Why do you serve those who cage you? I am your ally. And I know what you want. Exactly what you want."

The spirit of an ancient evil sorceress inadvertently unleashed by archaeologist June Moone after centuries of imprisonment. She and June now share a body, and with it supernatural abilities that have drawn the attention of Amanda Waller.


  • Adaptational Skimpiness: Enchantress wore full-length dresses in the comics while the film has her in something of a Chainmail Bikini. However, the fact she looks like she is rotting away skews it more towards Fan Disservice. Downplayed when she is given power by Incubus to sustain her until she regains her heart in the third act. In these scenes, she wears a dress that still shows skin but is most definitely not just a Chainmail Bikini.
  • Adaptational Ugliness: Despite wearing a more revealing outfit than her comic counterpart, she's also messier and creepier-looking. Subverted once she's empowered by her brother.
  • Adaptational Villainy: Played with. In the comics, she's a member who's gone on multiple missions with the Suicide Squad, including their first against Brimstone, before she left when the entity was destroyed. However, she had to be kept under check, and was just as dangerous to her teammates as she was to her enemies. Here, she's straight up the Big Bad to the Suicide Squad and plans to Take Over the World, and never goes on a mission with the squad. In fact, she's what causes their first mission to begin (though she was proposed for the squad, it didn't happen before she went rogue). That said, the Suicide Squad were never saints to begin with, she was always portrayed as a truly villainous character kept on a leash, was (relatively speaking) the Token Evil Teammate to them, and had been an antagonist in the comics, such as Justice League Dark. Basically, both versions are evil, but Movie!Enchantress never got to do any good, unlike Comics!Enchantress.
  • All Wishes Granted: The Enchantress uses her mental abilities to find out what several of the Squad's members want most of all (Harley wants to be married to the Joker, Deadshot wants to kill Batman, Rick Flag wants his girlfriend June Moon to no longer be possessed by the Enchantress and Diablo wants his family to be alive again) and offers to fulfill the wishes. If she offered anything to Killer Croc, Captain Boomerang or Katana, it wasn't shown onscreen. Subverted when the Squad refuses the Enchantress's offer.
  • Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She's a very intimidating Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette.
  • Ax-Crazy: Highly destructive and uncaring.
  • Badass Cape: Her empowered form has a flowing blue-green cape.
  • Beat Still, My Heart: Her heart has been removed from her body, and serves as a Soul Jar.
  • Big Bad: Of Suicide Squad.
  • Black Speech: She speaks an ancient language that sounds demonic with her brother — it was nicknamed "Moonspeak" by the filming crew, which is also a slang word for confusing foreign languages. She switches to English when addressing the Squad and Amanda Waller.
  • Blood Knight: Despite her possessing the capability to wipe out Task Force X with absolutely no trouble, she decides to have a little fun with them by going toe-to-toe with all of them at once, even reverting herself to her weaker form to even the odds a little.
  • Brother–Sister Team: She works to release her brother, Incubus, and together they are the major villains of Suicide Squad.
  • The Caligula: She's completely psychotic and demands worship.
  • Chainmail Bikini: Enchantress wears a skimpy outfit made entirely out of metal jewelry. And she looks very fine in it.
  • Cold Ham: Her lines are overtly dramatic as expected from a villain, but not delivered with full force given Cara Delevingne's Dull Surprise.
  • Color-Coded Wizardry: Turquoise. It contrasts with the Suicide Squad's lineup - the majority of whom are associated with the color red - as well as her brother Incubus and Diablo's unleashed form - who is orange.
  • Dark Action Girl: At first she's purely of the Black Magician Girl variety, but she gets two magical swords in the final battle and goes toe-to-toe with the entire squad in close-quarters combat.
  • Dating Catwoman: June is in a relationship with Rick Flag, which means he's technically dating Enchantress at the same time.
  • Demonic Possession: The summary of Enchantress's relationship to June; when the archaeologist disturbed the vessel that the Enchantress's essence was sealed inside of, Enchantress possessed her, and now co-opts her body whenever she desires.
  • Disney Death: Once the Enchantress is defeated, Rick Flag demands that she free June, or else he'll crush her heart and kill her. The witch then eggs him on to do it, saying that he doesn't "have the balls"; regrettingly, he does, ultimately killing both the Enchantress and June. As he grieves over murdering his beloved, June suddenly emerges from the Enchantress's body, alive and well.
  • Dual Wielding: Gets two swords in the climax when fighting Task Force X.
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: After possessing June. Before, it's a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl.
  • Entitled Bastard: Believed that Rick Flag wouldn't kill her even after bragging about how June was well and truly dead by now.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She genuinely loves her brother, as she is visibly horrified when he is killed, and after her defeat she begs to be finished off so she can be Together in Death with him.
  • Evil Counterpart: To Diablo. Diablo manages to restrain his own supernatural abilities after it cost him his family, while Enchantress lets her power run rampant knowing full well it might kill her host's lover.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: Amanda Waller finds out trying to use her was definitely not a good idea.
  • Evil Luddite: She sounds incredibly disdainful when commenting on how humanity now worships machines instead of revering her, and her plan is to "pay them back in kind" by using a magitek doomsday-weapon to obliterate all of the planet's military facilities and secret bases.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: She gets a Voice of the Legion when she is empowered.
  • Fan Disservice: She's an attractive woman in very little clothing, but her dark ragged look can make it come off as more creepy than titillating. She cleans up after getting her heart back.
  • Fanservice Pack: Her empowered form inexplicably makes her breasts larger.
  • Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: After attaining her full power, she cleans up nicely.
  • Game Face: Enchantress reverts back to her more hideous form when she enters the final battle herself.
  • A God Am I: At one point in the film, she comments on how humanity once worshipped her and her brother, but has now forsaken her to "worship machines".
  • Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Compared to her brother, she's small and fights with magic, though she certainly can throw down in close quarters combat very well.
  • Heart Trauma: Waller is in possession of the Enchantress's physical heart, which considerably weakens the latter if Waller physically abuses it. Flag ultimately kills her by crushing the heart.
  • Hot Witch: Even with her scraggly appearance, Enchantress is still played by fashion model Cara Delevingne, and wears next to nothing.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Due to her magical powers and feral mannerisms, she feels very out-of-place considering how grounded in reality the previous DCEU films were. During one of her transformations, she briefly grows an extra hand from under June's sleeve.
  • Implied Death Threat: Enchantress gives Flag a hallucination of Moone dying in a hospital bed, to stop him warning Waller that she's loose.
  • It's All About Me: Her overriding of June's free will is just the first in a long line of clues that she's fundamentally a very selfish person with an over-inflated ego. She treats her own brother as little more than a glorified mook despite needing his assistance to stay alive at one point.
  • Join or Die: She attempts this with Task Force X after they deliver a good fight. Harley appears to comply.
  • Lady of Black Magic: An ancient, evil sorceress who is scantily-clad and has immense magical powers. She also stops her feral mannerisms and conducts herself much more properly once she regains her heart.
  • Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: She is the dark to June Moone's light. Whereas June is a Proper Lady who dresses conservatively, the Enchantress is scantily-clad and moves sensually.
  • Lotus-Eater Machine: Enchantress ensnares the team in her illusions. We only see four of them. Deadshot kills Batman, Harley Quinn is married to the Joker and they have children, Rick Flagg is in bed with his girlfriend June Moone, and El Diablo is living happily with his wife and children. El Diablo is able to break free and wake up the others, because he accepted that his wife and children are dead.
  • Lunacy: Her host's last name is Moone, she wears a crescent moon accessory on her head whilst wielding darkness-themed powers, and the ancient language she speaks with her brother is called Moonspeak.
  • Magic Dance: The moves she performs during her ritual.
  • The Magic Goes Away: During a conversation she has with El Diablo at the film's climax, she notes that this happened in the distant past...but then asserts that now the magic is coming back, citing the rise of Metahumans as a symptom of this trait.
  • Mook Maker: She can transform normal civilians into all-black Humanoid Abomination Mooks, which she sends against Task Force X.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Double Subversion. For much of the movie she wears a black-and-metal bikini that leaves little to the imagination while being generally creepy looking. Her appearance after regaining her heart plays this trope even straighter, since her dress is just as revealing, but she looks alluring and seductive instead of disheveled and creepy as with her original look, not to mention the ritualistic dance she performs.
  • New Era Speech: The Enchantress gives one of these to the Squad near the climax of the movie to try and get them to join her, claiming that the emergence of the metahumans is nothing but a sign of a new age of magic that is about to begin.
  • One-Shot Character: She gets destroyed at the end of Suicide Squad, the only movie she's in.
  • Orifice Invasion: Her spirit form flows into June Moone through her mouth and nose.
  • Outside-Genre Foe: She is a straight-up magic-using witch in a cinematic universe that had thus far been built upon science fiction.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: When she cuts loose, she reveals herself to be possessing world-ending levels of power.
  • Psychopathic Womanchild: It's subtle, but her plan basically amounts to "cause The End of the World as We Know It because everyone's stopped paying attention to me."
  • Really 700 Years Old: She is over 6,313 years old, making her a millennium older than Wonder Woman.
  • Rule of Symbolism: She rises to power after the death of Superman, just like how the moon shines brightest after the sun has set.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Enchantress was unleashed after June Moone messed with an artifact she shouldn't have.
  • Sealed in a Person-Shaped Can: Now, she inhabits June's body.
  • Shadow Archetype: To Shazam. Both can transform by calling their names, and their powers are magic-based. Unlike Shazam, Enchantress is her own separate identity, and rather than empower her host the way Shazam does with Billy Batson and his allies, she's basically a parasite that overrides their free will.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: After regaining her heart, all the dirt on her body disappears, making her appearance literally more cleaned up.
  • Smug Super: She is very self-assured about her power. Although it's fairly justified considering that she packs enough power to cause the end of the world singlehandedly.
  • Sophisticated as Hell: After she starts speaking English, she generally speaks in a very sophisticated way. Up until Flag is about to kill her by crushing her heart, at which she says that he doesn't "have the balls".
  • Soul Jar: Waller keeps her under her thumb because she possesses the Enchantress's heart. Rick Flag destroying the heart is what defeats her for good.
  • Squishy Wizard: In comparison to her brother. She's never shown to possess anywhere near his level of raw physical strength and toughness, but her magical powers are far more impressive, being sufficient to deal significant damage to the entire world if properly focused and amplified. Such power is not directly applicable in personal combat, though, which is why she hides behind her brother and an army of Mooks.
  • The Starscream: The whole reason Task Force X was formed was that she turned on Amanda Waller the first chance she got.
  • Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Enchantress has messy black tendrils of long hair running down her head when she takes over June. Enchantress cleans up much more nicely once she gets her heart back.
  • Supering in Your Sleep: How Enchantress manages to escape captivity, from June accidentally saying her name in her sleep.
  • Superpowered Evil Side: June Moone can summon Enchantress by saying her name.
  • Superpower Lottery: Part and parcel of being a god. Superhuman strength (though only to around Killer Croc levels), toughness (bullets from Deadshot's rifle bounce off her) and reflexes, telepathy, mind control, teleportation, limited regeneration, telekinesis, longevity, ability to project illusions... The list goes on.
  • Teleport Spam: Teleportation is part of her abilities, and she uses it when fighting Task Force X.
  • Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: Enchantress at first appears covered in grime and dirt for no apparent reason. When she gets more powerful later, it somehow cleans her off.
  • Voice of the Legion: Her voice is deep and reverberating when she talks to the Suicide Squad when they come to confront her.
  • Your Heart's Desire: At the final confrontation, Enchantress offers each member of the Suicide Squad the chance to fulfill their deepest desires, but they slowly start rejecting it or at least in some cases, debating it.

