Characters / DCEU: Task Force X - Officials and Agents

aka: DCEU Peacemaker

DC Extended Universe Character Index
Vigilantes & Black Ops Teams
Gotham Vigilantes | Task Force X (Officials and Agents, Original Team, New Team)

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Non-criminals involved in the Task Force X ("Suicide Squad") projects.

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Advanced Research Group Uniting Superhumans (A.R.G.U.S.)

Mission Control

Amanda Waller

Amanda Waller

"It's taken some work, but I finally have them. The worst of the worst."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): A.R.G.U.S.

Portrayed By: Viola Davis

Voiced By: Laura Torres (Latin-American Spanish), Noriko Uemura (Japanese), Maïk Darah (European French), Johanne Garneau (Canadian French), Márcia Morelli (Brazilian Portuguese)

Appearances: Suicide Squad | The Suicide Squad | Peacemaker | Black Adam | Creature Commandos | Waller

"Getting people to act against their own self-interest is what I do for a living."

The ruthless government official at the head of ARGUS (Advanced Research Group Uniting Super-humans), a United States government organization tasked with handling major threats. To counter the now blatant rise of Metahumans, she decides to create and manage the Task Force X.

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• Abusive Parents: Regardless of intent, putting your daughter on a morally-ambiguous team that has trained killers and forcing her to betray one of them, when said daughter's previous job was working in an animal shelter, definitely isn't good parenting.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Viola Davis is more slender and attractive than the classic comics version of Amanda Waller, who is heavyset and weathered with age. Although, compared to the younger, taller and more slender version seen in Arrow, Green Lantern (2011) and the New 52, she is much more similar to the classic Waller.
• Adaptational Dumbass:
  • The Waller from the comics was nowhere near as incompetent as this one. The most shining example is in Suicide Squad, where she leaves the vessel containing Incubus completely unguarded while she sleeps on the assumption that Enchantress - the metahuman she can only keep in line with threats - wouldn't try to go behind her back.
  • Furthermore, in The Suicide Squad, Waller constantly dismisses her squad's ability and personalities and does not think all the way through about their potential defiance. As a result, when they do defy her, she's left unable to do anything about it. She also doesn't consider the possibility that the control room personnel might object to her leaving an entire country to be destroyed, and attempts to convince the Squad to follow her orders instead of using their neck explosives.
    • She also insists on having King Shark, a giant barely sentient shark man barely capable of speech, following orders or knowing his teammates are not food, on a Squad assigned to inflitrate a foreign nation. As a result, the latter spends pretty much the entire mission as The Load.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • While she was never the most moral person in the comics, the movies make her a full-blown sociopath with no redeeming qualities who murders her own mission staff in cold blood to keep them from talking about her involvement in the Enchantress debacle. In the sequel, she's willing to kill the Squad and leave the people of Corto Maltese to die at the hands of Starro before Flo knocks her out.
  • Also, in the final issues of John Ostrander's Suicide Squad run, Waller sent the Squad on a mission to take down the dictator of Diabloverde, a South American country backed by the US government, and then chose to retire (and possibly help said country move towards democracy). In contrast, this version of Waller is complicit in the US government's support of the Corto Maltese government, and as mentioned above, is willing to let the country be destroyed by Starro.
• Alternate Self: Has three: one on Earth-Prime, one on Earth-12 and one on Earth-167.
• Anti-Hero: Is technically on the side of good, but make no mistake, she's an utterly ruthless individual. As the second film shows, she's perfectly fine with letting an entire country be destroyed just to protect her government's reputation.
• Asshole Victim: Of the non-fatal variety. After the utterly awful shit she's pulled over the course of the DCEU/DCU, and her downright abusive treatment of her people, she finally gets her comeuppance with her career being effectively nuked-from-orbit once Peacemaker's team leaks the details of Task Force X, Project Butterfly (and assumedly Project Starfish as well) to the media. Only time will tell if or when her career will recover from that.
• Badass Boast:
  Waller: I am your consequence.
  Waller: [just before Enchantress begins her Mind Rape for intel on the US military] Do your worst, bitch!
• Bad Boss: She cares little for the well-being of her team and sees them more as expendable tools. Right after getting her team to lead the Suicide Squad to her locale, she has them executed because "they don't have the proper clearance" to be rescued.
• Beware the Superman: Everything she does is to ensure that the government is prepared in the event a being with superpowers becomes a threat. Considering what happened with General Zod and Doomsday, it's a valid concern. Though this may be just a convenient excuse for her, considering she's perfectly happy to let a gigantic starfish monster destroy an entire country, so long as it's not her country.
• Big Good: Subverted. Waller is the force mobilizing the Suicide Squad to deal with whatever threat is present, but as it turns out, she always has a hidden agenda. In the first film, the High Value Target they were sent to pull out of Midway City turned out to be her, right after she personally killed the support staff under her. Then, in the second film, her reason for sending the Squad into Corto Maltese isn't so much to protect the world from an alien threat but to cover up America's involvement in the human experimentation performed on the regime's political prisoners. Then, after Starro breaks free, she orders them to stand back and let it rampage, deeming a potentially hostile country being destroyed to be of no consequence.
• Black Boss Lady: Waller is famously a no-nonsense sort of woman who doesn't take shit from anyone, least of all Batman.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Waller thinks that the best way to handle the Enchantress, an ancient magical being of immense power whose limitations are unknown, is by repeatedly abusing her disembodied heart, never once thinking about what might happen if Enchantress finds a way to "slip the leash". Indeed, one has to wonder whether or not Enchantress's rampage wasn't caused by Waller's brutal attempts to "handle" Enchantress, especially when she was used to receiving worship and reverence from comparatively weak and pathetic mortals.
  • Honestly, her entire treatment of the Squad, is this as none of them would hesitate to take her out if not for the bombs implanted in their necks. Even then, their expressions while interacting with her suggest that they might consider dying worth it if they can take her with them. It eventually led the new Task Force X to completely disregard her as a result.
  • She tries it with Batman, of all people, by suggesting she could expose his identity. Not only is Batman not intimidated, but he orders her to dismantle the squad or else he'll send in the Justice League to take care of them AND her.
• Composite Character: Due to the above-mentioned Adaptational Villainy, her role with the Squad often more closely resembles that played by General Wade Eiling, especially in her role trying to cover up the U.S's involvement in Corto Maltese, similarly to how Eiling used his Suicide Squad in Diabloverde.
• Control Freak: She continuously seeks to control everything, from Task Force X to the Enchantress herself. Rick Flag even lampshades this trope at one point.
• Deadpan Snarker: Her descriptions of the team are filled with extremely dry quips, with barely a change in expression or tone.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of Necessarily Evil and Above Good and Evil, being a sociopathic government agent means she can make ruthless and pragmatic decisions that sometimes get results, but just as often cause problems she'll have to solve later. Her complete inability to empathize with people means she's never really in control over anyone because she doesn't understand their principals or personal ethics, added to her Mean Boss tendencies and overreliance on Recruiting the Criminal means no one is really loyal to her and will betray her the minute the opportunity presents itself even if it's at great personal risk.
• Didn't Think This Through: Her daughter worked in an animal shelter and needed a job after it closed down. So what does the Wall do? Put Leota on a covert black-ops team and have her set up Peacemaker as the fall guy after they stop an alien invasion. You know, place a civilian on a team with a violent anti-villain known for his body count. Amanda and Leota are both lucky that Peacemaker doesn't want revenge on Leota for framing him, only saying they're no longer friends and are done after the mission after first finding out, and eventually coming to consider her one of his BFFs.
• The Dreaded: If Rick Flag is to be believed, Waller has quite a reputation. Even Harley Quinn, upon meeting her, meekly ponders if she's the Devil. She's even wearing red in that scene.
  • However, she ends up becoming a joke after her plan doesn't go the way she wants in the sequel, punctuated by her getting hit in the head and knocked out by her subordinates.
  Flag: They warned me about you. My dumb ass didn't believe the stories.
  Waller: Nobody does.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: From what little we've seen of their relationship so far, it seems like Waller actually does legitimately care about her daughter, Leota. She does criticize Leota's compassion, but it seems to be more out of the belief that it'll leave her vulnerable in her line of work. How much she actually cares about her daughter becomes hazier with the reveal that Leota came to her to find employment after the animal shelter she worked at closed down, meaning it was Waller's decision to put her daughter in a field in which she has little experience and where she'd be forced to compromise her personal ethics.
• Evil Is Petty: A deleted scene from The Suicide Squad reveals that Waller put Flag on the marked-for-death “Team 1” just because he made fun of her shirt. Peacemaker reveals she had her subordinate Flo Crawley arrested after the events at Corto Maltese, presumably out of spite for knocking her out with a golf club along with denying her the chance to blow off the Squad's heads.
• Expository Theme Tune: "Sympathy for the Devil" is her intro song, and as Harley notes, she may as well be the Devil.
• Fancy Dinner: She meets with Dexter Tolliver and Admiral Olsen in a posh restaurant to tell them about her Task Force X project in detail.
• Fatal Flaw: Lack of Empathy, more specifically lack of understanding that other people have empathy. It never seems to occur to her that the people she employs have their own morals and don't want to make the same ruthlessly pragmatic decisions she dose. She didn't think the Suicide Squad would defy her orders and try to stop Starro's rampage, or that her subordinates would support their decision, or that her daughter would tell the truth to the press and expose the shady goings on of her task force instead of using Peacemaker as The Scapegoat.
• Hated by All: The characters of the DCEU all started to lose respect for her in The Suicide Squad when she decided to let Corto Maltese be annihilated by Starro and tried to kill the squad when they intervened. Then in the first season of Peacemaker, she loses the respect of basically everyone in America when she double crosses Peacemaker with a forged diary and her daughter, disgusted by this, reveals Amanda’s true colors to the public; resulting in Amanda’s overall reputation plummeting downwards.
• Hidden Depths: She was fully prepared to not repay the Squad for saving her life, but when Deadshot demands to see his daughter, she relaxes just a little and offers him some quality time with his girl.
• Hypocrite: She's at least as bad as most any member of the teams of supervillains she looks down on.
• I Gave My Word: One of her very few redeeming characteristics. For as ready as she is to betray the team at the end of the first movie and how willing she is to withhold certain information to Task Force X, when Amanda makes a deal, she's good for it. She follows through on her promise to add some luxuries to the cells of the first Task Force X, and while she's strong-armed into letting her second iteration of Task Force X go, she does it without a second of hesitation, even sincerely congratulating Bloodsport on becoming a leader, just like she said he would.
• Ignored Aesop: Despite getting captured and tortured by the Enchantress and almost causing the destruction of the entire world, she fails to realize that manipulating and backstabbing everyone around you isn't the best way to handle others, as it eventually comes back to bite you in the ass. Batman has to remind her that she now answers to him when she tries to do so to him.
• Iron Lady: You don't mess with the Wall.
• Jerkass: She's unpleasant and manipulative to everyone within her power. The Squad and Flag all despise her. Even her subordinates do, which eventually culminates in her getting knocked out with a golf club.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When it comes to the danger metahumans can possibly pose to the Muggles of the DC universe.
• Karma Houdini:
  • For all the trouble she caused by thinking she could subdue Enchantress plus murdering her own field staff, she seems to get away with little more than cooperating with Bruce Wayne to cover up her mess in exchange for information on metahumans, with Wayne's stern warning to call for the Justice League should she keep her Task Force X project going.
  • On a lesser note, Deadshot never found out that it was Waller who tipped off Batman about his presence in Gotham, leading to his arrest in front of his daughter, so she can expect no comeuppance for that either. (Though whether providing information that leads to the arrest of a professional murderer is an act that warrants comeuppance is highly debatable).
• Karma Houdini Warranty: The Suicide Squad sees Waller knocked down a few pegs. Unlike in the last film, Bloodsport manages to win the freedom of himself and his surviving allies, as well as his daughter, by blackmailing Waller with America's involvement in Project Starfish. Waller is reduced to a screaming, impotent breakdown when Bloodsport betrays her and is ignominiously clubbed unconscious when she tries to detonate the chips. Amanda is still in power by the end, and still technically gets what she wants—the cover-up of Project Starfish—but at the cost of her dignity and her newest, most useful iteration of Task Force X.
  • Even after her own daughter outs Waller to the press, she's apparently suffered no lasting consequences as she's formed a connection with the Justice Society.
• Kick the Dog: Forging a diary that she has her own daughter plant in Peacemaker's trailer, which explicitly pins all the casualties of Project Butterfly on him to shift blame away from the rest of the team, especially reeks of this, considering he still has a bomb in his skull that can be detonated the moment he steps out of line.
• Knight Templar: She seems totally committed to the security and protection of the United States, even if she has to use extortion, blackmail, assassination, and flat-out murder to achieve it. She also makes it clear that she considers all metahumans to be a threat, regardless of their alignment, and that they just "got lucky" with Superman.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Her attempts to manipulate a nigh immortal reality warper directly result in the Midway City disaster, her own capture and torture by said warper, and her being forced to hand over files on known metahumans to Bruce Wayne to guarantee his protection. And, since she's now dependent on the help of the one person she can't intimidate to keep herself from facing up to the consequences of her actions, she's essentially been demoted from chessmaster to pawn.
  • In the sequel, she gets knocked out with her own golf club by one of her staff, which feels particularly karmic after callously murdering her previous staff in the first movie, especially so when the ending makes it clear Amanda can do absolutely nothing to them as "payback" short of simply saddling them with Peacemaker, which simply leads to his subsequent TV series.
  • The TV series has Amanda get what's coming to her once again in the season 1 finale, as after she goes back on her deal with Peacemaker by having Leota plant a counterfeit diary in the hopes of having Peacemaker scapegoated for the Project Butterfly killings and throwing the police off her trail in the process, it leads to Leota exposing Amanda Waller and the existence of Task Force X to the public, placing Amanda and her Task Force X project under heavy scrutiny.
• A Lesson in Defeat: After Project Starfish and Project Butterfly tarnish her reputation, Waller looks to more dependable sources for maintaining the peace, starting with the Justice Society.
• Moral Sociopathy: Although you'd have to be flexible with the word "moral," she genuinely believes that she is keeping order in the world, and there is practically no line she won't cross in pursuit of that goal.
• Nerves of Steel: Even when Bloodsport has a pen to her throat she doesn't flinch, even ordering her guards to put their guns down.
• Necessarily Evil: Waller is, to put it as lightly as possible, completely and utterly heartless. But then again, so are the supervillains that she marches to their deaths for the sake of an ultimately noble goal. They deserve to work for her, and they deserve whatever consequences they receive if they try to run out on her.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Her "Task Force X" plan tragically backfires, mainly due to her idea to use Enchantress, who ends up being a threat to the entire world. Things get so bad for Amanda afterwards that she requires Bruce Wayne's help to cover up her mess in exchange for information about the metahumans. Before leaving their private meeting, Bruce reminds her that if she doesn't disband Task Force X, his friends will take care of them.
• Nominal Hero: While allegedly on the side of the angels, there's no question her actions are outright dubious at best.
• Not So Above It All: Waller is the last person you'd expect to see casually practicing golf in her control room.
• Not So Stoic: In The Suicide Squad, she is able to maintain her cool composure throughout most of the film, but has a spectacular meltdown when the survivors of the squad choose to defy her orders and stop Starro from destroying Corto Maltese.
• The Oath-Breaker: While Amanda normally keeps the promises she makes towards the Task Force X members, she goes back on her word with Peacemaker in the TV series, as she promises that Peacemaker would stay out of prison and have his sentence reduced if he agreed to participate in Project Butterfly. However, she decides to throw Peacemaker under the bus by having Leota plant a forged diary in Peacemaker’s trailer in the hopes of having Peacemaker arrested by the local police department for all of the butterflies killed in the mission. It’s implied that Peacemaker lost any respect he had for Waller when he finds out about the planted diary.
• Only Known By Her Nickname: Even her daughter-in-law calls her "Waller".
• Pet the Dog:
  • While she does ultimately screw over "Task Force X" at the end and send them back to prison, she also agrees to and grants several concessions like allowing Deadshot to visit his daughter, giving Killer Croc cheeseburgers and a flat screen TV in his cell, and installing an espresso machine in Harley Quinn's cell.
  • A softer side of her is seen in Peacemaker, when she's talking to her daughter, who she has a surprisingly amicable relationship with. Then it turns out Amanda Waller forced her daughter to transfer from an animal shelter to lethal government work, culminating in Waller using her as a patsy to frame Peacemaker to get her own ass out of trouble.
• Pride: This is, without a doubt, Amanda Waller's Fatal Flaw; her overwhelming confidence in her abilities and that she can get her way ultimately leads to disaster.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Waller's confidence in her ability to control anyone and any situation ultimately turns out to outweigh her actual ability by a couple of factors. Her brilliant plans to control the Enchantress ultimately fail to work, and one can argue that she may have driven Enchantress to her hostility in the first place by abusing her, she ultimately needs to go crawling to Bruce Wayne for protection to keep from getting roasted over her role in the whole fiasco, she's warned to shut down Task Force X before the Justice League does it for her, and the Joker breaks Harley Quinn out of Belle Reve. Let's not forget the fact that once she's bought Bruce Wayne's protection, she tries to intimidate him by revealing that she knows he's Batman — he promptly shuts her down right there and then. Later, when another Task Force X defies her orders not to interfere with Starro's rampage in Corto Maltese, she flies into a furious rage and attempts to kill them with the detonators on the spot, only for her own underlings to turn on her and knock her out cold.
• Smug Snake: She struts around like this indomitable authority figure in the first part of the first movie; one of her subordinates even (jokingly) refers to her as "the voice of God". Oh, how the mighty have fallen, come the stinger.
• Tap on the Head: She receives one (deservingly) from her subordinates in the second movie with a golf club. She ends up having to clutch an ice pack to her head with her dignity shattered.
• The Sociopath: According to Viola Davis, who claimed to have read books on the disorder to get into the role. That being said, she at least wants to act for the good of society as a whole, even if she doesn't care what happens to the criminals who will accomplish this for her. One review for the sequel describes her as deploying members of Task Force X "more like living hand grenades than precision missiles".
• Staying Alive: She has a very peculiar knack for staying alive in the midst of chaos and destruction. Deadshot is outright annoyed at the fact Waller doesn't die when the climactic battle wrecks the subway station, despite being near the epicenter of the magitek doomsday-weapon that they blew up.
• Ungrateful Bitch:
  • You know, considering the Squad saved her life, and, you know, the entire world, she could be a little more appreciative. Harley had to push her to get so much as a "thank you," and Amanda then proceeds to go back on her end of the deal. Though she does at least agree to some smaller rewards, like letting Harley have her espresso machine and letting Croc have a TV, even if just to shut them up.
  • It gets worse in The Stinger. After Bruce Wayne agrees to help her cover her ass, she not-so-subtly tells him she knows he's Batman, and implies that she wants to use that as leverage. Fortunately, Bruce shoots that down.
• Villain Killer: To the point where her willingness to instantly execute anyone on the Squad is used as an intimidation tactic to keep them all in line.
• Villain Respect:
  • Deadshot comments that Waller's cold-blooded slaying of her mission control staff was "gangster," and even Killer Croc comments "I like her" when she brutally intimidates the Squad after they contemplate just killing her there and then.
  • She's on the other end when Bloodsport betrays her and turns not only the entire Squad, but her entire support staff against her. Even after being thoroughly humiliated, Waller admits without a second of hesitation that she made Bloodsport a leader in the process—just like she promised she would at the beginning of the film.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the sequel, after the entire squad goes rogue to stop Starro, she completely loses it and desperately tries to get them to stop, culminating in her screaming profanity and threatening to kill them all. After getting knocked out, Waller, now holding an icepack, is sitting in her office humiliated as she has no choice but to agree with Bloodsport's negotiation.
  Amanda Walker: Turn around now, God damn it! You dumb pieces of shit! Motherfuckers! God damn it, Task Force X, this is your last motherfucking warning!
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: As is probably obvious by now, Waller does some truly heinous things in the name of National Security, and seems to truly believe that every one of them was necessary for the greater good. That said, it could also be argued that personally massacring her mission control staff was more about protecting her ass politically, and the deal she makes with Bruce Wayne at the end further implies that while she'll go pretty far in her duties, that's due to her borderline-sociopathic nature rather than any sense of sacrifice.
• Would Hurt a Child: She "convinces" Bloodsport to join the Suicide Squad by implying she would pull some strings to have his daughter tried as an adult and potentially sent to Belle Reve (for stealing a watch at that) if he refused. When one of Amanda's aides asks if she really would have done it, she implies she's willing to do a lot worse if the mission requires.

Emilia Harcourt

Emilia Harcourt

"This is the guy Waller's giving us? I told you she's fucking us."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): A.R.G.U.S.

Portrayed By: Jennifer Holland

Voiced By: Nana Mizuki (Japanese), Jennifer Gouveia (Brazilian Portuguese)

Appearances: The Suicide Squad | Peacemaker | Black Adam | SHAZAM! Fury of the Gods ^note In The Stinger

"Here I am, living the dream. About to assassinate a couple of children."

An aide to Amanda Waller and Peacemaker's handler.

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• Action Girl: After Peacemaker and Vigilante, she's easily the most capable ass-kicker on the team.
• Ascended Extra: Alongside Economos, she went from having a relatively small role in The Suicide Squad to being a main character in Peacemaker.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Harcourt bet that Weasel would get killed off. She then witnesses him drown before he's able to do anything useful, which she's not the least bit pleased with. Then it turns out Weasel was just sleeping this whole time, so she actually lost money on that one.
• Black Bra and Panties: She gets woken up in the middle of sleeping by a call from Peacemaker. Apparently, she sleeps in black undies and a flattering black pushup bra.
• Bulletproof Vest: In the season one finale of Peacemaker, she wears a military vest when she, Peacemaker, and Vigilante face off against the butterfly horde. While it doesn't completely stop every bullet aimed at her, it still ends up saving her life when she inevitably gets overwhelmed and shot down by some of the gun-toting butterfly hosts.
• Characterization Marches On: In The Suicide Squad, Harcourt is depicted as an office drone with little experience on the front lines. In Peacemaker, she's instead depicted as an experienced Action Girl who's very willing to go out in the field and kick ass herself.
• Consistent Clothing Style: With the execption of dark blue jeans in The Suicide Squad, she is always dressed in black.
• Deadpan Snarker: Emilia's the first to start making fun of Peacemaker's garish outfit.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: At the beginning of the series, she openly tells Peacemaker that he's a "piece of shit murderer" and generally treats him with disdain, but over the course of their operations she warms up to him and Vigilante, becoming much more appreciative of what they do and genuinely liking her colleagues.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • She's clearly shaken when Vigilante kills Senator Goff's Butterfly-infected family.
  • Similarly, while Harcourt accepts that her line of work requires doing the dirty work, she hates traitors. She has a hard time working with Peacemaker due to his betraying Task Force X and killing Rick Flag, and later holds a grudge against Adebayo for setting up Peacemaker to take a fall. She is only comparatively more lenient to Adebayo due to finding out almost immediately that she's legitimately out of her depth, as she was just an animal shelter worker prior to being put on the team by her mother.
• Face Palm: She's visibly disappointed that Squad Team A manages to lose a member mere seconds after their arrival on the beach.
• The Lancer: She serves as one to Murn, being the one who distrusts Peacemaker the most and able to take command in case he's incapacitated.
• Made of Iron: Downplayed. While she does get hospitalized and was wearing a Bulletproof Vest, she still manages to survive getting shot several times by the Butterfly-possessed horde in the Peacemaker finale. Quite impressive.
• Not So Above It All: She's usually strict and serious but when Adebayo accidentally shows the team a pic of her wife's genitals, she bursts out laughing.
• Side Bet: Has a betting pool set up with Economos, Crawley, and their colleagues over which squad members will die first.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Despite not being a field operative, Harcourt can still defend herself just as easily as any other Badass Normal.
• Spotting the Thread: She's the only member of the team to figure out that Murn is a Butterfly, which she quickly deduces after the former survives an explosion at close range without any ill lasting effects. Adebayo only found out by accident, while the rest of the team had to be told.
• You Are in Command Now: After Murn is taken out by the Butterfly Queen, the team choose her as the undisputed leader (although with some confusion from Economos).

Flo Crawley

Flo Crawley

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): A.R.G.U.S.

Portrayed By: Tinashe Kajese

Voiced By: Natsuki Mori (Japanese)

Appearances: The Suicide Squad | Peacemaker

An aide to Amanda Waller.

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• Demoted to Extra: Compared to the comics, Flo receives very little focus. This is due to the Unrelated in the Adaptation example below, combined with the absence of her unrequited crush Bronze Tiger and friend Oracle, leaving her with none of the character interactions that made her so prominent in the comics. Subverted to an extent in the climax, when she knocks out Waller and allows the Squad to fight Starro.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: While the rest of the mission control team ultimately rebelled against Waller in helping Task Force X out, it was Flo Crawley who actually led the insurrection by knocking her out. Flo ultimately gets the brunt of the punishment and gets arrested, while Harcourt and Economos instead get reassigned to Project Butterfly.
• Put on a Prison Bus: She's last seen getting arrested in the recap of the events of The Suicide Squad in Peacemaker.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Flo receives very little focus for most of the film, and anyone who doesn't recognize her from the comics would assume that she's just a glorified extra, but by knocking out Waller with her own golf club, she saves the Squad and Corto Maltese, not to mention whoever else might have ended up as a target of Starro's wrath.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the comics, Flo's killed when she joins the Squad on a mission to Apokolips. She makes it out alive and well in the film, notwithstanding the prison sentence.
• Suddenly Shouting: "GET ON THE SATELLITE, DALE, YA FUCKIN' DICKHEAD!"
  • Justified, as she's on quite an adrenaline rush after knocking Amanda Waller out with her own golf club.
• To Be Lawful or Good: She, like her co-workers, shows some reluctance to go along with Waller's Knight Templar decisions. When Waller elects to leave Starro to his own devices and abandon the people of Corto Maltese, Flo knocks her out with a golf club and acts as Mission Control to help the Squad take on Starro.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: In the comics, she's Waller's niece, but no such relationship is mentioned in the movie.

Leota Adebayo

Leota Adebayo

"You use being a jerk as a way to push people away. But if you just dropped that, people actually might like you."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): A.R.G.U.S.

Portrayed By: Danielle Brooks

Voiced By: Angélica Borges (Brazilian Portuguese)

Appearances: Peacemaker

A new ARGUS recruit.

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• Beware the Nice Ones: A nice, sweet, mostly naive and innocent woman. She subtly manipulates Vigilante into trying to murder Auggie Smith. It woulda worked too, if he had done some prep. She also is willing (under orders from her mother) to have Peacemaker falsely arrested and portrayed as a crazed psychopath to cover up an operation, though she feels pretty bad about it. Then, during the mission to kill the Cow, she manages to gun down a surprising number of Butterflies with just two pistols.
• Chekhov's Skill: She mentions getting marksmanship training in episode 2. At first, it seems like just a way to make herself seem less like a liability to the rest of the team, as the only ones she's seen gunning down are standing still. Come the season finale, it turns out that she legitimately has some incredible marksmanship skills, and is capable of gunning down multiple attacking Butterflies while in a full sprint.
• Decomposite Character: See the entry on Flo? Here, Adebayo is the one who is related to Waller.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • As pointed out by Murn, her plan to manipulate Vigilante into murdering Auggie Smith has a few major holes: regardless of if Vigilante kills Auggie or Auggie kills Vigilante (a distinct possibility given Auggie is a trained soldier with years of experience acting as a supervillain), Peacemaker isn't so stupid that he won't work out that the team was involved, and as such will inevitably lose trust in them regardless of whether the plan succeeds or fails, either because they murdered his father or got his friend killed. Neither winds up happening because of another factor Leota didn't consider: Auggie recognizes an attempt is being made on his life, and rather than taking the bait, immediately goes to the police to spill everything about Peacemaker in exchange for protection.
  • Similarly, Murn points out that while he believes she shouldn't have done it at all, if she had to plant the diary framing Peacemaker as the fall guy for Project Butterfly, then she could've at least waited until after the mission was over to do it.
• The Dog Bites Back: After her mother puts her on a dangerous task force and forces her to betray Peacemaker's trust, she ends up getting back at her by exposing Project Butterfly and Task Force X to the public. It's something of an indirect example, as Adebayo was more motivated by clearing Peacemaker's name than getting revenge.
• Endearingly Dorky: Certainly has her moments, such as her giving an entirely unnecessary speech when she's first introduced to the team.
• Friend to All Living Things: She was running an animal shelter before being dragged into Argus' business. She and Keeya also have three small dogs.
• Happily Married: Her first scene also has us meeting her wife, Keeya, and they seem to have an extremely healthy relationship.
• The Heart: To Murn's team involved with the Project Butterfly, as she's the member who has the least experience, but is also the most emotionally open and friendly to others.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Sadly, her work with Task Force X means she has to keep Keeya at arm's length and out of harm's way.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After dipping her toes in trying to be a Manipulative Bastard like her mother for a few episodes, the season finale has Leota being manipulated herself in a more direct fashion when Peacemaker uses her and the "human torpedo" helmet to kill the Cow, launching her into the creature at high speeds and absolutely drenching her in its gore.
• Last-Name Basis: A minor one, but a lot of the squad refers to her as Adebayo, not Leota.
• Like Mother, Unlike Daughter: Unlike her cold-blooded mother, Amanda Waller, she actually is openly friendly and has a moral compass. This is driven home further in the season one finale of Peacemaker, where she reveals Task Force X and Project Butterfly to the press.
• My God, What Have I Done?: It turns out Leota was placed on the task force so that she could secretly place a fake diary in Peacemaker's trailer that would make him look like an insane psychopath, making him a perfect fall guy for all of the dark activities the task force is up to, but nobody else on the team is aware of it. She begins to regret this even before she plants the diary, as she has come to realize that Peacemaker is fundamentally a pretty alright guy, if also a boorish idiot. Later on, she faces the consequences, as Peacemaker rejects her apology and doesn't want anything to do with her once the mission is done. He later comes around to her and calls her one of his BFFs, but she's obviously devastated by his refusal to accept her apologies.
• Nice Girl: She's the only ARGUS member besides Vigilante who doesn't completely hate working with Peacemaker, seeing that he's got a vulnerable side hidden under his asshole exterior.
• Punch-Clock Villain: She's only working for her mother as The Mole on a covert assassination squad to pay the bills, after the animal shelter she worked at closed down and she lost her job.
• Rejected Apology: She tries to apologize to Peacemaker for planting the fake diary in his trailer to make him the fall guy for their operation, but he bluntly tells her that he doesn't care and doesn't want anything to do with her after the mission is done. He does come around to forgiving her at the end of the next episode after she helps destroy the Cow, telling her that he's gone back to considering her his BFF...right after Eagly.
• The Reveal: She's Amanda Waller's daughter, working for her in secret.
• Token Good Teammate: Between Peacemaker, Vigilante, and her fellow ARGUS members, Adebayo is the one with the strongest moral compass, as well as the least amount of blood on her hands.
• Took a Level in Badass: Graduates to full-blown Action Girl in the season finale when she takes two pistols and guns down a shocking number of Butterflies on her way to save Peacemaker.
• Took the Wife's Name: She uses her wife's surname in order to hide the fact that she is related to Amanda Waller, specifically that she is her daughter. Despite that, however, Murn knows who she is through a background check.
• Twofer Token Minority: She's an African-American lesbian.