    Incubus 

Kinich Ahau / Incubus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/incubus_3.png

Species: Inter-dimensional mystical entity

Affiliation(s): Enchantress

Portrayed By: Alain Chanoine

Voiced By: José Luccioni (European French)

Appearances: Suicide Squad

Enchantress: (Moonspeak) The humans turned against us.
Incubus: (Moonspeak) But they worshipped us? We were gods to them!

The brother of Enchantress, a demon who was sealed in a small statue. Upon being freed from it by his sister, he possesses Midway City businessman Gerard Davis, adopting his face, and merges three additional people into himself, growing much bigger than his sister's human size.


  • Adaptational Ugliness: In the comics, Incubus's host body appears as an average-looking human man, whereas here he becomes a towering, demonic creature.
  • Big Bad Duumvirate: He and his sister treat each other like equals, he appears to be equal in power to her, and it was actually he who kickstarted the plot (well, besides Waller) by helping his sister escape and regain her power. Enchantress functions as the more visible Big Bad of the two, though, as Incubus doesn't say much and dies before the main climax.
  • Black Speech: He speaks the same ancient language as his sister ("Moonspeak") when talking to her, and it sounds demonic.
  • Body Horror: His transformation from his human host into his true form starts by grabbing three extra people and quickly degenerating into a wriggling mass of flesh as the new form begins to assert itself. Then, as it takes form, it finishes by catching on fire and growing his exoskeleton from his skin like a fungus.
  • Brother–Sister Team: He's his sister's muscle as she carries out her scheme.
  • The Brute: He is Enchantress's last rampart, and he's fit for the task due to his sheer brute force.
  • Combat Tentacles: Emits them to attack and feed.
  • Demonic Possession: He quickly finds a human host once Enchantress frees him, but that doesn't seem to be enough, and he absorbs several other people before adopting his definitive form.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Apparently, a mere bomb is enough to destroy him. Very likely a shaped charge, considering how small it was and the fact that he survived worse in earlier scenes.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He genuinely loves his sister, sharing some of his power with her until she gets her heart back, and she is horrified by his death.
  • Evil Is Bigger: In contrast to the still human-sized Enchantress, her brother is a towering beast.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: His voice is deep when he talks to his sister.
  • Flat Character: He doesn't have much of a personality outside of being extremely cruel and caring about his sister.
  • Force and Finesse: He's the Force that complements his sister's Finesse.
  • A God Am I: He was worshiped as a deity several millennia ago, just like his sister.
  • Generic Doomsday Villain: More so than his sister. While Enchantress at least had a vision of what she wanted, Incubus seems to just go along with her plans, and acts as her muscle for the most part.
  • Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Compared to his sister, he's large, imposing, and fights physically.
  • Hero Killer: On top of killing at least a couple dozen National Guardsmen, the titular squad is absolutely no match for him, and only narrowly avoid all dying against him. He requires a Heroic Sacrifice from El Diablo (and Navy SEAL Lieutenant Edwards) to beat.
  • Horned Humanoid: He has antler-like horns on his head.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Bordering on Eldritch Abomination. His body (which is made up of three people meshed together) is wreathed in flames and encased in a black exoskeleton, and he can turn his arms into tendrils.
  • Immune to Bullets: Early in the movie, we see Humvees with .50 BMG machine guns unload on him to no effect. Deadshot's small arms are, of course, even less effective. Anti-tank weaponry, on the other hand...
  • Non-Indicative Name: For someone called "Incubus", he does no seducing, instead "feeding" directly on humans.
  • No Name Given: Narrowly averted: his name is displayed on Enchantress's "profile shot", where it lists him as her brother. It's never actually spoken by anyone in the movie, however.
  • One-Shot Character: Like his sister, he gets destroyed at the end of the movie.
  • Orifice Invasion: His spirit form flows into Gerard Davis through his mouth.
  • The Quiet One: He doesn't speak much.
  • Race Lift: The Incubus host in the comics was white, while he is black in the movie.
  • Reused Character Design: He resembles Firestorm when he's at full power, even requiring more than one human host to maintain himself.
  • Scary Black Man: As a result of his host happening to be a black man and him taking his appearance.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: He was imprisoned in a small statue in the same cave as Enchantress. She frees him once she manages to foil Amanda Waller's attempts to control her.
  • Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Due to him being a Walking Spoiler and directly related to how Enchantress figures into the plot. However, he actually appears as a Freeze-Frame Bonus in most of the trailers as something destroying an oncoming train.
  • Superpower Lottery: As a result of his divine status.
    • Super-Strength: He can toss 3-ton Humvees around effortlessly, shatter concrete pillars with his punches, shoot his tentacles through armored attack helicopters, and overpower El Diablo's Fire God form.
    • Super-Toughness: See Immune to Bullets. He's very tough, but he has his limits. El Diablo's flames also have little effect on him.
    • Healing Factor: He regenerates his hand after Katana cuts it off, and seemingly heals from the burns El Diablo causes on him.
    • Psychic Powers: To a light extent. He levitates some items (such as Enchantress's heart), and communicates with his sister telepathically.
    • Mind Manipulation: He can take control of people by touch. He gets a host this way, and can brainwash people to turn them into his mooks.
    • Super-Empowering: As long as Enchantress doesn't have her heart, Incubus shares his power with her.
  • Walking Spoiler: He barely appeared in marketing for a reason.

    Eyes of the Adversary 

Eyes of the Adversary

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eyesoftheadversary.jpg

Species: Mutated humans

Affiliation(s): Enchantress & Incubus

Appearances: Suicide Squad

Humans who get forcibly turned into monstrous grunts by Enchantress.


  • Alien Blood: They "bleed" black grit, as their bodies are petrified and their stone-like tissue shatters from damaging impacts.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Anytime they appear, they start attacking everyone in sight.
  • And I Must Scream: These are people who got turned into abominations.
  • Body Horror: The sight of a person transforming into one is unnerving, to say the least.
  • Canon Foreigner: They are an original creation for the film.
  • Eyes Do Not Belong There: They're black and covered in eyeballs.
  • Horned Humanoid: A select few have curved black horns.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Their flesh is warped and covered in eyes. They also feel no pain, and can only be permanently killed by destroying their heads.
  • Mooks: They're an army of foot soldiers who serve Enchantress, and they're basically Cannon Fodder the Suicide Squad has a jolly time tearing through.
  • Was Once a Man: They are horribly mutated humans. Their clothes and accessories are still present.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: It is not known if the remaining people who were turned into such creatures reverted back to normal, died or remained as such when Enchantress was destroyed.