Clemson Murn

Clemson Murn / Ik Nobe Llok

"There is the four of us against the damn alien invasion. We need a psychopath."

Species: Human/Butterfly

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): A.R.G.U.S.

Portrayed By: Chukwudi Iwuji

Voiced By: Rodrigo Oliveira (Brazilian Portuguese)

Appearances: Peacemaker

The leader of Operation Butterfly.

---

• Asshole Victim: The Butterfly inhabiting Murn claims he chose to take over the real Murn specifically because the real Murn was a terrible person who he could effectively kill without it weighing on his conscience too much. However, even then, it didn't assuage the Butterfly's guilt, as he realized he had just taken away the possibility of the man even atoning.
• The Comically Serious: The show mines plenty of humor out of him being just about the only person on the team who is taking the mission seriously...only to turn right around and deconstruct it by showing he's Not So Above It All at times.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: Harcourt puts it together that he's a Butterfly after he immediately recovers from a near-point blank explosion that sends him flying, as Butterfly hosts are known to be able to shrug off concussive damage.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: His true form is mercilessly crushed by a Goff-possessed Song, an act that appalls even Goff's fellow Butterflies.
• Dead All Along: The real Clemson Murn was killed before the events of the show, and the Murn we see on the show is just a Butterfly possessing his corpse.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Or hands, to be exact.
• The Dreaded: Murn has a reputation for brutality and ruthlessness, which results in him being feared and mistrusted by most of his team. However, he seems to genuinely want to atone. It's eventually revealed that the real Murn is just as much of a monster as his reputation suggests - however, the Butterfly possessing him is far nicer.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • He's a black ops mercenary who is implied to have done to have pretty shady things, but he clearly looks disturbed when Vigilante casually kills Senator Goff's family, even though they're all infected with Butterflies. It's still the case when it's revealed that he's a Butterfly who pulled a Kill and Replace on the real Murn to stop his own kind from achieving world domination. Additionally, he considers the real Murn's memories of what are implied to have been his black op jobs to be horrifying.
  • He stops chewing out Peacemaker when the latter reveals that one of Murn's agents, Caspar Locke, murdered three helpless cops. Murn's expression clearly indicates he's mortified by this and clearly never gave Locke those orders.
  • Despite his at-best adversarial relationship with Peacemaker, he agrees with Harcourt that Adebayo should have never planted the diary in Peacemaker's home to frame him for the actions of the team.
• Famed In-Story: Tales of his exploits during his black ops missions have become almost legendary due to the unspecified but implicitly unpleasant things he's done on them.
• Foreshadowing: He is largely emotionless, staying at an even calm under most conditions (unless he's particularly angry). We even see him watching TV by himself with a completely blank face. He even mentions in a conversation with John that he's never expressed any feelings before, even basic ones like hunger or chilliness which is extreme even for The Sociopath. With the Goff family, we see that as soon as they are out of the public eye, they completely drop all pretense of emotion. At the end of episode 4, we learn that Murn is secretly a butterfly himself.
• Heel Realization: He had one shortly after taking over the real Murn. Experiencing the real Murn's memories made him realize that, regardless of how terrible a person the real Murn was, he had the capacity for good, and now he'll never have the chance to atone because the Butterfly took control of his life away from him.
• It Has Been an Honor: His last words while in Murn's body are telling Harcourt and Adebayo that he's glad to have had them on his team before Goff and her butterflies subdue him.
• Made of Iron: He somehow survives an explosive going off close to his face, which sends him flying back without any ill effects. This ends up becoming a Cover-Blowing Superpower when Harcourt puts two and two together.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: He's terrified of going to sleep because when he does, he frequently experiences the real Murn's memories. Evidently, what he's seen isn't pretty.
• Mysterious Past: He's a legend in the black ops community, but his past exploits are only talked about vaguely by Peacemaker.
• Not So Above It All: When Leota and John get into an Seinfeldian Conversation about the pronunciation of The Berenstain Bears, he rightfully calls them out on if it's necessary... before joining in and siding with John.
• Not So Stoic: He starts crying while admitting his guilt towards taking away the real Murn's freedom as well as the terrible memories he's forced to experience while being in Murn's body.
• Only Sane by Comparison: Murn spends much of his time having to deal with his team's impulsive and downright moronic decisions, and often serves as the voice of reason whenever Harcourt isn't doing so. However, he's a somewhat eccentric and seemingly emotionless black ops agent who definitely does not qualify as normal by any means. It gets a little weird and ironic when we find out he's actually a butterfly. Turns out the only alien in the group turns out to be the most sane member of said group.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: While he is a stern taskmaster and resorts to blackmailing Peacemaker into service with Project Butterfly, he vocally confirms that he does not want to be another Amanda Waller. He (awkwardly) tries to build a rapport with his team, is patient with them despite their screw-ups, and has an active policy against collateral damage in their assignments. Notably, while it would've been far more prudent to have Senator Goff's family killed along with him as part of their mission due to the high likelihood they had all been taken over by Butterflies, he keeps Goff as the only target and only orders the family killed once it is confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are Butterflies as well.
• Sacrificial Lion: During the team's Darkest Hour, Murn is tracked down by the Butterflies and fatally wounded by Goff to show how high the stakes have gotten.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: He knows that Adebayo is Amanda Waller's daughter through a background check, but Adebayo doesn't know that he did that.
• The Stoic: He's almost always icily calm and never raises his voice, outside of the occasional outburst of anger. It's possible foreshadowing to the fact that he's actually a Butterfly, who are characterized as generally emotionally flat in private outside of moments where they experience particularly intense emotions.
• Surrounded by Idiots: He feels this way by episode 4 of Peacemaker, ranting at the constant incompetence and disastrously impulsive decisions of his agents along with dealing with resident Cloudcuckoolander Peacemaker.
  Murn: I thought Waller gave me soldiers, instead it’s the fucking Apple Dumpling Gang!
• Token Heroic Orc: He's a Butterfly who apparently opposes his own kind's plans for world domination. According to him, he's the sole dissenter.
• Walking Spoiler: It's pretty hard to talk much about his role in the story, without mentioning the fact that he technically is the enemy.
• Would Hurt a Child: Downplayed. Senator Goff is initially the only target for Peacemaker to assassinate, with Murn only extending this to Goff's wife and two children at the last moment once Peacemaker and Harcourt indisputably confirm they are Butterflies as well. Even then, he clearly takes no pleasure from the order, and is disturbed at how nonchalant Vigilante is when gunning them down after Peacemaker fails to work up the nerve to take the shot.

Field Operatives

Rick Flag

Colonel Rick Flag

"Here's the deal. We fail the mission, you die."

^{Click here to see him in Suicide Squad (2016)}

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): US Army, A.R.G.U.S., Task Force X

Portrayed By: Joel Kinnaman

Voiced By: Irwin Daayán (Latin-American Spanish) | Atsushi Miyauchi (Japanese) | Gilduin Tissier (European French) | Pierre-Étienne Rouillard (Canadian French) | Reginaldo Primo (Brazilian Portuguese)

Appearances: Suicide Squad | The Suicide Squad | Peacemaker ^note  Flashback with archive footage from The Suicide Squad

"We don't leave one of our own behind."

A special operations officer who acts as the field commander of the Suicide Squad.

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• Adaptational Villainy: In the comics, Flag is one of the more moral government officials. Here, he willingly turns a blind eye to Waller murdering her support staff, though he might not condone it, considering what he already thinks of her. It's further toned down in The Suicide Squad, where Flag's snap reaction to learning the US government was covering up horrible illegal experiments is to betray Waller and try to expose the experiments. It leads to his death.
• Adaptational Wimp: This version of Flag is mostly a liability to the team, and is only tolerated because he holds the Explosive Leash and commands the troops. Compared to his comic book counterpart (along with the other versions of Rick Flag, especially the DC Animated Universe version of Rick Flag), who is one hell of a soldier, keeping up with the best of them, this may leave something to be desired. He's gotten better by the time of the sequel.
• Alternate Self: Has one on Earth-167.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: His intro splash in the first movie notes that he is proficient with every weapon in the US Army... and plays golf with a handicap.
• Attack on the Heart: His ultimate fate by Peacemaker.
• Badass in Distress: The abominations attempt to kidnap him twice, forcing the squad to rescue him.
• Badass Normal: Though most of the team are examples of this trope too, Flag is just a badass government agent/soldier tasked with helping to keep the group in check and on mission. No fancy costumes for him.
• Broken Pedestal: His faith in the United States government is pretty much shattered when it's revealed that Project Starfish involved experimentation on children. This had nothing to do with national security (Flag's main justification for the amoral and possibly immoral things that Task Force X does on behalf of the US Government), and it's clear that the Thinker's motivation was For Science!, morality be damned..
  Flag: ...They experimented on children...
  Peacemaker: No one is saying what they did is right-
  Flag: THEY EXPERIMENTED ON CHILDREN!
• Character Development: He's mellowed out by the time of the sequel, and is genuinely friendly with the Squad this time around, even treating Harley and Boomerang like old friends.
• Colonel Badass: His military rank is stated to be colonel, and Waller calls him the best special forces officer the United States has ever produced.
• Dating Catwoman: He's in a relationship with June Moone, aka the host of Enchantress. Amanda Waller thinks this will help to keep Enchantress on a leash. She's quite wrong.
• Defrosting Ice King: He's initially disgusted with the Squad and dismissive of their skills and courage. By the end, he's come to respect some of them enough to smash the controls to the Explosive Leash, give Floyd his daughter's letters, and ask them to help of their own free will. He personally oversees Deadshot's visits to his daughter to make sure he isn't mistreated. He finds Harley Quinn annoying and dangerous, but by the second movie he treats her like an old war buddy.
• Despair Event Horizon: He's heartbroken when he is forced to end Enchantress, as it means killing June too. Except it doesn't.
  • Though he's far more angry about it, the reveal of the US Government's involvement in Project Starfish in the sequel marks another one for Flag. He's willing to reveal the crimes of his government (which is technically treason) out of rage for what he learned.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Flag died in an explosion in the comics, while in the second movie, he's stabbed through the heart during his fight with Peacemaker.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In the sequel, a Deleted Scene strongly implies that Flag was sent to the marked-for-death Team A because he made a crude joke about Waller's shirt.
• The Dragon: He serves as Waller's right-hand man. When he discovers the United States cover-up of Starro, he turns on Waller. It doesn't last long, as Peacemaker kills him after a struggle.
• Dying Declaration of Hate: Delivers one to Peacemaker before succumbing to his wounds. This, of course, shakes Peacemaker to the core. In the show, this moment is a repeated flashback and point of guilt for Peacemaker.
  Flag: "Peacemaker"... [scoffs] What a joke...
• Fun T-Shirt: Wears a yellow one in The Suicide Squad that has a bunny holding a sign that has "obstáculos son oportunidades"^note obstacles are opportunities printed on it.
• Killed Off for Real: It seemed very unlikely that he would die, even taking into account the film's premise, but he dies in The Suicide Squad after a fight with Peacemaker.
• Mr. Exposition: A good portion of his dialogue is simply him yelling plot-relevant details, including the infamous "This is Katana!" speech.
  • Averted in the sequel, where he gets to showcase more of his personality.
• Mr. Fanservice: He gets a shirtless scene in The Suicide Squad.
• Nice Guy: He's evolved into this in The Suicide Squad, having become leagues more affable and heroic than in the previous film and genuinely caring about the Squad's wellbeing.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Flag initially rebukes this stance when Deadshot tries to make the comparison. Upon closer inspection, though, he's just as much under Waller's thumb as the Squad is. To say nothing of the fact he can be as cold-blooded as Waller in some situations.
• Odd Friendship: The straight-laced black ops soldier has a strangely cordial rapport with bubbly psychopath Harley Quinn. It's why he goes back to rescue her in The Suicide Squad despite it potentially jeopardizing the mission.
• Patriotic Fervor: Downplayed. His bio states he "bleeds red, white, and blue." This turns out to be more of an Informed Attribute.
  • Averted by the end of the sequel, where The Reveal of the US Government's complicity in Project Starfish leads to his willingness to betray Waller and the government, showing that his patriotic loyalty is to the Country rather than the State...causing Peacemaker to step in.
• Pet the Dog: He defends Weasel from criticism about his species, and awkwardly shows respect to him for going along with the mission.
• Redemption Equals Death: He's killed by Peacemaker shortly after he attempts to get out from being a mere pawn to the United States government by exposing Project Starfish to the press.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Although initially wearing his military fatigues in the sequel, Flag, after surviving the opening massacre of Team A, escaping, then encountering the revolutionaries, later changes his clothes for a yellow T-shirt with a bunny sticker, making him look more faithful to the comics.
• Straight Man: Very frequently, given all the scenes paired with the Large Ham of Harley and Boomerang, and the neverending snark by Deadshot.
  • This continues in the sequel, as he now has to handle Bloodsport, Ratcatcher, Polka-Dot Man, Peacemaker, and King Shark as well.
• Surrounded by Idiots: An extension of the Straight Man trope above, it's pretty clear that he's thinking this at the very beginning of the (doomed) island invasion at the start of the sequel.
  Flag: Did anyone check to see if the Weasel could swim?
• Sweet and Sour Grapes: He spends much of the first film worried that destroying the Enchantress's heart will kill the woman he loves. In the end, it instead frees her.
• Token Good Teammate: For a given definition of "good", considering he works for a government black ops agency, but he's one of two members of the Squad who isn't a convict or former supervillain (the other being Katana). When Waller wipes out her own mission control staff, Flag just shrugs it off, but in the sequel, Flag outright betrays Waller when he's fed up with covering up her bullshit. Likewise, in the sequel, he's portrayed from the start as the most heroic and moral of the Squad outside of Ratcatcher 2.
• Took a Level in Badass: Thankfully, Flag lives up to his name in the sequel by showing his skills in frontline combat tactics and fighting prowess. Furthermore, he, alongside Peacemaker and Bloodsport, engage in a fierce firefight with members of the Corto Maltese army and emerged victorious, showing he really is one hell of a soldier. He later takes on Peacemaker following the latter's betrayal and, despite enduring an Agonizing Stomach Wound upon Jotunheim's collapse, while his opponent comes out relatively unscathed, nearly wins the fight, with only an underhanded move on Peacemaker's part doing him in.
• Took a Level in Kindness: He's much more personable in the sequel, being genuinely friendly with the rest of the Suicide Squad and cracking jokes with them. He's also more willing to disobey Waller, deciding to expose the evidence of the US's collaboration with the Thinker's horrific experiments out of sheer disgust.
• Unwitting Pawn: Unfortunately, for all his Took a Level in Badass upgrades in the sequel, Rick Flag is firmly this for Amanda Waller. He is placed on the "decoy" team to make it easy for Bloodsport's team to infiltrate the island of Corto Maltese, where his survival is not expected by his superiors. When that fails and he is rescued by the resistance fighters, he is later murdered by Peacemaker because the real mission was never to depose the government or anything that Flag would find justifiable. It was all about covering up the truth of Project Starfish, even if that meant killing a loyal servant of the US Government in Rick Flag.
• Uriah Gambit: He's heavily implied to have been the victim of this in the opening of the second film. Why else put Rick Flag, a decorated member of the US special forces who has commanded Suicide Squads in the past, in charge of an admittedly terrible team? This is confirmed in a deleted scene, where it turns out Waller marked him for death simply for making fun of her shirt. Of course, this fails, with the responsibility of removing Flag falling onto the sadly capable shoulders of Peacemaker.