Corto Maltese crisis

    Starro the Conqueror 

Starro the Conqueror

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/starro_suicide_squad6.jpg
"THIS! CITY! IS! MINE!"

Species: Alien Starfish

Affiliation(s): The Thinker, Corto Maltese Military

Appearances: The Suicide Squad

"American goddamn astronauts found Starro! Yankee fucking doodle dandies! Although the Cold War was ended, your government saw the potential in weaponizing such a powerful beast. But banish the thought of any such experiments being held on American soil!"
The Thinker

A gigantic alien starfish who conquers planets through mind-control.


  • Adaptational Superpower Change: In the comics, someone who falls victim to one of its parasites goes right back to normal if you can get the thing off them. Here, they're gone forever the moment it latches on, with one poor test subject's demise showing it eventually burrows through their face all the way to the skull.
  • Adaptational Sympathy: Unlike in the comics, where Starro came to invade the Earth under its own will, here it was content to drift aimlessly through space, but was captured by humans and brought to Earth against its will, where it was gruesomely experimented upon for decades, giving it every reason to hate humanity.
  • Adaptational Wimp:
    • In the comic books, Starro is a world-ending threat able to go toe-to-toe with the entire Justice League and physically beat Superman. Here, to account for the lower scope of the movie, it goes down when a swarm of rats eat its internal organs.
    • In the comics, Starro's spores could survive for quite some time without a host. Here, they perish after a minute or so if they don't find a victim to latch onto.
  • Adorable Abomination: It's a mind-controlling parasitic kaiju, but also a brightly colored starfish with rounded almost cuddly features and a puppy-dog eye.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Its final words are it reminiscing about how happy it was in space looking at the stars during whatever passed for its childhood. Likewise, due to the Adaptational Superpower Change, all of its victims died with it.
  • Alien Blood: A weird case where its averted with the big guy itself, but its spawns seem to bleed dark purple.
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: "This! City! Is MINE!!"
  • Alternate Self: The Wally West of Earth-1/Earth-Prime mentions fighting "a starfish from outer space", and a whole species of alternates invaded Earth-26 that its Wells repelled.
  • Animalistic Abomination: A giant literal Starfish Alien that can control humans with its offsprings.
  • Anti-Villain: Starro threatens the lives of millions of people after it's freed – possibly even billions, as Starro is well established as an apocalypse-level threat if it ends up breaking free. It also is a tormented Non-Malicious Monster who admits it was happiest floating around and watching the stars before it was kidnapped by American astronauts and the Thinker, and ended up driven to insanity over thirty years of constant torture. Even its final death is framed in an incredibly tragic light.
  • Being Tortured Makes You Evil: It's all but stated that Starro was a docile creature who was content drifting in space before decades of torturous experiments under the Thinker warped it into a vengeful monster.
  • Because You Were Nice to Me: Initially spares the Suicide Squad out of gratitude for freeing it. It only attacks them when their Heel–Face Turn compels them to stop its rampage.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: Particularly by the standards of a comic book movie villain, Starro is an incredibly goofy-looking figure, between the bright blue-and-purple color scheme, the codename "Project Starfish" (which Peacemaker compares to a butthole), and its almost cuddly design. Then it breaks out the Body Horror, and strikes out to devour the entire island.
  • Big Bad: Of The Suicide Squad. It doesn't become an active threat until the final quarter of the film, but the very reason Task Force X goes on the mission in the first place is because of Project Starfish, and while characters like the Thinker and Presidente Luna/Suarez attempt to exploit it for their own ends, all of them ultimately pay for it in the end.
  • Bizarre Alien Reproduction: It isn't clear if Starro even can reproduce. Starro is capable of ejecting tiny duplicates of itself, but we are explicitly told that these are in fact not offspring. Rather, they're extensions of itself that can act as Puppeteer Parasites for hosts with properly-sized and shaped heads (namely humans), and in fact they are shown to die if they do not find a host soon enough after being ejected. That said, Starro was quite a bit smaller when it was first captured, compared to when it escaped, which implies it was indeed birthed/hatched/whatever by parents/a parent of some description.
  • Combat Tentacles: Is able to sprout whip-like tentacles from the ends of its appendages which it can grab people with.
  • Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Its name being "Starro the Conquerer" is only what the Thinker likes to call it. It is otherwise referred to by the "Project Starfish" designation, if it is ever given a proper name at all. With that said, the film's comic-styled text gleefully refers to it as Starro, and Ratcatcher 2 also calls it Starro.
  • Composite Character: Despite obviously being an adaptation of Starro, this version of the character has a lot in common with Doomsday too. Both are alien Living Superweapons whose origins involve being endlessly tormented by a deranged scientist until they're broken to the point where they perceive just about everything as a threat. Much like Doomsday, Starro would eventually break free of its confinement and brutally murder its tormentor, before seeking out to destroy everyone and everything.
  • Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Like the Enchantress, Starro is a being far outside the knowledge base of the U.S. government that said government attempts to control for its own ends, which ultimately goes poorly. Also like Enchantress, Starro transforms its victims into mindless extensions of its will that can't be saved. But whereas Enchantress is a knowingly malevolent entity that successfully manipulated U.S. government officials into setting up its plans for world domination, Starro was a peaceful entity corrupted by decades of cruelty and experimentation and released only by a botched effort to cover its existence up. And while Enchantress begins her world domination efforts out of perceived disrespect from humanity at large, Starro is more clearly lashing out for reasons of vengeance.
    • Starro also serves as one for Steppenwolf, the main villain of the other DC superhero film of 2021. Whilst both Starro and Steppenwolf are dangerous, yet sympathetic, alien villains (whose names begin with "St") the differences lie in the details. Steppenwolf was exiled from his home of Apokolips for his betrayal of Darkseid, forced to roam the galaxy conquering planets until he had repaid his debt to his master. Starro, meanwhile, was a totally innocent alien, driven into villainy only by his desire for revenge against the Corto Maltesians. Steppenwolf looks down upon the Justice League (with the exception of Wonder Woman) seeing them more as minor obstacles rather than anything else, whereas Starro recognises the Suicide Squad and shows gratitude for freeing him, only turning against them when they attack him first. Steppenwolf is a physical threat, using brute strength (and his parademons) to achieve his goals, whereas Starro's mind control abilities are a bigger danger than its size. Finally, where Steppenwolf's death is treated as a victory, Starro's defeat is more tragic, as in its final moments it laments how it was happy floating through space, seeing the stars.
  • Devoured by the Horde: Gets a javelin in the eye, and then is eaten from the inside out by rats.
  • The Dog Bites Back: The Thinker imprisoned and experimented on it for thirty years, and the moment its containment is destroyed, it grabs the Thinker and rips him to pieces with its tentacles before splattering him against a wall. Notably, he's the only person in the movie Starro outright kills immediately instead of trying to assimilate first.
  • Eye Scream: Starro is killed after Harley Quinn pierces its eye with Javelin's javelin, allowing Ratcatcher's swarms of rats to get into the eyeball and gnaw at the blood vessels inside.
  • Faceless Eye: Its eye is the most complex part of its body, and Starro uses its hosts to speak, due to not having a mouth or any other speech-related organs.
  • Fed to the Beast: Dissenters of the Colto Maltese regime, political rivals, journalists that got too nosy, or anyone even vaguely associated with the three prior groups ended up becoming unwilling test subjects for Starro's parasitic extensions, amounting to thousands of victims over decades.
    • Starro also falls into the receiving end of this when Ratcatcher feeds it to her army of rats.
  • Freudian Excuse: When it was just a tiny alien, American astronauts abducted it. Then the US government handed it over to the Corto Maltese government, who then employed the Thinker to experiment on it. The Thinker would then use his job as an excuse to torture Starro in every possible way for thirty years. No wonder it despises humanity.
  • Giant Equals Invincible: In the present day, Starro's massive size renders it practically immune to most conventional weapons, by virtue of the sheer amount of bulk any adversaries have to get through. Its flesh can be damaged, sure, but there's so much of it that hitting anything vital is an exercise in futility, though Polka-Dot Man disintegrates one of Starro's limbs before dying. Starro is only defeated once Harley dives into its eye with a javelin, piercing the iris and allowing Ratcatcher's rats to reach its internal organs.
  • Hive Mind: Its puppeteered victims, referred to as the "Star Crossed" in the credits, are reduced to mere extensions.
  • If It Swims, It Flies: The parasites are shown to swim through the air in order to reach their targets. Starro himself is much too big to do this.
  • Immune to Bullets: Both the Corto Maltese army's guns and Bloodsport's much more powerful rocket-grenades do nothing but aggravate Starro. Only Javelin's javelin as wielded by Harley Quinn is able to pierce it through its eye, but even the hole it created was temporary, as Starro's eye regenerated and the hole closed back up, so Starro could've survived that too if it wasn't for the rats who entered the hole to chew up its veins.
  • Ironic Name: The Thinker calls it "Starro the Conqueror" despite it having spent the last 30 years as a conquered victim of the Thinker ("It's meant to be derisive", as the Thinker points out). Before that, Starro spent its life just floating through space, looking at the stars, so it was actually peacefull up until it was subjected to the Thinker. Only when it finally escapes does Starro intend to live up to the "Conqueror" part of its name, and it is out of revenge for having been tortured for years.
  • Kaiju: Starro has grown to a giant size in the many years since it was captured. John Economos even refers to Starro as a kaiju when he first sees it.
    Economos: Oh my god! We've got a freakin' kaiju up in this shit!
  • Logical Weakness: Its duplicates can only latch on to people's faces if they are completely unprotected. As such, the Squad are able to avoid being controlled in the finale by simply covering their faces with their masks or hands, or in King Shark's case, having a face that is too large and abnormally shaped for them to latch on to.
  • Make My Monster Grow: It's able to grow larger by feeding on the consciousness of its victims. When first captured, it was barely larger than a person. Now, it's as tall as a skyscraper.
  • No Biological Sex: Starro never identifies as a particular gender in the movie, and it's also able to duplicate itself through clefts between its limbs, akin to asexual reproduction - though Thinker says that the duplicates are not its progeny.
  • Pet the Dog: It pitifully begs the Suicide Squad for mercy when they initially find it, and then promptly returns that same mercy after it breaks free of Jotunheim. After it consciously realizes the Suicide Squad survived its mass assimilation of the Corto Maltesian army, it proceeds to leave them completely alone. It's a major plot point in the final battle that the Suicide Squad choose to go into the final battle and save innocents when they could walk away entirely free, and it's only when the Squad attacks does Starro become hostile toward them as well.
  • Puppeteer Parasite: Is capable of ejecting an airborne swarm of these, seemingly at will. The amount it can release at once depends on its size.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Launches into this in the final battle.
  • Rogues' Gallery Transplant: In its first appearance in the comics, Starro faced the Justice League of America, not the Suicide Squad.
  • Single Specimen Species: Ambiguously. It's the only one of its kind we see (assuming the parasites it ejects are indeed not distinct organisms by any measure), and it's never stated whether there are others out there in the cosmos, but it does seem to have been only a baby when first captured, and babies imply parent(s)...
  • Space Whale: The void of space appears to be its natural habitat, though it seems to function equally well on the surface of a rocky planet like Earth.
  • Speak in Unison: Starro itself never speaks physically. All its lines are spoken in unison by humans controlled through its parasites.
  • Starfish Alien: A quite literal example. It came from space, but that's basically all we know about its origins.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: It was brought to a secret facility and experimented on for decades. Somewhat tragically, it wasn't actually particularly evil at all before being sealed, only becoming vengeful after decades of torturous experiments.
  • Tragic Villain: Starro doesn't live up to the "Conqueror" part of its name until it's freed from Jotunheim, and even then the only reason it goes on a rampage is as revenge for being tortured for thirty years straight by the Thinker. Notably, its first (and one of its only) lines of dialogue to the Squad isn't any sort of threat or postulation. It's a plea for help.
    "Have you come to save me from that madman?! Thirty years he's kept me here...tortured me...had his way with me!''"
  • Weaksauce Weakness: All those parasites it releases die out rather quickly if they can't attach to a host.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: While unambiguously the villain of The Suicide Squad and expressing visions of conquest and mass assimilation, Starro is still sympathetic because it was forcibly taken from its peaceful existence drifting through space, imprisoned and tortured for decades, and intended to be used as a weapon by humans. It's no wonder at all it goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge once it's freed.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Starro goes on a rampage in Corto Maltese, undeniably killing many children as a result. The mission control note this, which is one of the reasons they turn against Waller.
  • You Will Be Spared: Its initial opinion on the Suicide Squad. After it realizes they survived its mass assimilation, Starro decides to let them go as a measure of unspoken gratitude for freeing it, even after it goes on a rampage to assimilate as many people as possible. It's only after the Squad attacks it to prevent it from killing innocent people that it truly becomes hostile toward them.