Katana

Tatsu Yamashiro / Katana

"I'm not a thief."

Species: Human

Citizenship: Japanese

Affiliation(s): A.R.G.U.S., Task Force X

Portrayed By: Karen Fukuhara

Voiced By: Fernanda Robles (Latin-American Spanish) | Arisa Shida (Japanese) | Jessica Monceau (European French) | Mylène Mackay (Canadian French) | Angélica Borges (Brazilian Portuguese)

Appearances: Suicide Squad

[In Japanese] "Criminals deserve no mercy!"

An expert martial artist and swordswoman that serves as Rick Flag's bodyguard, and wields a powerful blade. As she is a volunteer, not a criminal, she does not have a micro-bomb implant.

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• And This Is for...: She almost misses the mission because she was busy hunting down one of the men who were there when her husband was murdered.
• Alternate Self: Has one on Earth-Prime and one on Earth-167.
• Bilingual Dialogue: The bulk of her dialogue in the movie is in Japanese, but everybody responds to her in English.
• Captain Ethnic: In case you couldn't tell, she's Japanese.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: She's absent with no explanation in the sequel.
• Co-Dragons: With Lieutenant Edwards, with her fulfilling a more direct bodyguard role for Flag.
• Death Seeker: Strongly hinted when she speaks to her husband's soul, telling him that "[they] will be together". Given his soul is trapped in the weapon...
• Empowered Badass Normal: She's just a regular (if skilled) woman, but her soul-sucking Muramasa blade is able to harm Incubus.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Even though she's tasked with helping Flag keep the Squad in check, she doesn't have any hang-ups about having a drink with them.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: She has several scars on her face. One continues from the cut that goes through the eye on her mask.
• Inspector Javert: She says that "criminals deserve no mercy", and it's implied she thinks All Crimes Are Equal. Fortunately, we don't see her stab someone for jaywalking or the like, but it's an open question of whether she would consider that justified.
• Japanese Delinquents: Her redesigned outfit is patterned after the biker (bosozoku) variety.
• Katanas Are Just Better: They are when they have soul-sucking abilities. Her katana contains all of the souls of the people who have been killed with it, including her husband.
• The Lost Lenore: She's still reeling from the loss of her husband.
• Master Swordsman: Her primary skillset. She's really good with that katana.
• Not So Stoic: When the mission is nearing its end, she briefly breaks down while talking to her husband's soul.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: She's the shortest member of the squad, but a deadly fighter nonetheless.
• Sarashi: A Japanese woman wielding a katana whose shirt is constantly open? Obviously required.
• The Stoic: Doesn't emote very much, other than anger and disgust for others. Subverted towards the climax, when she weeps as she talks to her husband's imprisoned soul.
• They Call Him "Sword": Her codename is "Katana".
• Token Good Teammate: She is a volunteer for the squad and doesn't have an Explosive Leash to keep her in check.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Her mask is designed after the Japanese flag.

Lieutenant Edwards

Lieutenant G.Q. Edwards

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): US Navy, A.R.G.U.S.

Portrayed By: Scott Eastwood

Voiced By: Gerardo García (Latin-American Spanish) | Masamichi Kitada (Japanese) | Lionel Erdogan (European French) | Alexis Lefebvre (Canadian French) | Mckeidy Lisita (Brazilian Portuguese)

Appearances: Suicide Squad

A Navy SEAL and Rick Flag's second in command.

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• Badass Normal: A Navy SEAL Spec Ops who holds his own against the Incubus's zombies. He is the last survivor of the unit before his Heroic Sacrifice, in which he manages to kill what is essentially a god with a large bomb.
• Co-Dragons: With Katana, with her performing a more direct physical bodyguard role while he delegates Flag's commands.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He is in point-blank range when the bomb set to destroy Incubus is detonated, and he is the one that presses the button to set it off, knowing it would kill him.
• Mauve Shirt: A movie-original character who acts as Rick Flag's right-hand man. He srvives the whole movie, and leads the last remaining SEALs through the sewers, wherein he is rescued by Croc from the abominations. He triggers a bomb with one second left on its timer in order to kill Incubus, blowing himself and Diablo up in the process.

Peacemaker

Christopher Smith / Peacemaker

"My coterie of supervillains is six
feet FUCKIN' under!"

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): A.R.G.U.S., Task Force X ("Suicide Squad")

Portrayed By: John Cena, Quinn Bennett (young)

Voiced By: Jorge Badillo (Latin American Spanish), Akio Ōtsuka (Japanese), Duda Ribeiro (Brazilian Portuguese), Raphaël Cohen (European French)

Appearances: The Suicide Squad | Peacemaker | Mortal Kombat 1

"I used to think God put me here for a purpose. For peace. And I know I said I didn't care how many people I needed to torture or kill to get it, but... Y'know, lately I'm just thinkin' I'm a fuckin' maniac."

The estranged son of the infamous white supremacist August "White Dragon" Smith, who trained him from early childhood to be a ruthless killer, Peacemaker is a man who desperately wants to be a hero. Donning a costume and helmet designed by his father, he began a career as a super-vigilante, only to find himself imprisoned for his lethal methods. From there, he was recruited into Task Force X, and later A.R.G.U.S.'s field operations division.

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• Abled in the Adaptation: While just as violent, this version of the character is significantly more mentally stable than his comic counterpart, who believes that the souls of everyone he kills reside in his helmet. This begins to slide in the season one finale, where starts to experience hallucinations of his dead father mocking him.
• Abusive Parents: As revealed in his series, his father was and still is incredibly emotionally abusive to him, with implications that he was also physically abusive towards him while training him to become an enforcer of his own white supremacist ideology.
• Adaptational Villainy: Unlike in the comics, in The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker is The Mole for Waller and acts to preserve America's secrecy in being involved in very immoral projects. Subverted in his own series, as his entire character arc centers around growing out of his My Country, Right or Wrong mindset and making choices for himself.
• Adaptational Upbringing Change: In the comics (at least the '80s remake), his father was an Nazi war criminal (commander of a death camp who killed himself to escape prosecution), in the series, his father is an American white supremacist terrorist.
• Alas, Poor Villain: He's a jingoist, a backstabber, and an all-around jerk who deserves the ridicule he gets from the other ARGUS agents, but when you see the kind of man his father is, it isn't hard to see how he ended up this way. Not to mention, it turns out he actually hates himself for how he is.
• Amazon Chaser: He admits to being aroused after watching Harcourt beat up a guy that was harassing her.
• Ambiguously Bi: Peacemaker's sexuality is, to quote James Gunn, "twisted." He definitely experiences attraction to women, but there's certain eyebrow-raising things about him. He mentions that having been in prison he hasn't been with anyone in 4 years, before correcting himself to any woman, and then there's his mention of how he'd suck a beach of dicks "for freedom." Muddying the waters is that he's clearly homophobic about Vigilante's father. invokedDuring their fight, his father Auggie drops the ambiguity by outright saying that Chris has had sex with men. James Gunn confirms his bisexual orientation online, saying it was John Cena's idea for his character.
• AM/FM Characterization: According to James Gunn Peacemaker's affinity for hair metal was in part rebellion against his father and his obsession with manliness. Listening to a music performed by a bunch of guys with long hair, makeup and all around Camp Straight aesthetics was sure to get under his skin. It also hints at Peacemaker himself having a complex, sensitive side to him under all the macho surface.
• Animal Motifs: Peacemaker seems to have an affinity for birds. He has doves engraved on his helmets, uniform, weapons, and shield, since they are associated with peace and freedom. His weapon is a Desert Eagle. He also has a pet bald eagle whom he named Eagly, to further advertise his love for America.
• Anti-Hero: He is willing to create and keep the peace. Regardless of how many men, women, and children he has to kill in order to do it. He manages to mellow out to a Good is Not Nice type by the end of the first season of his series. He's foul-mouthed, abrasive, and willing to kill threats to the peace, same as he was before. But Peacemaker does genuinely value the friends he's made, and is willing to hear out his targets for the full picture before deciding if he should kill them or not.
• Apologetic Attacker:
  • He clearly doesn't enjoy having to fight Rick Flag to keep him from taking the hard drive. And killing him is one of the few acts in the film he seems to genuinely regret. This regret lingers on into his series. He also appears to be conflicted about executing Ratcatcher, and apologizes when he decides to shoot her.
  • He apologizes before using lethal force against someone who wasn't themself at the time. He shoots Goff's host body dead after he rejects their plan that they believed would save both the humans and butterflies. Peacemaker knows that Goff isn't herself, but it's for the good of the planet, so he goes through with it.
• The Atoner: When he recovers from his injuries and starts working for ARGUS on a more permanent basis, Peacemaker isn't as much of an antisocial blowhard as he used to be. This is best seen with how well he gets on with Vigilante and Adebayo, when his attitude towards the rest of Task Force X was one of self-importance, at least until they started bonding and discovering new surprising facts about each other. He eventually admits in his show that he hates himself and his superhero identity and wants to be something different. He even ends up killing his father to distance himself from his awful origins.
• Ax-Crazy: Peacemaker may not look the part, but with the way he expresses his goals and motivation, he ends up establishing himself to be the most deranged and unstable member of the Task Force's B-Team, even making King Shark and Polka-Dot Man look more mentally stable by comparison. As demonstrated with the way he kills the resistance fighters, Peacemaker has a violent, bloodthirsty streak.
• Badass Normal: Peacemaker possesses no superhuman powers and doesn't wear any protective gear aside from his helmet, but even that is mostly just for show (up until his solo series, that is). He still proves to be an incredibly effective asset to the team using only his skills, strength, and weapons. Stripped of his weapons, he manages to hold his own against a super-strong assailant in the first episode of his own series, wounding her with improvised implements and quickly killing her once he gets his gear back, even though he started out naked, unarmed, and taken completely by surprise by a superhuman with a weapon.
• Bash Brothers: Peacemaker has been one with Vigilante since before he went to prison, and they bond even more during his time on Project Butterfly. Their favorite hangout activity is showing off their shooting skills by destroying random abandoned appliances out in the woods, and Vigilante later reassures Peacemaker that while they may not be "good" guys, they're at least killing guys worse than themselves... usually.
• Beneath the Mask: Peacemaker is acutely aware that the world hates him, and feels he deserves it after the events of The Suicide Squad, to the point of breaking down hysterically crying by himself.
  Peacemaker: Rick Flag was right… "Peacemaker… what a joke."
• The Big Guy: To Murn's team involved in Project Butterfly, as he's the principal field operative and the physically strongest and most combat-ready member (besides Vigilante).
• Black-and-White Insanity: To Peacemaker, none of his actions are truly evil as long as he achieves peace or dies trying to maintain the world order. In the series, however, he's not as committed to his ideals as he thinks because he expresses remorse for killing Rick Flag and he backs out of killing children in the name of peace.
• Blatant Lies: He insists his aiming skills are more precise than Bloodsport’s because he uses smaller bullets and could fire into bullet holes left by Bloodsport without touching the sides... ignoring the fact that he uses a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle. In reality, Peacemaker uses ridiculously huge exploding hollow-point bullets that prioritize messy overkill over precision. Thus, when he and Bloodsport fire at each other in the end, Bloodsport's smaller bullet goes right through the middle of the hollowpoint in Peacemaker's bullet, flying straight through the barrel of his gun without touching the sides and right into Peacemaker’s neck.
• Blood Knight: While he claims to fight for peace and liberty, Peacemaker revels in the death and destruction he causes. Bloodsport even points this out. Averted when he turns on Rick Flag and Ratcatcher.
  Peacemaker: Nothing like a bloodbath to start the day.
• Boomerang Bigot: Retroactively, it turns out he's a mild form of this. He makes some rather homophobic jokes about Vigilante's gay dad to push his buttons, only for Auggie to later reveal that Chris has had sex with men.
• Boring, but Practical: His x-ray vision helmet lets him see through walls and through the outer layers of people, which while not flashy, proves very useful in determining if someone is possessed by a Puppeteer Parasite or not.
• Bright Is Not Good: The most heroic-looking member of any team he's on, whose costume sports beautiful, bright colors. He's really the least heroic member of those teams, willing to outright kill his own teammates. According to Peacemaker, his outfit strikes fear into the hearts of his enemies, though nobody's convinced.
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Peacemaker's Long List of celebrities that Economos could have framed instead of Auggie includes characters from Transformers, G.I. Joe, Super Mario Bros., Sesame Street, The Muppets, and various fast food mascots.
• Captain Patriotic: Decon-Recon Switch. Peacemaker considers himself a man fighting for peace and liberty. His car is painted with the U.S. flag, and he has a pet bald eagle whom he named Eagly. Initially, this is presented as a bad thing, in reality being nothing more than a self-mythologizing right-wing militant maniac. However, in his show, he actually goes through some much needed character development, and he tries to shed the toxic mindset that led him to becoming a murderer.
• Cerebus Callback:
  • Early in The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, in a darkly humorous moment, claims that he is willing to kill anyone, be it men, women, or children, if it means maintaining peace. Later on, he doesn't hesitate to turn against Rick Flag and Ratcatcher 2, claiming that "keeping the peace is worth any price".
  • It also is a blatant lie: in the show, he's shown to be deeply remorseful for killing Rick Flag, and he's so conflicted about being ordered to assassinate children that he ends up unable to do it at all, endangering the mission. Vigilante ends up taking the shot for him.
• Character Development: You wouldn't believe that the same man that tried gunning down his own team out of patriotism and having military orders to enforce a coverup is the same one that outright refuses to blindly do Amanda Waller's dirty work in his own spinoff series. By all accounts, he should be dead. Recovering in the ICU and knowing that he would be released back to prison as soon as he was able to walk — probably should have been, as Peacemaker acknowledges— gave him time to think, and ponder that he killed a man trying to do the right thing, that would have sacrificed his life to save his team. Over the course of season one, Peacemaker realizes that he doesn't want to be that person anymore, and that he does want real friends, rather than pulling out his guns every time someone serves as his conscience. Actually bonding with Adebayo helps with this, as he gets a taste of what it's like to have a trusted team member betray you, only for Adebayo to reveal that Waller made her do it because the woman is her mother, and being on the Wall's bad side is awful enough when you're a supervillain. What's more, Adebayo nearly sacrifices her life to stop the Butterflies, though she doesn't have more than a concussion at the worst after Peacemaker helps get her out of the exploding barn. She ends the season doing what Flag would have wanted to happen — reveal the conspiracy and Task Force X — and Peacemaker is visibly proud of her. More to the point, the Peacemaker of old would have happily joined the Butterflies in their crusade to fix the Earth, but the fact he outright refuses here shows he's not going to be the jackboot apologist for his country's ideals any longer.
• Characterization Marches On: In The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker is depicted as an unsympathetic character fanatically loyal to the US government and implied to be a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist who kills people for the enjoyment of it rather than any ideals. His own series depicts him in a more sympathetic light as someone who wants to be a superhero but fails due to being warped by his very abusive childhood, and is not blindly loyal to his handlers, getting very angry when it becomes clear they expect him to do their dirty work without question. It is justified to an extent, as some of this is a direct result of his guilt over killing Flag.
• Chekhov's Gag: Peacemaker ends up being the victim in this case. Early in the film, he boasts towards Bloodsport about how his bullets are more effective, and the latter states that smaller bullets are better. Bloodsport is eventually proven right after the two have a face-off in Jotunheim, and Bloodsport's bullet not only shatters Peacemaker's explosive bullet, but also wrecks his Desert Eagle and eventually hits Peacemaker's throat with tight precision.
• Chick Magnet: Like Bloodsport, Peacemaker receives a lot of attention from the female Belle Reve inmates on the team's way to meet Ratcatcher II.
• Children Forced to Kill: It's revealed in a flashback to his childhood that as part of his upbringing, Peacemaker's father forced him to kill a tied-up man with a sick look of satisfaction on his face as his son went through with it while crying his eyes out.
• Chrome Champion: Peacemaker's helmet wouldn't look out of place in a Jack Kirby comic.
• Climax Boss: After being revealed as a mole working under Amanda Waller's orders without a second thought spared for the other members of Squad B, Peacemaker takes the role of being the main antagonistic threat during the last parts of the Jotunheim segment, following the Thinker and preceding Starro.
• Cloudcuckoolander: For some reason, Peacemaker is convinced that martial artists can replace their hearts with one of their kidneys.
• Co-Dragons: Peacemaker and Rick Flag serve as Waller's trusty attack dogs in the film.
• The Comically Serious: Peacemaker treats everything as a life-or-death situation, even when he's just bickering with his teammates and getting into petty dick-measuring contests with Bloodsport. After recovering from his injuries and getting recruited by A.R.G.U.S. on a full-time basis, he still takes his whole schtick way too seriously, to the point of ordering food in a restaurant wearing his full outfit, helmet included.
• Composite Character: For the final fight in season 1, Peacemaker gets a shield similar to Guardian, the Alternate Company Equivalent to Captain America.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: Peacemaker is this to Captain Boomerang: Captain Boomerang is scruffy, mischievous and lacks any kind of principles. Peacemaker is well-groomed with a Heroic Build, acts no-nonsense most of the time, and has a sense of duty, however misguided it may seem.
• Cool Helmet: Peacemaker wears a shiny metal helmet with a large horizontal fin on it. He considers it a symbol of freedom, though Bloodsport just thinks he looks like he's wearing a metal toilet seat on his head.
  • Peacemaker’s father gives him a new, upgraded helmet that has a sonic boom function, which he uses to great effect when a one-night stand who turns out to be a metahuman tries to kill him.
  • Peacemaker later gains a variant with a cleft in the arc that looks slightly more intimidating.
  • There are other versions of the helmet that can let their user breathe underwater, become a human torpedo, have X-ray vision, float without gravity, or give them scabies.
• Corrupted Character Copy:
  • John Cena directly compares Peacemaker to "a douchey, bro-y Captain America", both being Captain Patriotic agents of liberty. However, while Cap is willing to go against his government and expose its unethical conspiracies, Peacemaker intends to cover up his country's dirty work in order to keep the peace, even being willing to murder his teammates to prevent them from exposing it. The similarity is even more pronounced in his spinoff, where Peacemaker gets a custom-made shield that he uses in battle and flings at bad guys. Although, unlike Cap, where the shield throwing is almost always non-lethal, due to the sharp points and edges of Peacemaker's shield, it cuts and stabs the butterfly hosts rather easily.
  • This also goes for pretty much the kind of character archetype John Cena tends to play: Peacemaker, like many of Cena's past roles (right back to his WWE days), is a patriotic military man who cherishes peace and liberty. However, while normally this would be played as a good thing, here Peacemaker is portrayed as a delusional killing machine, and others are disturbed by both his dedication to his mission and the methods he employs.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not often, but he is capable of cutting remarks, such as snarking at the Thinker's efforts to frame himself as a victim, and around Bloodsport in general.
• Death by Irony: Peacemaker claims that he uses smaller bullets than Bloodsport that could pass through the holes left by Bloodsport without ever touching the sides of the wound. When Peacemaker and Bloodsport fire at each other, Bloodsport uses a smaller bullet than him, which not only destroys the incoming round but also nails Peacemaker in the throat, seemingly killing him. Subverted when The Stinger reveals Peacemaker survived.
  Peacemaker: How...
  Bloodsport: Smaller bullets.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Peacemaker deconstructs the Captain Patriotic superhero. Peacemaker styles himself as a classic example of the archetype, but it becomes immediately clear that he's a delusional, jingoistic Right-Wing Militia Fanatic who values the nebulous concepts of freedom and peace so much he will gleefully kill for them at the drop of a hat. Multiple characters point out the flaws in his reasoning, and Bloodsport suggests at one point that he uses patriotism to obscure that he kills people for the sheer enjoyment of it. His eponymous series is slowly beginning to reconstruct it, as Peacemaker begins recognizing those flaws and tries to overcome them.
• Dented Iron: A downplayed example, but Peacemaker still isn't quite at 100% during the events of the show. Injuries from Corto Maltese (namely a clavicle replacement) still flare up whenever he takes a rough spill or even just tries to put on his costume. This happens repeatedly.
• Destroy the Evidence: Peacemaker's (and by extension, Amanda Waller's) real goal is to infiltrate Jotunheim to search for any sort of evidence of the United States Government having any sort of involvement with the Corto Maltese government via Project Starfish and destroy it, with Peacemaker stating that it is necessary to do so, as revealing the evidence would compromise the peace that he is working for. The reason why he turns against Rick Flag and Ratcatcher 2, kills the former, and nearly kills the latter, is because they wanted to reveal the evidence to the public, which left Peacemaker with no other choice but to oppose them.
• Dork Knight: Peacemaker likes to sing along to Quireboy songs, and it's clear some of his problems are less because he's actually got issues, and more because he has NO IDEA how normal humans act.
• The Dragon: While the rest of the Squad is only following Waller's orders because of blackmail or commuted sentences, Peacemaker is a completely loyal henchman to Amanda Waller who carries out her commands to achieve peace for the United States faithfully. Peacemaker shows that Peacemaker's only really working with her for the commuted sentence; the second he thinks he can get away from Task Force X, he takes it and gets the hell out of dodge as fast as he can. While he will work for her if he thinks it will benefit the United States, he'd clearly much rather have his freedom than be forced into working for her.
• Dumbass Has a Point: In Peacemaker, Murn rightfully calls out his stupidity in bringing his assassination dossier with him to a one-night stand and leaving it out for his booty call to read, but then tries to call him out for failing to understand how the fate of the country relies on Project Butterfly succeeding. Peacemaker fires back by pointing out that he doesn't understand because nobody on the team is willing to tell him what Project Butterfly actually entails, or what a Butterfly even is. Murn later chews him out for refusing to shoot Senator Goff's children despite them being compromised by butterflies, and Peacemaker again fires back by saying it's unreasonable to expect him to just murder children without understanding why it's necessary. This time, Murn concedes his point.
• Dual Wielding: He effectively utilizes both his custom Deagle and his custom shield in the season one finale of Peacemaker.
• Eagleland: Very, very firmly a Type II. Peacemaker is an over-the-top, boorish jingoist who owns a pet eagle, a car detailed after the American flag, wields all kinds of crazy guns and styles himself as a patriotic superhero who practically lives and breathes America, when it's fairly obvious he's a delusional murderer.
• Enemy Mine: While he aligns himself with Waller at the climax of The Suicide Squad, it's only because Peacemaker genuinely believes it's in the world's best interest to cover up the U.S.'s involvement in Corto Maltese. In the aftermath, he tries to make a break for it at the first opportunity before bing press-ganged into continuing to work as a Boxed Crook.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He cares about his pet eagle Eagly a lot. Also his father to a degree, despite how abusive the man was and is towards him.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Part of his dislike for the hired killer Bloodsport stems from a belief that killing people for money, rather than duty, is despicable.