    The Thinker 

Dr. Gaius Grieves / The Thinker

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_suicide_squad_thinker_textless_poster.jpg
"Child, your government didn't send you here to protect the world from alien technology, your government sent you here to cover up their part in it!"

Species: Enhanced human

Citizenship: Scottish

Affiliation(s): Jotunheim

Portrayed By: Peter Capaldi

Voiced By: Keiji Himeno (Japanese)

Appearances: The Suicide Squad

"Supervillains. Sad souls in costumes, wanting you to think they're all dark and deep. What's it like, living life as a punchline? But all it would take would be one blessed act of rebellion to restore your dignity in its entirety."

A highly intelligent metahuman who serves as the lead researcher of Project Starfish.


  • Adaptational Nationality: American in the comics, but Scottish like his actor here.
  • Adaptation Name Change: There have been several Thinkers in the comics, most famously Clifford DeVoe, and the one most associated with the Suicide Squad is Cliff Carmichael. None of them (not even the New 52 incarnation this Thinker's design is inspired by) have been named Gaius Grieves.
  • Alliterative Name: Gaius Grieves.
  • Alternate Self: Someone using the Thinker alias lived on Earth-1/Earth-Prime.
  • An Arm and a Leg: He has one of each painfully ripped off by Starro before being splattered into goo, and screams in agony all the while.
  • Asshole Victim: He's a remorseless, smug monster responsible for 30 years worth of atrocities, including possibly raping patients and Starro, so it's hard not to cheer when Starro rips him apart.
  • Ass Shove: Ratcatcher threatens to do this to him with her rats. His response indicates he wouldn't be totally against it.
  • Bald of Evil: He's as lacking in hair as he is any redeeming traits. It's also messily covered in diodes to enhance his mental capacity, and thus enhance his depravity.
  • Butt-Monkey: Is nearly attacked for implying sarcasm by Suarez, forcibly carried around after Task Force X gets to him, told that he would die at the first sign of betrayal, gets his face smashed into an optical scanner by Peacemaker, and is held at gunpoint by Bloodsport to lock the doors to Jotunheim. Really, it seems his only safe haven is his Mad Scientist Laboratory until the explosives set throughout Jotunheim are detonated prematurely, allowing for Starro's release and his own prolonged dismemberment. Given his vile personality, he deserves every bit of it.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: He's disgustingly avid about his own atrocities, enjoys making Starro's tortures as sadistic as possible, and smiles after Starro accuses him of thirty years' worth of experimentation, torture and rape.
    "If God existed...wouldn't this be proof that He wasn't good at all?"
  • Casting Gag: Seeing The Twelfth Doctor take a relatively harmless alien like Starro and gleefully exploit it for decades of experiments is a pretty radical change of pace for a character known for liberating such creatures. As an added bonus, the Thinker delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech (another Doctor signature) that's more of a Malcolm Tucker-style profane rant to justify his evil actions.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He'll align with pretty much anyone as it suits him and turn against whoever he has to, regardless of previous loyalty.
  • Civvie Spandex: He's introduced wearing jogging clothes as he's escorted to Luna and Suarez. For the rest of the film, he's stuck wearing what he wore to the gentleman's club, as seen in the picture above and most other promotional materials.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: He has limbs ripped off before being thrown so hard he is graphically splattered into a pile of goo against a window. The extended version of his death is even nastier—the Thinker doesn't explode immediately, resulting in Starro repeatedly smacking him against the glass until he's a mangled, gurgling abattoir before finally reducing him to pulp on the window. He deserves every second of it.
  • Cyborg: He has electronic implants in his head that "make his brain good."
  • Deadpan Snarker: He takes every chance he gets to covertly insult whomever he's talking to regardless of who they are (from Luna wanting to use Project Starfish as a show of military power to Ratcatcher's naivete), owing to his extreme narcissism. Established in his first dialogue with Suarez:
    Suarez: They call you "Thinker", yes? All that shit in your face is to make your brain good?
    Thinker: Yes. Makes my brain good.
  • Dirty Coward: His incredible arrogance disappears the second his life is in danger, at which point he turns into a pleading wreck.
  • Dirty Old Man: He spends so much of his off-time at a sleazy bar that employs lady dancers that it's a given that the Squad will find him there. Later, one of Starro's controlled humans blurts out that he sexually abuses them. He smiles and shrugs as if bashfully conceding.
  • Ear Ache: His ear is bandaged in the film, but the reason for it was only in a deleted scene. His attempts to bargain with Polka-Dot Man end in failure, and he shoots Grieves in the ear.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Subverted. He's disgusted by the Suicide Squad being sent by the U.S. Government to cover up their involvement in Project Starfish...because he's angered that they'd destroy his research over it.
  • Evil Eyebrows: He's a total bastard who has Peter Capaldi's famous "attack eyebrows". They stand out even more due to his baldness.
  • Evil Genius: The Thinker is a very intelligent man and a genius scientist, and is also a self-serving, opportunistic and ruthless narcissist that is willing to do quite literally anything to expand his ever-growing knowledge and research, no matter who ends up being the victim.
    (after Ratcatcher dispatches a guard) "Your equipment manipulates animal behavior, clever. I'm working on something similar with humans."
  • Evil Is Hammy: Arguably the most over-the-top character in the movie (besides Harley Quinn), he's an evil and callous prick with some hammy moments anytime he's on screen.
    "American GODDAMN astronauts found Starro! YANKEE FUCKING DOODLE DANDIES!!"
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: His ultimate fate for experimenting on Starro is to get torn apart.
  • Evil Old Folks: He's his sixties, and is a callous, unpleasant, abusive sadist and sexual predator.
  • Evil Wears Black: He's the most evil character in the film, and he spends most of his screen time wearing a casual all-black ensemble.
  • For Science!: His primary motivation. He has no loyalty to the previous Corto Maltese government, and is more than willing to work for the usurpers if they give him the opportunity to continue his experiments on human test subjects, including children. The only thing seen to genuinely drive him to anger is the fact that the Suicide Squad was sent to destroy his research.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: It's heavily implied that if Grieves hadn't abused Starro, it wouldn't be the massive threat it eventually becomes but rather docile and passive.
  • Hate Sink: He’s a cowardly, sadistic, cruel man who’s only out for himself. Not to mention the horrific experiments he performed on Starro and the prisoners, implied to include rape, which make it all the more satisfying when said monster rips him apart.
  • Hostage MacGuffin: Is pointed out by Waller herself as the only man able to get the Squad into Jotunheim and gain access to Project Starfish. Unbeknownst to the Squad or the Corto Malteseans, he's also the only member of Project Starfish left alive that could expose the US's involvement in Starro's capture.
  • I Love the Dead: The victims of Starro reveal he sexually assaults them, which he doesn't deny, right after he explains they're dead.
  • Informed Ability: We're told that his implants give him Super-Intelligence, but he fails to make any visible progress towards duplicating Starro's mind control despite decades of unfettered access and resources and never gets the opportunity to show any particular cleverness in the present day.
  • Insufferable Genius: He's an egotistical and condescending narcissist with Super-Intelligence, and is a useless smart aleck when he's apprehended by Task Force X.
    (to Ratcatcher and Polka-Dot Man as they escort him) "You are perceivably panicked. I'm guessing that you are not the alphas of this battalion."
  • It's All About Me: He has no loyalty to anyone but himself, turning against allies without a second thought as it suits him and only thinking about what his experiments can do for him and him only.
  • Jerkass: He's a smug, condescending asshole who's contemptuous of others.
  • Just Think of the Potential!: He gruesomely experimented on Starro for 30 years, reveling in the pain he's caused the creature and its controlled humans in the name of some nebulous scientific advancement. When revealing the US government's involvement in Project Starfish to Task Force X, Thinker balks at Americans as being too "squeamish" about the "necessary sacrifices" the Corto Maltesian government let him get away with.
  • Karmic Death: The alien he experimented on, sexually assaulted, and tortured for thirty years rips him to pieces the moment it gets an opportunity.
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: He has a reputation as a brilliant scientist and claims he can control Starro. However, his experiments are more about satisfying his sick scientific curiosity than advancing anything, and no, it turns out he can't control Starro, who rips him apart for his needless cruelty.
  • Lack of Empathy: He doesn't give one solitary shit about the people he's experimented and butchered, displaying zero remorse for his actions. He's also implied to have raped patients and Starro.
  • Lean and Mean: He has Peter Capaldi's skinny frame, and is a complete bastard with no empathy for anyone and decades of vile behavior to his name.
  • Made of Plasticine: When Starro finally gets a hold of him, it first draws and quarters the guy, then throws what's left against the window. Upon contact, these fragments-of-a-human actually fly apart as though they were held together with bubblegum and paperclips.
  • Mad Scientist: This iteration of the Thinker has experimented on hundreds—maybe even thousands—of innocents with Starro's spawn, be they dissidents or innocent journalists that the Thinker has managed to lure into his clutches. He has no compunction as to what he's doing to the people Starro possesses, dismembering them and torturing them, and all the while Starro can feel every single moment through them.
  • Mr. Exposition: Given his status as (at the time of the film) the only scientist left in Project Starfish's crew after the coup, Thinker is able to explain away Starro's discovery and abilities to Luna, and also inform the Squad about the creature as well, namely that his discovery was made by the Americans, who left him in the hands of the Corto Malteseans to ensure that their hands were clean of any suspicion in handling the creature.
  • My Brain Is Big: He has a swollen, bulging cranium.
  • Named by the Adaptation: He's based primarily on the unnamed version of the Thinker from the New 52 Suicide Squad run, and the movie gives him the name Dr. Gaius Grieves.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: Promotional material implies that he's a member of the Suicide Squad. Instead, he's one of their enemies, who gets forced at gunpoint to help them break into Jotunheim. Also, his monologue about supervillains at the top of this folder is only said by him in the trailer, never being said in the movie proper.
  • Non-Action Guy: Being a Mad Scientist and Evil Genius, Grieves doesn't do much in terms of combat. He only ever does as he's ordered once the Squad has him.
  • Not in This for Your Revolution: As seen throughout the film, he couldn't give a damn about Luna and Suarez's political views, nor about the Suicide Squad's mission until he realizes what it is. Grieves only cares about keeping himself alive and keeping Project Starfish active. See Wild Card below.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: At first glance, the Thinker isn't that much of a threat. He's a scrawny old man who gets captured by the Suicide Squad without much trouble, and undergoes quite a bit of physical abuse as their hostage. That all changes after they enter Jotunheim, where it's revealed that the Thinker tortured Starro for decades and used the alien's spawn to kill thousands of innocent people, children included.
  • Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: He's stated to have raped the bodies of the people controlled by Starro – which Starro could feel.
  • Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Downplayed. The Thinker is usually a Flash nemesis (DeVoe in particular is an adversary of Jay Garrick), but the Cliff Carmichael and New 52 Thinkers are Suicide Squad enemies. Grieves on the other hand is not tied to any particular superhero, is primarily motivated by his scientific endeavors, and doesn't actively go against the Squad aside from debating with Flag and Ratcatcher.
  • Sadist: He puts on a borderline Slasher Smile when Starro brought up that he tortured and raped his test subjects for thirty years.
  • Sir Swears-a-Lot: Can rival Malcolm Tucker for profanity.
  • Smug Snake: He has an extremely abrasive attitude and high opinion of himself, and treats everyone he interacts with as if they were insects.
  • The Sociopath: He shows absolutely no concern for the people he experiments upon (including children), nor does he care about the lab workers Suarez murdered beyond not having staff. He presents himself in a superficially charming way, but his condescension for others is extremely obvious. He only cares about himself and his research, as shown when it is revealed that Task Force X was sent to destroy all files on Starro.
  • Too Kinky to Torture: His reaction to Ratcatcher asking him whether he wants a dozen angry rodents crawling up his ass is "my answer may not be what you expect".
  • Undignified Death: Starro hates the Thinker so much that it doesn't even bother to subject him to a face-hugging treatment like its other victims. Instead, the alien starfish comically rips him apart and renders a good chunk of his body into red paste on a window. The Thinker begs pathetically for mercy through all of it.
  • Villain Respect: In his closest thing to a Pet the Dog moment, he commends Ratcatcher's clever proficiency with her technology and comments how it similarly echoes the endgame of his own experiments on humans. A disgusted Cleo doesn't like the comparison.
  • Villainous Breakdown: He breaks down into rage, then panic, when the premature detonation of the explosives frees Starro.
  • Villains Out Shopping: When not conducting his horrible experiments, the Thinker spends his time at the La Gatita Amable bar. Exploited by Amanda Waller, who instructs the Squad to make their way to the bar to find him, which they do.
  • Villains Want Mercy: He pathetically begs for mercy from Starro. It doesn't work.
  • Violent Glaswegian: He's a supervillain played by Glasgow native Peter Capaldi.
  • Wild Card: Is only ever loyal to whoever happens to be convenient to forwarding his research at the time. First, he's loyal to the Corto Maltesean presidential family, since they run the country housing Jotunheim, the facility where Project Starfish is taking place. After they're executed, he decides to ally himself with Luna and Suarez, who both plan on using Starro as a WMD (and are persuaded into keeping Grieves alive since he claims to be the only one capable of controlling it). Once he's kidnapped at his gentleman's club by the Squad, he reluctantly switches to aiding them, turning on Suarez in the process.
  • Would Hurt a Child: His horrific experiments have included children as test subjects/victims as well as adults, a fact he has utterly no remorse over. There's even the implication they were sexually abused by him as well.