  • He isn't a racist. When his father says he hopefully can kill some minorities, he objects, saying that isn't what he does. Considering how much of a Politically Incorrect Villain his father is, it serves as a nice contrast, and really shows he probably could've veered very badly in the opposite direction.
  • Despite disagreeing with Flag over exposing the data to the public, it's heavily implied that Peacemaker is just as disgusted as Rick Flag over the United States' involvement in Project Starfish. He also wasn't thrilled with the Thinker trying to paint himself as the victim of Task Force X for them trying to destroy his research.
  • He also doesn't like the idea of Aquaman fucking fish or Superman having a "poop fetish".
  • He seems genuinely horrified by Vigilante's needlessly ruthless murder tactics, and even more so by Vigilante's casual and nonchalant demeanor about how much he enjoys it. He doesn't even deny Vigilante asking him if said admittance makes him sound like a "fucking maniac".
  • His previous boast about being willing to kill children in the name of peace gets thrown back in his face when he's tasked to assassinate Senator Goff's kids. When the time does come, it turns out this really was just a boast. Peacemaker finds killing kids to be a line he's not willing to cross.
  • When Detective Song gets an arrest warrant for Peacemaker and brings a squad of police to arrest him, he refuses to kill any officers, while Vigilante is willing to in order to avoid arrest until Peacemaker stops him. He's even horrified when Locke starts killing cops to ensure he and Vigilante can escape, with one cop begging for her life before being shot, and then executes some others that were just knocked unconscious.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Bloodsport. Both have virtually the same backstory and overlapping combat skills, something Bloodsport even points out. They have an immediate distaste for each other, and spend most of their time in an extended dick-measuring contest. However, while Bloodsport eventually becomes the team's leader and warms to his comrades, Peacemaker was ultimately loyal to his twisted ideals above all else.
  • Also to Rick Flag. Both are highly patriotic American heroes, but unlike Peacemaker's patriotism, Flag's patriotism doesn't blind him to his country's abuses, leading him to oppose Peacemaker's attempts to cover up U.S. involvement in the Starro experiments. Peacemaker even gets Flag's old job.
  • He's even one to Superman. Much like Superman, Peacemaker is a muscular Primary-Color Champion that wears a symbol of benevolence on his chest. Both have also killed a military man that turned on his own superiors out of principle and have been seriously injured by Bloodsport, the difference being that Superman only killed because he had no other choice, while Peacemaker killed Rick Flag despite having the option to either cripple him or destroy his leverage.
• Evil Hero: What Peacemaker actually is. While he is honest about wanting to uphold world peace as long as he can and sincerely believes himself to be a hero, he's also insanely deluded, and his actions and motivations end up becoming more villainous than they are heroic. He's so misguided that he is willing to kill several innocents and even those that he respects, as shown with Rick Flag, if it means holding on to his twisted code of being a hero. Although, his solo series reveals he's more of Hero with an F in Good.
• Failed a Spot Check: In episode 5 of his show, during a raid on a Butterfly complex, Peacemaker turns off his x-ray vision when it looks like he's killed all the possessed agents in the building. This conveniently allows for him and Leota to be completely blindsided by a Butterfly-controlled gorilla when they hastily enter the next room to regroup with their teammates.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Acknowledged in-universe in the film. His fashion sense is as reliably untrustworthy as his moral compass, and the rest of the cast - especially Bloodsport - are swift to mock him for it.
• Foreshadowing:
  • It's pointed out that, while ARGUS specifically assembled a team based on their unique skills - and Peacemaker's skills are pretty much identical to Bloodsport's - Waller specifically tasked Peacemaker with this mission. It's because he's there to carry out the real objective of making sure that America's involvement with Project Starfish never comes to light.
  • In a verbal spat with Bloodsport, Peacemaker makes mention that he is willing to kill "men, women and even children" in the name of his mission for peace. The abrupt way he says this gets played for laughs. It makes his rather methodical heel turn sting even more, because despite bonding with the team and being otherwise amiable, he still ultimately prioritizes his mission over whatever bonds he may have made.
• For Great Justice: Heavily Deconstructed. Peacemaker is a brightly colored self-identifying sentinel of liberty who fights in the name of everlasting peace. On paper, this would be the usual stock motivation of a Captain Patriotic superhero. But throughout the film, Peacemaker's willingness to habitually cross whatever lines he deems as necessary in adherence to something as abstract and loosely defined as "peace" is seen in-universe as laughably ironic at best and horrifyingly myopic at worst.^note  After all, if everyone in your way is dead, then you have peace: the peace of the grave. Once Peacemaker murders Rick Flag in order to keep the United States' involvement in Project: Starfish a secret, Rick's Dying Declaration of Hate lambasts the sheer absurdity that is Christopher Smith's modus operandi.
  Rick Flag: "Peacemaker". [scoffs] What a joke.
• Freudian Excuse: Everything wrong with Peacemaker can be traced back to his abusive white supremacist father, Auggie, who deliberately raised him to kill minorities and constantly belittles him for every perceived failure. Peacemaker's hidden but intense self-loathing is also the result of him accidentally killing his brother in a fist fight (even though the only reason they were fighting in the first place was because their father forced them to for the entertainment of him and his friends).
• The Generic Guy: Peacemaker sees himself as uniquely one of the deadliest marksmen in the world... even though Bloodsport and Deadshot have the exact same aptitudes. His civilian name is the ridiculously mundane-sounding "Christopher Smith", which coming after a decade's worth of superhero films starring actors named Chris could be seen as a joke in itself if this weren't already his name from the comics.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Peacemaker mentions having 400 gigs of lesbian porn on his computer.
• Giver of Lame Names: Considering he named his eagle "Eagly" it's safe to call him this, and in his own series his team mocks him for it.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Peacemaker swears a lot, but he makes sure to say "effin" when he's around children… even when he's using the word as a verb.
• Guest Fighter: He's been announced to join the roster of Mortal Kombat 1 as part of Kombat Pack 1.
• Hammerspace: Although he's usually seen with his hilariously over-extended Desert Eagle holstered on his thigh, as well as basic Utility Belt (which contains a small Blow Gun along with three darts, and an attachable scope for his gun), he also carries a hatchet and his own sword. Both of which disappear between scenes. Although considering his father seems to have a "quantum unfolding storage area", it might not be too out of left field to say he might actually have Hammerspace.
• Handicapped Badass: In the first season of the show, Peacemaker is still recovering from his Corto Maltese injuries, having had a clavicle replaced and being unable to lift his elbow above his chest. While it hinders him in combat, it doesn't mean he's completely helpless either.
• Hand Cannon: Peacemaker's weapon is a heavily modified Desert Eagle with a ludicrously long barrel extension that allows him to shoot exploding compression bullets. If you're into gun culture, Peacemaker's choice of firearm says a lot about him — it's often said that a Desert Eagle is an oversized range toy for people that are Compensating for Something, and associated with smug jerks.
• Harmful to Minors: It's shown in a flashback in episode 4 of his show that his father forced him to bludgeon a tied-up man to death when he was just a child.
• Heel Realization: It took until his own series for it to take, but he becomes fully remorseful over killing Rick Flag, acknowledging in private to himself that he's a colossal Jerkass who keeps on pushing away anyone who could actually like him.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: His show has his helmets get knocked off frequently in order to retain dramatic tension, due to the gadgets in his helmets bordering on being a Story-Breaker Power.
• Hero Killer: He kills Rick Flag in their fight, which is what turns Ratcatcher against him.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Peacemaker likes to think of himself as this. He insists that he is a superhero, while everyone around him recognizes him for what he really is: a jerk and a murderer.
• Hero with an F in Good: He's presented more in line with this in his own series. He does genuinely want to be a hero, he's just terrible at it because he was only ever taught how to kill people by an abusive, racist father.
• Hero Worship: Downplayed, but he clearly respects Flag and defers to him as the commanding officer. The only time he talks back to him is when Flag insists on rescuing Harley due to it potentially jeopardizing the mission. He even refers to Flag as a hero despite having a gun pointed at him, and is genuinely disturbed when he's forced to kill Flag. By the time of his own series, he's left with Tears of Remorse and Inelegant Blubbering when he's in private over having to kill Rick Flag.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Peacemaker's actions and demeanor are borderline-sociopathic with his dead-serious creed of having to kill anything to maintain peace, his immaturity, and being a lot more violent and brutal than his beliefs make him out to be, but he expresses these thoughts and beliefs in a quirky and humorous fashion. Still, it doesn't change the fact that Peacemaker is easily the most deranged member of Squad B.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: As time goes on, Peacemaker begins to wonder if his quest for peace means he's "just a fucking maniac" when all is said and done because of the number of people that he's killed. Chris eventually has a Heel Realization when he's remorseful over killing Rick Flag, acknowledging to himself that he's a colossal Jerkass who keeps on pushing away anyone who might want to genuinely help him, and saying that he's a "a fucking joke" through tears. However, it's this self-hatred and self-reflection that eventually puts Chris on a course where he Took a Level in Kindness and became a genuine hero.
• Hidden Depths: While Peacemaker seems pretty blind to the faults in his ideology and his own flaws, he's revealed to be well-aware of what an asshole he is, and he is deeply self-loathing because of it.
  • As it turns out, he's quite the music enthusiast, and a huge fan of 1980s Glam Rock and Hair Metal. He is also a pretty capable piano player.
  • He also captures the Butterfly inside Senator Goff's head instead of killing it, showing that he doesn't blindly trust his handlers. Although, this is implied to be part of his growing discontent and unease regarding how much good he's doing in his job despite his earnest desire to be a hero, which has been peaking ever since his Heel Realisation after Corto Maltese.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Despite defying Movie Superheroes Wear Black, he can be as stealthy as the comparatively more practical Bloodsport.
• Honor Before Reason: His Fatal Flaw. Peacemaker puts the honor and reputation of his country above everything else, though this isn't as easy for him as he initially makes it sound.
• Humanizing Tears: It turns out Peacemaker does feel guilt for all the lives he's taken. Killing Rick Flag apparently took an especially hard toll on him.
• Hypocrite:
  • He believes in peace, but Peacemaker's brutal actions make it clear he obviously enjoys violence.
  • He judges Bloodsport for killing people for money. It holds no weight, since he’ll still kill for little to no reason, such as showing off his skills to Bloodsport or trying to kill Ratcatcher II even after she gave up the drive with evidence that America was involved in Project Starfish.
    Ratcatcher II: So okay, okay, destroy the hard drive. Why kill me?
    Peacemaker: Because I'm thorough.
  • His claims to be preserving freedom ring hollow when he acquiesces to the wishes of ARGUS and the government in order to hide America's involvement in shady practices.
  • He chews King Shark out for playing with clay explosives and calls him a "play baby" for being childish. However, the TV series reveals that Peacemaker often behaves just as childishly as King Shark.
  • He believes Batman is a terrible hero because he lets his enemies live. Many of the villains Batman lets live end up joining Task Force X, just like him.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: He has a lot of trust issues stemming from his father's abuse, and thus he acts like a total jerk to other people, despite wanting to have friends that love and support him. His lack of good communication with others also makes him a desperate loner who barely knows how to behave outside of work, and growing closer to his new handlers and Vigilante helps Peacemaker discover nobler sides of himself, even almost tearing up over a heart-to-heart talk with Adebayo.
• Ignored Epiphany: While he looks genuinely remorseful over killing Rick Flag and seems badly shaken by his final words to him, spotting Cleo snaps him out of it, and he quickly resumes trying to take back the hard drive. He even doubles down and decides to murder Cleo as a witness in order to be thorough. This winds up being subverted in his own series, where he sobs in his bed over killing Rick Flag, lamenting how he keeps on pushing away and killing everyone he cares about.
• Impromptu Tracheotomy: Peacemaker is defeated and seemingly killed when Bloodsport shoots him in the throat.
• Inelegant Blubbering: In the privacy of his room, he weeps like a heartbroken child over murdering Rick Flag. Also counts as Tears of Remorse.
• Inexplicably Awesome: Peacemaker somehow managed to survive a bullet to the neck, falling from a tower and being crushed under said tower's rubble in quick succession. He also managed to maintain his muscular physique despite spending six straight months in intensive care and no longer able to raise his arms above his shoulders.
• Informed Attribute: He insists he’s more precise in his aim than Bloodsport because he uses smaller bullets and can fire dead center into holes left by Bloodsport. We never see Peacemaker demonstrate being a better shot than Bloodsport, and actually, the exact opposite turns out to be true. In their final confrontation, Bloodsport uses a smaller bullet that goes right through Peacemaker's own.
• Informed Flaw: In the DVD commentary for The Suicide Squad, James Gunn refers to Peacemaker as alt-right; while he is a jingoist prone to saying un-PC things, Peacemaker comes across more as a well-meaning yet carelessly oblivious dumbass than an active white nationalist. In point of fact, Peacemaker's series shows that he is strongly opposed to bigotry, in direct contrast to his father who does fit the alt-right label.
• Innocently Insensitive: He genuinely has no idea that the racist and sexist shit he says is offensive. He's surprised when people call him on it. Given who his dad is, this is easy to understand.
• Ironic Name: His name is supposed to show that he wants to achieve peace, yet Peacemaker's brutal methods and belligerent personality are anything but.
• Irony:
  • Peacemaker has a dove insignia on his chest, which is a symbol of peace. His methods? Not so much. Since the dove symbol is upside-down, it might be indicative of how screwed-up his idea of peace really is.
  • He is the only member of the team who is considered a superhero, rather than a supervillain or mundane soldier. However, he is by far the most villainous of the team.
• Jerkass: Peacemaker is a rude, volatile, and abrasive man who often finds himself butting heads with his teammates. This very much contrasts with Bloodsport, who, while just as deadly as Peacemaker, turns out to be quite approachable once one gets to know him well enough. Bloodsport suggests that he's just a psychopath who just uses the whole Captain Patriotic schtick as an excuse to kill people and get praised instead of condemned for it. He develops into more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold in his spin-off.
• Jerkass Realization: In addition to his overall Heel Realization early in his series, he also gets this specifically towards his poor treatment of Economos after overhearing him through the radio confessing that he dyes his beard because he's a lonely and overworked man who wants to feel attractive, and that Peacemaker's snide comments towards his beard genuinely hurt him.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: His own series reveals that he's aware of his problems and that he genuinely does want to be the good guy. It's just that his upbringing has royally screwed up his morality and general social skills, so actually being good is a struggle for him. The fact remains that he is making an attempt, and is capable of feeling guilt for his actions.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk:
  • Within the context of The Suicide Squad. Although seemingly amiable and more of a typical Jerk with a Heart of Gold character at first, he slowly loses the façade over the course of the film, and by the end, he discards any camaraderie with his team and shows just how fanatical he is by killing Rick Flag and trying to kill Ratcatcher in order to keep the information about Starro from getting out. It takes until his own series that it's indicated that he isn't completely irredeemable.
  • Although he is a more likable character in the TV series, he is retroactively revealed as this, in his reaction to hearing the story of how Bloodsport was mistreated by his father. In the movie, he shows some level of sympathy, but in the TV series it is revealed that he actually found Bloodsport's mistreatment hilarious. Though, it's also possible he was trying to find middle ground to bond with his father.
• Knight in Sour Armor: The true nature of Peacemaker's character is that he hides his inner anguish under a façade of machismo and immature bravado. The events of him killing his brother and Rick Flag haunt him over the course of his series, and him also shooting his father dead contributes to the overall guilt he feels. Despite that, Chris grows to aspire to be a real hero, not a person who uses heroic rhetoric to justify horrific actions.
• Knight Templar: He genuinely strives to maintain peace for the United States. It's a good goal to strive towards, all things considered, but it's the extremes he will go to that propel him into this territory.
  Peacemaker: Keepin' the peace is worth any price...
• The Lancer: Up until Rick Flag is rescued, Peacemaker acts as the second-in-command of Squad B, being the most effective and capable member alongside Bloodsport. That said, his actual role differs from what Squad B is intended to do, and is allied with Waller above all else for that matter.
• Large Ham: It is clear that John Cena is having way too much fun in the role of Peacemaker.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Remember when he bonded with Squad B, even dancing with them in a bar, only to pull a gun on two members because they wanted to uncover a conspiracy? Yeah, karma is a bitch, because he suffers a betrayal of his own trust, when Adebayo receives orders from her mother to plant an incriminating fake diary that would get Peacemaker arrested and pin all of Project Butterfly on him. While Peacemaker is mad at Adebayo for betraying him, he also silently admits that he isn't one to talk.
• Laughably Evil: He's an awful excuse for a human being most of the time, but his extreme bravado mixed with his epic incompetence and Cena's magnificently unrestrained performance make him a joy to watch.
• Leave No Witnesses: One of the reasons Peacemaker decides to kill Rick Flag and Ratcatcher 2 is that he couldn't leave anyone who had any knowledge of the United States' involvement with Project Starro alive, which links to his misguided mindset about peace and prosperity. It also doesn't help that Flag and Ratcatcher 2 had opposite goals in mind that clashed heavily against what Peacemaker and Waller were aiming for.