    Silvio Luna 

General Presidente Silvio Luna

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/silvio_luna.png

Species: Human

Citizenship: Corto Maltesian

Affiliation(s): Corto Maltese Government, Jotunheim

Portrayed By: Juan Diego Botto

Voiced By: Kenjiro Tsuda (Japanese)

Appearances: The Suicide Squad

The leader of Corto Maltese.


  • Affably Evil: He's rather polite for a ruthless dictator.
  • Asshole Victim: Despite being rather polite, he's still ruthless and evil, so when Harley shoots him it's hard to feel that bad.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: He seeks to use Starro as a weapon against the US, not even caring if children are among those killed. As soon as he says this, Harley decides that this is a major step too far and shoots him dead.
  • Bigger Is Better in Bed: Harley claims he had a "monster" between his legs, and bids it rest in peace after she shoots Luna.
  • Destructo-Nookie: Harley and Luna destroy a good part of the decorations in the room where they have sex.
  • Disc-One Final Boss: He's gunned down shockingly early on by Harley after being set up as the Big Bad.
  • Dashing Hispanic: The athletic and handsome leader of a fictional Latin American country, and at the very least Harley thinks he is attractive.
  • The Generalissimo: Has the Chest of Medals and brutality to match. In comparison to Suarez, he prefers to put on aristocratic airs and appears to be more ideological.
  • A Lighter Shade of Black: For all his cruelty, he only intended to use Starro to intimidate foreign nations, unlike his successor who immediately opts to use the alien for mass destruction.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: A young president of a small Latin American nation responsible for human rights violations, who "wants the world to take him seriously while he's playing with his birds", just like Nayib Bukele, the real-life President of El Salvador who's known both for shitposting on Twitter and for an authoritarian governing style and brutal crackdowns on crime. They even physically resemble each other!
  • Out with a Bang: Not too long after having sex with Harley, Luna is shot by her.
  • Spanner in the Works: As the Thinker explains, his coup forces the United States to destroy Jotunheim and hide their involvement in it, as he wouldn't accept the same deal as the previous dictators.
  • Too Dumb to Live: He calls himself a fan of Harley Quinn's and eagerly wants to marry her....yet, anyone who knows anything about her knows that she's: 1) batshit insane and completely unpredictable, and 2) has a big soft spot for children, so threatening them is a pretty big Berserk Button for her. Guess what happens to him when he starts waxing poetic in front of her about killing his enemies' children.
    • There's also the fact that Harley kills him using a gold-plated gun that he keeps on display — with at least one bullet in the chamber.
  • Would Hurt a Child: When he first takes over, he has the previous ruling family publicly hanged... including the young children. He later mentions that he plans to feed dissenters, their friends, and their children to Starro. The moment Harley hears this, she guns him down, because that's way too far for her.

    Mateo Suarez 

Major General Mateo Suarez

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bcfbb3a1_8978_4e66_b5ff_95c3b5d09b49.jpeg

Species: Human

Citizenship: Corto Maltesian

Affiliation(s): Corto Maltese Military, Jotunheim

Portrayed By: Joaquín Cosío

Voiced By: Katsumi Cho (Japanese)

Appearances: The Suicide Squad

Head of the Corto Maltese military.


  • Asshole Victim: It's hard to feel bad when Starro takes over his body and uses him as a mindless host, and even more after the defeat of Starro, which makes him fall on the ground truly dead.
  • Ax-Crazy: He's a grim sadist with a penchant for brutal torture. After taking over, he immediately starts making plans to unleash Starro on the world and use it to destroy other nations, just to establish Corto Maltese's power.
  • Bad People Abuse Animals: The moment he takes power, he burns down Luna's aviary with the birds still inside, musing how Luna wasted his time on such romantic pleasantries.
  • Beard of Evil: A bloodthirsty tyrant with a prominent beard.
  • Berserk Button: He seems to have no patience for sarcasm.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: He is much more openly sadistic than Luna, and the film seems set to take a darker turn when he takes over after Luna's death. This ultimately doesn’t prove to be the case, as Suarez doesn't fare any better than Luna, and is rendered utterly helpless when Starro escapes, becoming one of his mindless hosts and dying as a result.
  • Death by Irony:Suarez seeks to control Starro as a weapon against other nations. He ends up assimilated and becoming a tool himself in the alien's vengeful rampage. And when Starro expires, its last words expressing a desire for peace are spoken through the warmongering Suarez.
  • Dragon Ascendant: He takes over as dictator of Corto Maltese after Harley kills Luna.
  • Evil Old Folks: He's much older than Luna and even worse than he is.
  • Face Death with Dignity: After seeing Starro unleashed and watching everyone around him get assimilated, he calmly removes his hat and lets Starro take him without much fuss.
  • The Generalissimo: He has the short temper, medal-infested uniform and iron fisted view of the world. While Luna projects the air of a sophisticated aristocrat, Suarez rules with militaristic menace, intending to use Starro as a WMD to terrorize anyone that threatens Corto Maltese.
  • General Ripper: He's a sadistic brute who intends to use Starro to annihilate various nations as a show of force.
  • Jerkass: Unlike his predecessor who was genuinely polite and refined despite his cruelty, Suarez doesn't even pretend to put on a nice face. He's rude to everyone he comes across.
  • Literal-Minded: He takes a LOL, 69 joke at face value, resulting in one of his minions having to explain the joke to him. The simple idea of sarcasm seems to piss him off: he erupts at the Thinker when he assumes the latter is being sarcastic with him.
  • Mouth of Sauron: Starro uses him as its mouthpiece after taking over him.
  • More Despicable Minion: Unlike the polite and refined Silvio Luna, Suarez is a bloodthirsty maniac who relishes in the suffering of others. While Luna only intended to use Starro to intimidate foreign nations, Suarez immediately opts to use the alien for mass destruction. Once Luna is murdered by Harley Quinn, Suarez celebrates his new position of President by burning Silvio Luna's pet birds alive.
  • Sadist: He takes genuine enjoyment in causing others pain. While Amanda Waller and Task Force X are willing to commit atrocities to fulfill a cause, and the Thinker views his scientific experiments with nothing more than callous disdain, Suarez is noted to get overly invested in torturing people who fall into his hands. He extends Harley's torture as long as he can, and even burns all of Luna's pet birds to death for seemingly no reason other than to make a point of his – and to watch the birds burn.
  • Torture Technician: He tortures Harley in the climax, subjecting her to Electric Torture and then musing on the information she'll give if he chops her fingers off first. Even his own minions note it's not easy to get Suarez to stop when he's gotten carried away with torturing a captive.

Project Butterfly crisis

Butterflies

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_20220211_140840_youtube.jpg

Species: Unknown extraterrestrial insects

Appearances: Peacemaker | Mortal Kombat 1

An unknown, alien species of insect that can possess humans.