• Loser Protagonist: He was born to a racist redneck jerkass father whose main desire in life is a white ethnostate and because of his father's violent upbringing forcing him to become a killer since a young age, he was apprehended for murder and sent to jail with serving the Suicide Squad as his only chance for parole (but it turns out Amanda Waller was never going to release him, only make him take the blame for many of the United States' problems). His home is shown to be just a trailer next to a forest.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Downplayed on the “lovable” part, due to the fact that Peacemaker is acknowledged to be a jerk within the narrative of the story. He is, however, unambiguously shown to be a sex-crazed pervert, as he is shown to have sex with several people, and is revealed to have slept with several women and men through his career as a vigilante.
• Luke, I Might Be Your Father: Ten years before Peacemaker he met a woman named Becky Cooliage, and in one episode he meets her daughter who claims that he might be her father. Judging from his reaction he clearly thinks the possibility exists, but the teacher ends the class before the discussion can go further.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: He arms himself with a shield in the season one finale of Peacemaker. It's sturdy enough to block bullets rather easily, and he uses it not only for Shield Bashing but also stabbing and cutting.
• Made of Iron: Having brawled with Rick Flag, taking a bullet to the throat from Bloodsport, and being almost crushed by the Jötunheim tower, Peacemaker surprises the doctors by only needing a clavicle replacement.
• Mistaken for Racist: Due to his high body count of bad guys who are people of color, some people who know about Peacemaker think that he's a glorified white supremacist. While Christopher Smith's dad is extremely racist and absolutely fits that descriptor, the same can't be said for Christopher himself, as he shows no real signs of actually being prejudiced and is shown to draw the line at racism.
• Moral Myopia: Peacemaker claims to love peace so much he's willing to kill anyone — men, women, and children — to achieve/maintain it. Whilst this is initially played for Black Comedy, it quickly turns tragic when it puts him at odds with his own teammates.
• Most Definitely Not a Villain: No, he's definitely not a bloodthirsty ultranationalist lunatic, he's a peacemaker. Nobody else in the Suicide Squad — not even the naïve, idealistic Ratcatcher — is fooled for even a second.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: He does whatever he has to for America and global peace, no matter the cost, and even when he strongly disagrees with his country's actions. This includes killing his teammate and war hero Rick Flag. Him realizing how much grief this mindset has caused him and growing out of it is a key part of his Character Development in his own series.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He looks genuinely shaken after killing Rick, the latter's final words clearly having hit him hard. Spotting Cleo making a break for the hard drive quickly breaks him out of it, however. Then, in his self-titled series, it's revealed that he very much was and still is haunted by what he did.
• The Nicknamer:
  • A handful of cases, such as calling Polka-Dot Man "Norman Bates" and King Shark "Charlie Tuna".
  • When it comes to proper names, Peacemaker turns out to be quite the dullard. He named his pet eagle "Eagly", which Harcourt and Economos find hilariously lame.
  • He spends much of his own show calling Economos "Dyebeard", which he finds very insulting. Adebayo asks him to stop, and he does eventually listen, which helps when Economos kills a Butterfly-possessed gorilla and reveals they share a common interest in the music of Hanoi Rocks.
• Nothing Personal: Peacemaker says this almost word for word after turning on Rick Flag and Ratcatcher.
• Not Quite Dead: Peacemaker is shot in the throat by Bloodsport after the former tries to kill Ratcatcher for trying to escape with the data revealing the United States' involvement with Starro the Conqueror. It seems he is dead, as he doesn't play a role in the Final Battle... until the post-credits scene reveals that he was recovered from the scene and is alive, albeit wounded and under intense medical care.
• No Social Skills: On account of him being very emotionally stunted and generally ignorant, he struggles to carry out a normal conversation without saying something horribly inappropriate or offensive.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Peacemaker is an incompetent moron with terrible fashion sense and a bizarre moral code that gives him no end of mockery, but he's still a dangerous murderer at the end of the day who is scarily good at killing people.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Bloodsport accuses him of being one, saying he just uses his higher ideals as an excuse to kill people and be praised for it. Peacemaker's behavior shows that such an assessment is not totally off the mark. His own series subverts it, revealing Peacemaker is genuinely well-meaning and actually wants to be a hero. He's just really bad at it thanks to having been raised as a Tyke Bomb by a white supremacist and terrorist.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: When introduced, Peacemaker suggests that Project Starfish may be referring to literal assholes. Later on, it turns out that he was actually aware of the full circumstances and nature of the project, and is fully intending to cover it up to preserve his demented philosophy.
• Only Sane by Comparison: There's very few defining traits that Peacemaker and Vigilante don't share - a puerile sense of humor, Psychopathic Manchild tendencies, a love of murder, and Cloud Cuckoo Lander tendencies. The difference is, Peacemaker's inner pain, self-loathing, and guilt are on display much more often because he's the main character. This... is not true for Vigilante, whose homicidal tendencies are almost always on full display.
• Papa Wolf: He will always ensure Eagly's safety over his own.
• Patricide: He kills his piece-of-shit dad after realizing how much trauma he put him through.
• Pet the Dog: Peacemaker's a total asshole, but even he has moments of compassion.
  • When at the nightclub, he insists on Sebastian having a drink like the rest of the team.
  • Though he's clearly annoyed at him for wasting explosives, he does try to be nice to Nanaue, and even thanks him for the C4-molded figure of him he made for him.
  • He seems to genuinely love Eagly, getting all giddy when the bird wraps his wings around him in an embrace.
• Pink Is Erotic: Downplayed. The intro to the show has Peacemaker dancing to "Do You Wanna Taste It" by Wig Wam, and the dance involves a lot of pelvic thrusts, which activate the pink stage lights. As a character, Peacemaker makes a lot of dirty jokes, unwanted advances towards women, and sexual references.
• Politically Correct Villain: Parodied. He brags about killing children without hesitation, but gets offended when a janitor says he might be racist because a high percentage of the criminals he kills are black. He then promises to kill more white people too as a compromise, which the janitor is satisfied with.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Even if he's not killing them in the name of "peace", Peacemaker's attitude towards women needs a lot of work. Then again, considering who his father is, he definitely could have turned out a lot worse.
  • He tells a class full of children that Wonder Woman made a pass at him, when it's been thoroughly established how out of character that would be for her. (Although he has also said defamatory things against the other members, so it can be considered a case of hating all the members of the league equally.)
  • He sees Emilia Harcourt less as his supervising officer and more as a potential love interest (although Emilia didn't do herself any favors by pointing out that she finds him handsome).
  • He refers to a waitress as "sweet cheeks", although he assumed that expression was referring to her face rather than her butt. Once Leota tells him he just sexually harassed a random woman, Peacemaker misses her point and comments on Emilia's breasts.
  • Though he says he's not homophobic and has actually had relationships with men, he's not above using jokes about Adrian's gay dad to push his buttons.
• Primary-Color Champion: Peacemaker's costume is mainly colored bright shades of red, yellow, and blue.
• Psycho for Hire: It becomes extremely obvious early on that he sincerely loves violence, and his Patriotic Fervor is mainly about giving him a morally justifiable excuse to kill as many people as possible. This is in sharp contrast with Bloodsport, who really does treat killing as just a job, and is perfectly fine with doing something else so long as he gets paid.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Due to his upbringing, he's very emotionally stunted, and has the maturity of a teenager browsing Reddit to start flame wars. He's petty, naive, socially inept, distinctly lacks self-awareness (grossly overestimating his importance and heroism), has a propensity for bluntness, has been shown to have a child's overactive imagination (including hilariously mistaken knowledge of how anatomy works), and while he can properly use sophisticated words like "facetious" in a conversation, he will also drop phrases such as "dope as fuck" completely straight-faced. He has a puerile sense of humor, best seen when he holds a bottle out in front of his crotch and dares Vigilante to shoot it. He's also shown to use sex, drugs, and rock n' roll as a coping mechanism for life's pressures, a very adolescent attitude. He isn't strictly a bad guy like most other examples, but he does have serious emotional issues that impact his moral judgment. A few people have said that he's essentially what would happen if Dwight Schrute was put into the body of Captain America.
• Quick Draw: Engages in one against Bloodsport after the latter sees the former about to kill Ratcatcher 2. It doesn't go well for Peacemaker, though he does end up surviving in the end.
• Really Gets Around: His series reveals that he's a huge philanderer, having slept with a number of men and women, and is even seen doing so onscreen twice. "Murn After Reading" heavily implies that he spawned an illegitimate daughter from his frequent sexcapades, which invites the possibility that he might have even more bastard children.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: He gives a brutal one to his father during episode 7. Pointing out that he was the one responsible for Keith's death by making them fight each other, as well as stating the only reason he's such a Jerkass is because he listens to people like him.
• Red Is Heroic: While Peacemaker does wear a bright red shirt, the "heroic" part is downplayed due to his violent methods. He more or less becomes this after saving the world from an alien invasion in the season one finale of his series.
• Red Is Violent: Peacemaker wears a bright red shirt and causes a lot of carnage. His murder of Rick Flag is especially graphic.
• Redemption Rejection: After killing Rick Flag and cornering her like a rat, a teary, terrified Cleo offers him the intel that Rick died protecting in exchange for her life. He seems to contemplate sparing her, but decides he needs to be thorough with his mission and can't let her live. Subverted in his own series, where his actions in The Suicide Squad make him regret his choices in life and strive towards redemption.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: He's basically one of these with a superhero outfit and better-than-average combat skills.
  • Subverted in his own show, where it's pointed out he finds actual right-wing militia fanatics... unseemly.
• Sad Clown: He's a send-up of the '90s Anti-Hero, clearly intended to be a joke character, but also clearly intended to hate himself. Comes to a head when he finally admits to Harcourt that "I don't need the Dove of Peace, I just don't want to kill anymore."
• Sarcasm-Blind: Gloriously subverted when Vigilante uses what is possibly the most obvious sarcasm ever. He gets it. Even though it looks like it's taking him effort.
• Shadow Archetype: Like Rick Flag, Peacemaker is a patriotic soldier who wants to serve America and genuinely believes he's doing the right thing. However, Flag is a true hero who is willing to go against his government when he believes they are in the wrong, while Peacemaker is a Knight Templar who firmly believes in My Country, Right or Wrong.
  • Peacemaker is also one to Bloodsport by virtue of their overlapping characteristics. Like Robert, Christopher is a Professional Killer who was trained by his father from birth to be the perfect soldier, and shares similar Blood Knight tendencies while operating in the field. But where Bloodsport is a surprisingly affable mercenary who has no illusions about the evils of his job, Peacemaker is an uncompromising zealot who genuinely believes that everybody he kills dies for the greater good of his home country and global peace.
  • Has his own in Vigilante, who is what Peacemaker would be if he didn't have his own, minimal, standards and his own insane skills.
• Shield Bash: In the season one finale of Peacemaker (2022), he makes use of a custom shield that looks similar to a heater shield (and also Guardian's shield). Not only is it tough enough to block bullets, but it has some sharp edges and a few sharp points, which let him bash, stab, and cut with it. He loses it, however, when he falls into a tunnel that leads him into the Cow's underground lair.
• Situational Sexuality: In the first episode, while trying to convince Harcourt to sleep with him, he notes that having been in prison he hasn't been with anyone in 4 years, before correcting himself to any woman. It's possible that Peacemaker's sexuality isn't so much a matter of circumstance but him just being unambiguously bisexual, judging by Auggie's comments on Peacemaker having sex with men.
• Skewed Priorities: Peacemaker, on a desperate run from the police after killing a Butterfly, still finds time to rob the place of his Butterfly attacker, filling a blanket with CDs, vinyl records, memorabilia, and a strange, apparently alien artifact. This turns out to be a spaceship of the kind used by the Butterflies to travel.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He very openly thinks of himself as an effortlessly efficient killing machine who is a fearless leader, peerless tactician and outstanding fighter. The reality is very much otherwise.
• Smug Super: While not a metahuman, Peacemaker is incredibly effective at what he does, and he knows it. Best summed up in the following exchange:
  Bloodsport: No one likes a showoff.
  Peacemaker: Unless what they're showing off is dope as fuuuck.
  Bloodsport: ...Fuck. That's true.
• Straight Man: Yes. The extremist, childish, egotistical, murderous "superhero" becomes this when he's paired with the more insane and immature Vigilante.
• Super Gullible: He has no trouble at all believing ridiculous rumors about superheroes (like Aquaman fucking fish or Green Arrow being a brony) because he refuses to even consider that social media would ever lie to him.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: While his arsenal is very much varied, shotguns frequently end up in his hands. Mixed with his imposing figure, it's definitely just as striking as his custom Deagle. He prominently uses a Kel-Tec KSG in his solo series.
• Tautological Templar: Overlaps with Knight Templar above. Christopher Smith justifies what he does with a zealous belief that because peace is his goal, and because peace is a universal good, he therefore can and will do anything to uphold his ideals, because he knows he is right. This includes murdering Rick Flag and attempting to murder Cleo for the sake of covering up the truly horrific nature of Project Starfish to save the United States another stain on its image.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He and Bloodsport do not get along. There is little love lost when they end up fighting each other.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Peacemaker is a jacked-out macho man with a hard-on for violence who is desperate to prove he's better than everyone else. His father is definitely to blame for this.
• Token Evil Teammate: While the rest of the Squad are villains, Peacemaker in particular is nastier and unpleasant than his comrades. Especially after he betrays them.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Peacemaker is considerably more abrasive in the sequel TV series than he was in the movie. Closer examination will show that this is due to the fact that Peacemaker was working as The Mole for Amanda Waller, so he went out of his way to ingratiate himself with Task Force X in order to be Beneath Suspicion. His new team in the TV series is fully aware of his "true nature", so he doesn't bother trying to downplay it. It's ultimately flipped on its head, though, as while Peacemaker is more outwardly abrasive, he's also filled with more regret for his past actions. He also takes a level in kindness over the course of the first season.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Unlike his antagonistic relationship with the rest of Task Force X, he grows to genuinely bond with the other ARGUS members over the course of his series despite starting on the wrong foot with practically all of them. He also starts to move away from his My Country, Right or Wrong mentality and make decisions for himself.
• Truer to the Text: In the comics, Peacemaker believes that the souls of his victims reside within his helmet and he can hear their voices. This iteration of the character never has this disorder, until he sees a hallucination of his dead father haunting him several hours after he killed him.
• TV Never Lies: He completely believes everything he reads on Facebook and through Google searches, regardless of how completely absurd and far-fetched they are.
• Tyke-Bomb: Auggie trained him from birth to be an elite killer who would target minorities through a lot of emotional and physical abuse, even forcing him to kill a man at one point. While Peacemaker is a highly effective killer as an adult, he's uncomfortable with Auggie's intended purpose for him and tries to distance himself from it.
• The Un-Favourite: His father is not exactly candid about the fact that he liked his brother, Keith, much more than him and very much blames him for his accidental death, and makes it clear that he sees Chris as the lesser son and a disappointment pretty much every chance he gets.
• Vanity License Plate: Peacemaker's incredibly tacky car wouldn't be complete without one of these. Amusingly enough, his license plate reads "PSS-MKR", which reads closer to "Pissmaker" than his actual moniker. Bloodsport would've had a field day with that.
• Vengeance Denied: His rematch with Judomaster ends in a way that makes Peacemaker mad. Judomaster just gets shot from off-screen by Leota during the fight. Peacemaker is less upset by the fact that Leota shot someone he needed alive, and more about the fact that he was "trying to reclaim [his] honor" after losing the first time, and now he can't get it.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Not having the Dove of Peace engraved on his weapon makes him angsty and hesitant to use it. Although this might just be an excuse to get out of killing the Goff family.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Peacemaker's car is detailed with the American flag.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: A large part of Peacemaker's toxic masculinity can be chalked up to a desperate need to please his Jerkass father, who calls him a "nancy-boy" right to his face even after surviving a bullet to the neck.
• White Is Pure: Invoked, Peacemaker themes himself around doves and is shown wearing a lot of white clothes; a white polo shirt, white underwear, and his combat pants are white as part of his uniform. However, he has a very strict definition of justice and he's willing to kill anyone to keep the peace. It's worth noting that out of all of his costume pieces, it's only his pants are white because they are the most prone to getting dirty, likely symbolizing how his brand of justice is anything but just.
• Would Hit a Girl: He outright says he doesn't care about how many "men, women, and children" he needs to kill to bring peace.
• Would Hurt a Child: He outright says he doesn't care about how many "men, women, and children" he needs to kill to bring peace. Subverted when he is very hesitant to kill a U.S. Senator's children in his own series. Claiming to have no qualms about killing kids appears to merely have been a boast, and not a line that he is actually willing to cross when directly confronted with it.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: Despite what he has said about the lengths he's willing to go to make peace, Peacemaker can't bring himself to kill a kid. It's left somewhat unclear if this was always something he would have struggled with when push came to shove, or if it's brought about by a crisis of conscience he's been suffering since Corto Maltese and having to kill Rick Flagg.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Not surprisingly, given he's portrayed by a multi-time WWE Champion, Peacemaker's fighting style involves wrestling moves. His fights with Judomaster in particular see Peacemaker using wrestling throws, pins, and slams, including into the hood of a car.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: He thinks of himself as a Hero with Bad Publicity, ignorant to the fact that he's disliked more because his brand of "heroism" involves a lot of wanton murder and bloodshed. The fact he's also a Jerkass doesn't help.