    In General 
  • Ambiguously Evil: More of a case where it's ambiguous if they're an Always Chaotic Evil alien race. The Butterfly controlling Murn seems to think of himself as an outlier for only wanting to live on the planet alongside humans, but the fact that he feels guilt over killing and possessing a host suggests that the other members of his race are also capable of similar degrees of empathy and self-awareness. In the first season finale, "Goff" claims that they're actually villains of the Well-Intentioned Extremist variety seeking to keep humankind from going down the same trajectory that led to the destruction of the Butterflies' home planet.
  • Animal Motif : Butterflies (the real life insects, not the aliens) are symbolically associated with peace. If "Goff" is to be believed, this adds to their plans to save humanity from themselves and how that compares with Peacemaker's vow to maintain peace at all cost.
  • Bad Liar: When possessing Sophie, "Goff" is NOT a very good liar, which is ironic because her other host is an exceptional liar.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: They resemble winged insects, but besides taking over bodies and possessing human-level intellect, apparently have mammalian genitalia, considering Goff apparently has a vagina.
  • The Cameo: One appears in Mortal Kombat 1 during one of Peacemaker's Fatalities; crawling out of the opponent's mouth and hovering in front of them as he shoots at it, inadvertently blasting them to pieces.
  • Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": While their wings resemble a butterfly's, they themselves look more like mosquitoes.
  • Canon Foreigner: They have no comic counterpart, and were created specifically for the Peacemaker TV series.
  • Contrasting Sequel Antagonist; They are this to Starro. Both are alien beings capable of controlling humans. However, Starro was happily drifting through space before being forcibly brought to Earth, controlled its victims through a Hive Mind by attaching smaller versions of itself to their faces, was trapped in a lab for most of its time on Earth, and escaped and violently rampaged through the streets before Task Force X put it down. The Butterflies came to Earth willingly, seeking a new home before deciding to conquer it, and are more subtle, intending to take over Earth through a quieter conspiracy, and actually take over their victims by invading their bodies, this being harder to find unless you catch them eating or have X-Ray vision.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: They are visibly appalled when Goff (possessing Song) callously kills Murnnote .
  • Identity Concealment Disposal: Characters who we see get possessed are noticeably less good at pretending to be human than characters we do not know are possessed.
  • Immune to Bullets: Inverted. Butterfly-possessed humans are so strong and durable that they're virtually unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat by a normal human, even for a Badass Normal like Peacemaker. However they tend to get massacred when the heroes use firearms, or even swords.
  • Insufficiently Advanced Alien: Aside from the tiny spaceships and a few weird things like an alien door in Goff's house, almost all of the stuff they use appears to be completely normal human technology, like guns, car batteries for torture devices, a relatively normal factory for manufacturing their alien honey, and so on.
  • Kill and Replace: Their modus operandi. They infiltrate their victim's body through their mouths, with copious amounts of blood and epileptic seizures involved, making their way into their brain. To make it even more clear that the host is for all purposes dead, the Butterflies that possess Murn and Song refer to their hosts in the past sense.
  • Made of Iron: Zig-zagged. Their host bodies can take concussive force such as thrown blunt objects without even flinching. However, they're still vulnerable to being taken apart by gunfire and having their insides mulched by a chainsaw.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Murn reveals in episode 6 that their names are unintelligible to humans. Given that they also Kill and Replace their hosts, this leads to everyone referring to them with the name of their human/animal hosts.
  • Orifice Invasion: How they take over their hosts. Though Economos's slide show suggests that they are willing to use...any opening to get into the host, the ones that take over Sophie and everyone at the police station exclusively enter through the mouth.
  • Puppeteer Parasite: They bury themselves in human brains. We later learn they can do the same thing to animals.
  • Recurring Element: As an unknown life form that resembles a common Earth animal with the ability to possess humans, the Butterflies are a more covert take on Starro.
  • Super-Strength: When inside a host body, they can perform great feats of strength and agility, leaping about In a Single Bound and tearing through chain link fences. This is explained as the butterfly doing a lot of physiological mutation to their host. The actual butterfly parasite is a lot more fragile.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: They all eat some kind of alien honey or nectar to live, even in human form (and their human form briefly has a proboscis coming from their mouth when they do this). They have to manufacture it themselves in a factory.
  • The Stoic: They can fake being emotive to maintain their cover, but in private, they are quite emotionally flat unless directly threatened or if they experience a particularly visceral emotion.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: They're very strong once they possess a host, enhancing that host's physical abilities to a massive degree, but they fight like feral animals in combat. The 11th Street Kids are able to take them on simply because they have superior fighting skills, especially when it comes to Peacemaker, Vigilante, and Harcourt.
  • We Are Everywhere: A non-verbal one is delivered at the end of Peacemaker episode 3, when the screen in the team's van reveals that there are millions of Butterflies already infiltrating humans in the entire world.
  • Would Hurt a Child: They have no problem killing and replacing children (such as Goff's) as part of their plans.
  • Zerg Rush: Butterflies are fully sapient and even cunning in non-combat situations but tactics clearly aren't their strong suit- their default response to a physical threat is to scream and charge like a horde of zombies and although they're capable of using firearms they don't seem to understand the concept of cover.

    "Goff" 

Eek Stack Ik Ik / "Royland Goff"

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_20220211_141345_youtube.jpg
Click here to see the new host

Species: Butterfly

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Antonio Cupo, Annie Chang

Appearances: Peacemaker

A Butterfly that took over Senator Royland Goff with unknown purposes.


  • Affably Evil: Regardless of whether she's lying about her intentions or not, it becomes clear that she genuinely considers Chris a friend, and even wants him to join her on her mission.
  • Ambiguously Evil: While she is the primary Big Bad of the first season, her behavior and motivations frequently contradict each other, making her moral status hard to pin down for much of the show. The very last episode reveals she's a Well-Intentioned Extremist; willing and capable of killing millions to try and steer humanity to what she thinks is a better end, but also capable of genuinely empathizing with Peacemaker.
  • Artifact Alias: Peacemaker and the 11th Street Kids continue to refer to her as Goff even after she switches hosts because her real name is unpronounceable to humans.
  • Bait the Dog: While Peacemaker holds Goff captive, Goff seems to genuinely come to like Peacemaker and shows some affection towards him, hinting that she and the Butterflies as a whole might not be that bad. However, after she takes over Song, Goff has the Butterflies kill and possess everyone in the police station, and then proceeds to publicize Peacemaker's frame-up so she can hunt him down and kill him.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: In Peacemaker season one with the White Dragon. The White Dragon is the biggest obstacle for Peacemaker's Character Arc and his most personal foe, but it's Goff who serves as the overarching threat behind the alien invasion. Episode 6 sees her rallying her entire species to take over Earth, which ends up causing one of the biggest alien crises in the DCEU since the Kryptonian invasion. Then, White Dragon is killed in the penultimate episode, leaving her the final threat.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: Goff inflicts this on Vigilante as an attempt to get Peacemaker to confess what he knows. It doesn't work.
  • The Comically Serious: A creepy, sociopathic alien without regular human emotions. This creates a lot of darkly comical disconnect between her and the people she interacts with; she complains she has to relearn smiling for every new host she takes, doesn't understand that dull knives are very poor torture implements, and appears to take Caspar Locke's description of the Hamburglar as the culprit for a shooting at face value.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: This seems to be her relationship with Peacemaker after her plans are foiled and her second host body is killed. She flies back to him some time later just to hang out with him on his porch and drink what's left of the amber fluid.
  • Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Inverted. The reason Goff bonds with Chris—to the point, in the finale, she refuses to kill him—is precisely because she understands and empathizes with his good-hearted nature. Her methods and goals may be utterly draconian to Chris, but she understands him as much as he understands her. At the end, Goff visiting Chris in her natural form indicates she understands why Chris chose to stop her and doesn't hold a grudge over it, even if his actions might mean the death of the Butterfly race (with the last of the amber fluid gone).
  • Graceful Loser: She doesn't swear vengeance on Peacemaker despite him decimating her forces, destroying the Cow, and killing her new host body. In fact, rather than start her plans all over again, she flies back to Peacemaker some time later just to hang out with him.
  • Hazy-Feel Turn: At the very least, by the end of the series, she's made peace with Peacemaker and she's last seen harmlessly drinking the golden nectar beside him, neither in a host body or in her jar.
  • Mirror Character: Her specific wording regarding her motivations for taking over the Earth eerily mirror Peacemaker's own regarding his vigilantism, which he recognizes. It's likely why he chooses to only kill her host body.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: On two fronts:
    • She claims that humanity is currently on the same trajectory as the one that led to the destruction of the Butterflies' home planet.
    • She compares the Butterflies to Peacemaker, saying they've both taken a vow and will do anything to achieve it.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Peacemaker takes to calling the Butterfly that he found inside Goff's head "Goff". Since Murn describes her name as impossible to vocalize for humans, the team ends up sticking with this.
  • Pet the Dog: Upon taking over Song, the Butterfly Queen does make something of an effort to make Fitzgibbon happy, trying to smile to reassure him before he's turned into a Butterfly. She also claims to feel a fondness for Peacemaker, even returning to his house after he's foiled her plans.
  • Posthumous Character: Royland Goff (and his entire family) are by all purposes already dead when we meet them in Episode 3.
  • Samus Is a Girl: Previously referred to with male pronouns, only for it to be revealed that the Butterfly was actually a female high-ranked member of the species the entire time. This somewhat coincides with her host changing from the male Senator Goff to the female Inspector Song.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Subverted. Despite Peacemaker saving her after it was revealed she was inside Senator Goff's corpse, it doesn't stop her from taking over the police department and framing Peacemaker as a criminal. However, she later claims to feel genuine affection for him, and tries to bring him over to her side when things spiral out of control. After Peacemaker spares her a second time, she flies back to his home some time later just to hang out with him, indicating that she is actually capable of gratitude.
    "Thank you for feeding me, and talking to me, and showing me kindness...I see who you are and I see your character."
  • The Unpronounceable: The Butterfly Queen's name is impossible for humans to vocalize, so the team just refers to her as "Goff" after the host she was found in. He does try to pronounce it, however. It's something like "Ik Stak Ik Ik".
  • Walking Spoiler: It's hard to talk about her real identity without revealing the real objective of the Butterflies' infiltration and their modus operandi.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: In the final episode, she reveals that she believes that her world domination plan is the only way to save humanity from making the same mistakes as her people.

    "Fitzgibbon" 

"Larry Fitzgibbon"

Species: Butterfly/Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Lochlyn Munro

Appearances: Peacemaker

The Butterfly inhabiting Larry Fitzgibbon.


  • The Dragon: He acts as this to Goff, which makes sense since Fitzgibbon was Song's Number Two.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: He expresses horror at Butterfly Song outright killing Murn.
  • In the Back: Vigilante stabs him in the back of the skull with his sword, killing him.
  • Kick the Dog: It's pretty mean of him to remark on how pathetic humans are after hearing Economos talk about his sad, lonely life.
  • Strange Minds Think Alike: Just like Peacemaker, he's oddly preoccupied with Economos' half-assed beard dye job.

    "Charlie" 

"Charlie the Gorilla"

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_20220211_142042_youtube_1.jpg
"DIE, HUMAN!"

Species: Butterfly/Gorilla

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Stephen Blackehart

Appearances: Peacemaker

A Gorilla who has a Butterfly inside him. He is referred to as the "Guardian Angel" by other Butterfly parasites.


  • Back Stab: He's taken out this way. While he's busy beating up the rest of the crew, Economos sneaks up and rams a chainsaw into his back and right out the front, utterly destroying his internal organs to make sure he stays down.
  • The Brute: The other Butterflies regard him as a "Guardian Angel": a huge physical threat whose purpose is to rip apart any potential enemies.
  • Killed Offscreen: While Economos ripped apart his insides with a chainsaw, killing the gorilla he's inhabiting, Economos later mentions that they had to remove and kill the butterfly inside his brain to put him down for good.
  • Killer Gorilla: Not just any normal Killer Gorilla, but a gorilla who has a Butterfly parasite in his brain. He puts up one hell of a fight against the team.
  • Made of Iron: As expected from a gorilla that is possessed by a Butterfly, he takes a lot of damage from the group. It takes Economos absolutely mulching his insides with a chainsaw to put him down for good.
  • Rasputinian Death: He's shot a dozen times by Harcourt and Leota, gets stabbed in the back by Vigilante with a machete, and finally gets absolutely destroyed by Economos with a chainsaw.

    "Annie Sturphausen" 

Annie Sturphausen

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_20220211_141146_youtube.jpg

Species: Butterfly/Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Crystal Mudry

Appearances: Peacemaker

The first person Peacemaker encounters that is possessed by a Butterfly.


  • Contrived Coincidence: After her attack on Peacemaker, the team suspects she might have been a Honey Trap and that either their mission was compromised or there was a mole on the team. It's revealed to be neither: she legitimately did decide to have a blind hookup with Peacemaker, and only tried to kill him because he was stupid enough to bring his dossier on his target, Senator Goff, AKA the Butterfly Queen, to a one night stand, and after reading it she realized he was a threat to her people.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: Her fate, as Peacemaker blows her to pieces via sonic boom. When an officer finds a piece of her face, they mistake it for pizza.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Almost all of her scenes are her in a bikini. Although, it veers into Fan Disservice once we get a good look at how people act under the control of the Butterfly parasite.
  • Small Role, Big Impact: She's in only one episode, but the police investigation of her death drives a significant portion of the plot of the first season.
  • Starter Villain: Of Peacemaker, giving us a clue as to what we can expect from people that are possessed by the Butterfly parasites.

Affiliates

    Judomaster 

Judomaster

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/judomaster_9.jpg
"Kiaaaaaaaaaai!"

Species: Human

Portrayed By: Nhut Le

Appearances: Peacemaker

A martial arts expert and bodyguard to Senator Goff that Peacemaker comes into conflict with. He becomes a recurring threat to the team, no matter how many times they try to put him down.


  • Adaptational Villainy: A superhero in the comics.
  • Adaptation Dye-Job: His comics counterpart's costume is a mix of red and yellow. In Peacemaker, it's completely green.
  • Ambiguously Human: It's unclear if he's just a normal human, a normal metahuman, or if he's one of the Project Butterfly's hosts. The finale reveals that he's at least human, and was persuaded of his own free will to aid the Butterflies' invasion plan.
  • Badass Normal: Assuming he's not a metahuman, he's a skilled enough fighter to easily take down both Peacemaker and Vigilante in hand-to-hand combat.
  • Bathos: He is completely distraught when he arrives too late to stop the team and sees that most of the butterflies and their Cow are all killed... all while still eating his favorite Cheetos.
  • Berserk Button: Making fun of his height. He angrily flicks Peacemaker with Cheetos after he mocks him, and beats up and steals the car of two jerks that were mocking him.
  • Combat Pragmatist: He carries no weapons, but he'll grab and use anything, whether it be blade or firearm, if it's nearby.
  • Composite Character: While he's a basic martial arts expert, his short stature (and his basic costume design) are taken from Judomaster's sidekick Tiger.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Dry sarcasm is his go-to response to whenever people make jabs at his height.
  • Dented Iron: While he remains a threat throughout his appearances in the series, his rising list of injuries gradually takes its toll on his effectiveness. Getting in a crash and being beaten by a tire iron leaves him injured enough that Peacemaker is able to fight him to a draw in their rematch, which is cut short by Adebeyo shooting him in the chest. Despite still being in recovery from these injuries he picks a fight with Adebayo and Harcourt in the penultimate episode and comes dangerously close to beating them, only being incapacitated when the former surprised him with a taser. Had it not been for all these injuries, he probably would have killed all three without much issue.
  • Determinator: He is extremely stubborn in fights and can take a lot of punishment, and even if you manage to knock him out, he refuses to stay down for long. He manages to escape captivity several times, despite the sometimes quite serious injuries he has sustained.
  • The Dragon: To "Goff"/the Queen Butterfly.
  • Flat Character: Played for Laughs. His backstory and motivations are never explained in any real detail, and he refuses to engage in meaningful conversation with other characters. When he's not fighting the heroes, he seems content to just stand around and apathetically munch on Cheetos. The most depth he ever gets is the revelation that he's a willing collaborator with the Butterflies, but even that isn't elaborated on.
  • Green and Mean: Judomaster's outfit is completely green, and he's one hell of a fighter, despite his short stature.
  • His Name Is...: He's shot by Leota just as he's about to tell a secret about the butterflies.
  • Incoming Ham: "DING DONG, BITCHES!"
  • Kiai: His Catchphrase is this, shouted word-for-word. Economos later flips it back at him after incapacitating him.
  • Large Ham: The screams he makes are self-explanatory.
  • Made of Iron: Despite his size, he's surprisingly very durable. Even when getting T-boned and hit in the back of the head with a tire iron (repeatedly) by John, he manages to survive all that and is taken prisoner by the group. Then, later on, he gets shot right in the middle of his chest by Leota, and manages to somehow survive that too. After that, he's still in decent enough fighting condition to nearly kill Leota and Harcourt, and he's still walking even after Leota knocks him out with a tazer to the neck. What's more impressive is that he isn't a host for any butterflies.
  • The Napoleon: Mocking him for his short stature is a surefire way to get on his bad side.
  • Non-Indicative Name: Despite his name, his fighting style takes more from Capoeira, Muay Thai, Karate, Wushu, Vovinam and Krav Maga. Similarly, Judo is a style built around disarming opponents without causing much harm with it's name literally meaning "the gentle way" and Judomaster's fighting style is incredibly vicious.
  • Out of Focus: After he's shot, he essentially disappears from the narrative until Episode 7. He misses the finale battle entirely, only arriving after it's done.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: The majority of the cast absolutely towers over Judomaster, but that doesn't stop him from thoroughly beating down almost anyone that crosses him. He easily beats up Peacemaker and Vigilante at the same time, and nearly kills Harcourt and Leona. The only way any of them are able to win is mostly by taking him by surprise, and even then they can't put him down for good.
  • Running Gag: Despite being an incredibly formidable foe, he gets taken out by surprise by someone who's not very formidable in combatant. Economos t-bones his car with a van and knocks him out with a crowbar, and Adebayo shoots him in the middle of his rematch with Peacemaker and later tasers him in his fight with Harcourt.
  • Screaming Warrior: Judomaster is prone to shrieking and Kiai-ing when he goes on the offensive. Suspiciously, this is NOT the scream of a butterfly... We learn later on that he isn't a host to a parasite, and was just persuaded to join them.
  • Token Human: Is this for the Butterflies, being a (relatively) normal human being that has chosen to side with them.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: He's shown eating Flamin' Hot Cheetos whenever he's not doing anything. He's even shown eating them while he's crying when he sees that most of his Butterfly comrades are dead.
  • Underestimating Badassery: His small stature tends to draw mockery from people he encounters, with him even being compared to a leprechaun at one point due to his green outfit. Unfortunately for anyone who decides to bully him for his height, being vertically challenged doesn't prevent him from hitting like a truck.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Genuinely believes that the Butterflies taking over humanity is necessary for their survival, and he's left sobbing as he discovers the decimated Butterfly populace.
  • Would Hit a Girl: Judomaster has absolutely no qualms about beating the crap out of Harcourt and Adebayo.

    Cow 

Cow

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/2_peacemaker.png

Species: Unknown extraterrestrial livestock

Affiliation(s): Butterflies

Appearances: Peacemaker

An alien beast that produces nectar for the alien butterflies.



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