Vigilante

Adrian Chase / Vigilante

"Yo man, it's Vigilante! What up?"

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): Fennel Fields, A.R.G.U.S.

Portrayed By: Freddie Stroma

Voiced By: Enzo Fortuny (Latin-American Spanish dub), Tomoaki Maeno (Japanese dub), Thadeu Matos (Brazilian Portuguese dub)

Appearances: Peacemaker

"What separates us from other killers is we only kill bad people. Usually. Unless there's a mistake."

A naive and somewhat dimwitted but sociopathic vigilante, and Peacemaker's self-proclaimed best friend, who works with Project Butterfly alongside him.

---

• Adaptational Backstory Change: His comics counterpart was a DA in New York City who took up his vigilante activities after his wife and children were murdered. Here, he's a busboy in a small-town who doesn't and has never had a spouse or children, and whose vigilantism seems brought on more by thrill-seeking than any higher ideals.
• Adaptational Comic Relief: Vigilante is typically depicted as a serious character, more akin to Batman. This one is the go-to comic relief character with a goofy personality mixed with Ax-Crazy.
• Adaptational Dumbass: Unlike in the comics, Adrian is shown to have a below-average intellect despite being a ruthless killer. He often acts like a child and has trouble understanding simple concepts and ideas, much to the annoyance of the other characters.
• Adaptational Job Change: In the comics, he was a lawyer and district attorney in New York City. Here, he is a busboy at a small-town diner.
• Adaptational Villainy: To put it lightly, the original Adrian Chase in the comics wasn't the level of psycho this version is, although later bearers of the title are definitely up there.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: A variant, in that his hair is still blond, but a darker shade than the brighter color he has in the comics.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Adrian in the comics was much more serious and made a point of not killing enemies and trying to use non-lethal methods to bring them in, and was regularly tormented by his actions, even giving up the mantle after nearly killing an innocent man. Adrian here is much more light-hearted and chatty, has no issues whatsoever using lethal force even on children, kills people for crimes as minor as graffiti, and openly admits he enjoys killing.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the comics, Adrian and Chris were enemies, not Bash Brothers, with Chris even kickstarting the events that led to Adrian's suicide by publicly unmasking him after a brutal fight to the death between them.
• Affably Evil: He's more ruthless and immoral than Peacemaker himself, but is a lot more polite and easygoing, in contrast to the latter's jerkish and impolite attitude.
• Agony of the Feet: Loses roughly half of a pinkie toe. Everyone tells him to get over it.
• All Crimes Are Equal: He's killed people for crimes as innocuous as tagging walls with graffiti.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: A masked killer with a quirky personality and a hard-on for violence? Now where have we seen that before?
• Alternate Self: A complicated example in regards to the versions shown on Arrow, which had up to three: two on Earth-Prime named Simon Morrison and Vincent Sobel, the former using the name Adrian Chase as an alias while the latter used the codename Vigilante, and one on the pre-Crisis Earth-2 named Adrian Chase who was an Alternate Self to Simon Morrison.
• Ambiguously Bi: He participates in a threesome with Peacemaker and Amber, and judging by the way he looks at Peacemaker at the diner in episode 1, it's possible he might want to be more than just BFFs. Also during a voicemail message, he calls Peacemaker "P" and himself "V" before realizing what that sounded like.
• Ambiguously Human: Adrian being Made of Iron is just ambiguous enough that it isn't clear whether he's just tough or a metahuman with a Healing Factor like his comicbook counterpart. He doesn't seem to consider being blown up with a grenade or getting shot to be anything serious, and basically walks off potentially-fatal injuries after briefly passing out.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: He admits to having killed people for crimes such as murdering an innocent person, selling heroin, and spraying graffiti.
• Ax-Crazy: Vigilante looks calm, but he admits he enjoys the feeling he gets whenever he kills someone.
• Bash Brothers: Vigilante and Peacemaker get their jollies by playing target practice with random abandoned appliances they've found.
• Beware the Silly Ones: At first, he comes off as an embarrassing, empty-headed, and geeky, but overall harmless fanboy to Peacemaker. Then, he casually admits to having killed multiple people for committing petty crimes and enjoying it, a claim confirmed by John Economos, who says he has multiple warrants out for his arrest for murder. He then drops in on their mission to assassinate Senator Goff and nonchalantly guns down Goff's whole family while humming a merry tune to himself. He also successfully gets himself arrested in order to kill August Smith in prison. While there, he easily subdues three members of the Aryan Brotherhood bare-handed after insulting the ever loving shit out of them.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Vigilante seems to believe that the law is absolute and anyone who breaks it deserves to die. Even for minor offenses such as graffiti.
• Blind Without 'Em: Adrian wears glasses, which he puts on the moment he takes off his Cool Mask. ^note James Gunn has said on Twitter that the mask's visor is a prescription lens made for him.
• Blood Knight: He openly enjoys killing people and makes no secret of it.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": Vigilante's costume is decorated with white and blue accents/decals shaped like the letter V.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: While he's extremely out-there and socially inept, that doesn't prevent Vigilante from being an expert killer and marksman.
• Cloudcuckoolander: To say Vigilante is strange would be an understatement. He's convinced that the others wouldn't be able to tell the difference between him and Eagly, pretends to be a talking bush to hide from Emilia, and refuses to take off his mask during sex. When he learns that the Butterflies aren't on Earth to use humans as incubators, he's disappointed, because "how else could I experience motherhood?".
• Comically Missing the Point: This and being a Heroic Comedic Sociopath are pretty much Vij's entire personality.
• Cool Mask: Wears a full hood with a red visor. In later episodes, he doesn't bother wearing it so Freddie Stroma can just act.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: As Adrian Chase, he's an awkward, dorky, busboy that is not too bright or self-aware. When he's out being Vigilante, he's shown to be incredibly skilled in hand-to-hand combat, is an excellent marksman, and is proficient with practically any weapon he can get his hands on. James Gunn describes him as a "savant", very capable of spotting weaknesses and thinking up inventive ways to kill people, but doing so almost on instinct and without conscious thought.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Vigilante might be a psychopathic crusader of the law wearing an outfit with dark colors who violently kills people, but he's friendly enough and helps Peacemaker save the world from an alien invasion.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Vigilante openly brags about how he gets a high from killing people for crimes as minor as graffiti.
  • After he and Peacemaker have a threesome with Amber, he refuses to take a hit off a joint, saying if it hadn't been legalized, he would've killed both of them.
• Drugs Are Bad: He has apparently killed people for selling heroin, and refuses a joint after having a threesome with Amber and Peacemaker, saying he hates that it's been legalized and he would've killed them for smoking if not for that.
• Dramatic Irony: In episode 6, he throws away Peacemaker's phone in the belief that the police could track him through it^note they couldn't, Chris' phone was given to him by ARGUS, thus it was given protection to prevent that sort of stuff. Then, come episode 7, it's revealed that not only did he take all of the Peacemaker helmets that Auggie made for his son, but said helmets are what allowed Auggie and his white supremacist gang to track them down.
• Dual Wielding: Vigilante wields two daggers during his fight with Judomaster, not that they help him out. He does use them more effectively against the Butterflies.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • He's pissed off by blatant racism, to the point that while he worships Peacemaker he has nothing but snide contempt for his white supremacist father Auggie, referring to him as a "racist whack-job".
  • His visible anger at Peacemaker mocking his father for leaving his mother for another man makes it clear that he hasn't got much patience for homophobia.
  • He doesn't do marijuana, even if it's legalized. He even says if it hadn't been legalized, then he would've killed anyone who smokes it.
  • For all his sadism and instability, he makes sure to only direct his murderous behavior towards people who have broken the law. Granted, this means he will kill people for extremely minor crimes, but he does restrain himself from attacking anyone who hasn't done anything strictly illegal, which is leagues above how badly the comic book version has fallen.
• Evil Counterpart: As a diehard superhero fan that has blue in his costume and tags alongside a red-clad superhero that starts out with questionable morals, Vigilante can be considered one for Freddy Freeman. While Freddy admires the more noble traits of heroes and chides Billy Batson when he abuses his powers, Vigilante is all about the carnage and wants Peacemaker to stay a heartless killer.
• Expy: He has been described as Deadpool with half the brain cells.
  • Corrupted Character Copy: And half the morals.
• The Faceless: Vigilante is initially introduced with his face concealed with a mask. It comes off quickly, though he keeps it on in the intro and when he's taking part in missions.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: He's very boyishly handsome, but is an unstable killer.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He wears unflattering, Jeffrey Dahmer-style glasses and is a brutal and sadistic killer, albeit a charming one.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: The 11th Street Kids roll their eyes around him and are frequently annoyed by his sociopathy, childishness, and general stupidity but keep him around because, in spite of these qualities, he's a skilled marksman and assassin who has fewer moral boundaries than Peacemaker.
• Friendly Sniper: Fun guy to be around. Bit of a dork. Perfect shot with a sniper rifle.
• Guns Akimbo: Vigilante demonstrates his skill with firearms by using two revolvers simultaneously◊ à la another bearer of the Vigilante name.
• Handicapped Badass: He has a remarkably low intellect, is blind without his glasses, and has his pinky toe brutally sawed off, but in spite of all this, he's an efficient killer and assassin.
• He Knows Too Much:
  • Vigilante ends up crashing the team's mission to assassinate some of the Butterflies, and even takes over sniping duty when Peacemaker starts to crack under pressure. Because he got so deeply involved with the A.R.G.U.S. operations, Murn opts to recruit him rather than to try and cut him loose.
  • He tries pulling this on the vets that helped Eagly, but the entire team disagrees and tells him off. The vets don't seem to mind that the group just talked about taking them out, except for Vigilante, who made the suggestion in the first place.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Vigilante's unambiguously one of the protagonists. He's also a complete sociopath. Aside from his Hidden Depths, part of the reason he stays sympathetic is that his total disconnect from human life is hilarious.
• Hidden Depths: He's not... quite as unhinged as he seems at first, with his scene in the prison confronting the Aryans showing that he really has no patience for bigotry, a surprisingly deep understanding of African-American history, and ability to verbally destroy racists for someone that beforehand seemed barely capable of cogent thought.
• Hypocritical Humor: He is utterly obsessed with following the law; at one point, he comments he would have shot Peacemaker for smoking weed three years ago, but will abstain from doing so because it's legal in their state now. Despite this, he is himself a criminal and fully aware of that fact.
• I Just Want to Be Special: He craves respect and validation for his bloody crusade, to the point that being called "a good man" by Leota makes it insultingly easy for her to manipulate him into trying to murder Auggie Smith.
• Idiot Savant: Adrian Chase is by no means Book Smart, but he is shown to be quite competent in terms of combat. He even figures out how to disable the White Dragon’s suit, enabling Peacemaker to kill him. On top of that, his Hidden Depths imply he knows quite a bit about pop culture. Gunn has said that this is how he intended to characterize him.
• Ironic Name: Despite what his alias might imply, he kills criminals based on what's currently legal rather than strictly by his stance on what is appropriate, albeit with death being his favored form of punishment. He has stopped killing people for imbibing marijuana after its legalization, though he makes no secret of wishing he could start doing so again. While assassinating Auggie directly without just cause might be wrong, killing him in self-defense (granted, after severely provoking him) would slot rather nicely into his personal code of ethics.
• Large Ham: Freddie Stroma is clearly having the time of his life playing Vigilante.
• Machete Mayhem: His usual melee weapon of choice is a machete that is kept in a scabbard on his back.
• Made of Iron: Just like Peacemaker, Chase is very good at shrugging off pain and injuries. He's been beaten up, tortured, nearly shredded by a grenade, and shot in the side, but he manages to walk it all off. He does faint from blood loss after the last one, but he's back on his feet by the time the fight's over. He's so durable and so quick to heal that fans have theorized he has a Healing Factor, but is too dumb to know it.
• Moral Guardians: He tries to combine this with Judge, Jury, and Executioner, feeding his love of murdering people with lawbreakers of all stripes. At its worst, this tendency makes him rather obnoxious and pedantic, bringing up how much of a racist Peacemaker's dad is in every other sentence when they have to raid his home for gear and accusing Economos of bigotry for insinuating that the Butterflies invade human bodies through their anuses.
• Moral Sociopathy: Vigilante's... not right in the head, and he'll kill people — even children — for flimsy reasons, but he does still have a form of ethics that he adheres to. He holds special contempt for racism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry, and places great value on friendship.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: He's noticeably skinny, especially when compared to the extremely ripped Peacemaker, but he is very strong due to years of intense training and easily demolishes much burlier opponents with his fighting skill.
• Mythology Gag:
  • When he and Peacemaker decide to unwind by recklessly playing with guns and shooting appliances, he makes use of a pair of revolvers (and lends one to Peacemaker) which brings to mind the actual first bearer of the Vigilante name. To add to the joke, they're Colt Single Action Army revolvers — aka Peacemakers.
  • He scoffs at the attempted threats to his family, stating that "it's a little late" for threats like that to have a effect. It alludes to the fact that his family was killed in the comics by the mob.
• Nerd in Evil's Helmet: He has an intimidating-looking costume and is adept enough in the practice of killing and maiming to be recruited by ARGUS, but he's also a weedy dork who works at a tacky Italian restaurant.
• Noodle Incident: He darkly scoffs at threats against his family, claiming that "it's a little late" for that to have any effect on him. This could be a reference how in the comics, Adrian Chase's family was killed by the mob.
• No Sympathy: As he gatecrashed the Butterfly mission, no one on the team can muster up much care or even basic first aid treatment for his maimed pinky toe, and Peacemaker even chuckles a bit at the idea of him potentially walking funny because of such a small, yet grisly, injury.
• One-Way Visor: Vigilante's mask has a visor with opaque red lenses over his eyes that makes him look like a grimdark Power Ranger, but also helps out a lot in hiding his identity.
• Politically Correct Villain: He's a wanted serial killer, who just so happens to hate Neo Nazis and racism, he's also fine with his father marrying another man.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He often acts very naive and young, and is generally cheerful and enthusiastic about things like cute animals, pop music, and brutal murder. He also views the world in very childish terms, like always calling Peacemaker his "BFF".
• Replacement Flat Character: Like Peacemaker, he's a murderous nut convinced he's a hero who sees the world in black and white. But, by the time they're reunited, Peacemaker has started to doubt his previous way and is developing into a new person, while Vigilante remains stuck in his old ways.
• Sadist: He fully admits that he enjoys the feeling he gets from killing and hurting criminals.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Tries to pull this off after he gets his ass kicked by Judomaster, only to be captured alongside Peacemaker.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: Subverted. He wears glasses, but he's more than a little loopy. While he does have moments that reveal his Hidden Depths, he's not particularly smart compared to the rest of the Project Butterfly team (even Peacemaker, who isn't the sharpest tool on the shed himself).
• Sixth Ranger: He's not part of the Task Force X staff, nor is he a sentenced criminal forced to work with them. He's just Peacemaker's bloodthirsty, psychotic friend that happens to get involved with the Butterfly crisis.
• Straight Edge Evil: He refuses to do any drugs, and admits that he feels marijuana should never have been legalized.
• That Came Out Wrong: Vigilante at one point calls Peacemaker to say "P! It's V!". He immediately follows with a message apologizing for the unintentional sexual subtext.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Adrian Chase is incredibly ordinary looking out of his superhero suit, with unflattering clothes and glasses.
• Truer to the Text: Zig-Zagged, depending on which version of the character on Arrow is compared to him:
  • The Arrow version of Adrian Chase was the district attorney, which matches his comics career, while this Vigilante is a busboy. However, 'Adrian Chase' was revealed to be an alias for the supervillain Prometheus. This makes this version of Vigilante more faithful, due to being an Anti-Hero Vigilante Man.
  • The proper Vigilante character on Arrow, Vincent Sobel, is more in line with the source material in terms of the serious personality and drive to dish out justice. This version of Vigilante has a goofy personality more befitting of Deadpool than the tortured Fallen Hero from the comics, although he does have a more comics-accurate costume than the one on Arrow.
• Vigilante Man: It's in the name.
• Vitriolic Best Friends: Downplayed on Vigilante's side, but he and Peacemaker do have a habit of bickering. But they seem to enjoy each other's company well enough.
• Weak, but Skilled: He's not very physically strong as demonstrated in his pathetic but ultimately successful attempt to get arrested by struggling for several minuets to pick up a bin and then tossing it at the prison window without enough force to even go through it. The guard's could have stopped him at any point but they were too busy staring in disbelief. He's also proficient in several kinds of weapons as well as unarmed combat and an Idiot Savant for killing.
• Would Hurt a Child: He has no problem killing Senator Goff's children, and takes the shot when Peacemaker can't go through with it.

Caspar Locke

Caspar Locke

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Portrayed By: Christopher Heyerdahl

Appearances: Peacemaker

Murn's old mercenary comrade who is placed in charge of Evergreen's police force in order to keep Song and Fitzgibbon from interfering with Waller's group's business.

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• Asshole Victim: He and a bunch of neo-nazis get killed and taken over by Butterflies.
• Ax-Crazy: Locke's response to pretty much any inconvenience is to resort to murder, and he takes great pleasure in doing so.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's an extremely weird man, even by the standards of previous Task Force X operatives, yet he's an utterly monstrous individual who gleefully murders people left and right, and is very good at it.
• Comically Serious: He blames his massacre of several police officers on the Hamburglar in a very serious tone.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Locke is on a very different wavelength from most people. Even when he's undercover as a cop, his strange behavior almost immediately makes everyone extremely unsettled to be around him.
• Crocodile Tears: He really, really tries to get the tears working when he kills one of his "own" officers and tries to look like he's tending after his body...except, he fails miserably and can't do it because he can't stop laughing.
• Death of Personality: He gets possessed by a Butterfly, a process which essentially kills the victim and leaves them as a puppet for the Butterfly.
• Faux Affably Evil: He puts on the appearance of a genial, kindly friend to Murn, and an apathetic bureaucrat while undercover in the police station. Yet, once he can let loose, he cruelly taunts his victims before systematically murdering them. Under tense situations, he is barely able to put up a show of any real emotion or play a part very well. After killing multiple cops to help Peacemaker and Vigilante escape, he describes the cops' killer as the Hamburglar to Song and Fitzgibbon. This would have most certainly blown his cover if Song hadn't just been taken over by Goff moments earlier and thus wasn't really being interested in the investigation anymore. In the stinger for episode 6, he is seen joking around with a corpse he just killed while trying to get into character of being sad.
• Hate Sink: He's an absolute monster through-and-through who murders unconscious people and then laughs about it. He may be one of Murn's operatives, and a vital member of his Project Butterfly task force, but there are no redeeming traits to be found here. Even Peacemaker is throughly disturbed to see him work, and seriously makes him question on staying with the team. Peacemaker. The same guy who is best friends with Vigilante and killed Rick Flag just to maintain a lie.
• Karmic Death: After thoroughly enjoying murdering innocents for profit, he becomes just as much of a helpless, trembling victim to the Butterflies as the cops he mocked.
• Kick the Dog: Before he executes an injured officer, he mockingly repeats her begging for her life.
• Knight of Cerebus: While the show was never light before, Locke's appearance violently advances the plot forward and forces Peacemaker and Murn to confront their morally dubious deeds.
• Laughably Evil: His bloody murders aren't Played for Laughs as they are with Vigilante, but Locke himself is having so much fun with his evil it's hard not to enjoy him. He blames his massacre of the cops on the Hamburglar and walks away going "robble robble" with a wry smirk on his face.
• Mauve Shirt: Just like the rest of the police department, he is taken over by a butterfly at the end of episode 6.
• Sadist: While executing an injured police officer, Locke mockingly repeats the woman's panicked begging before gunning her down.
  Cop: No, please!
  Locke: "No. Please." (raises his gun)
  Cop: Don't! Please!
  Locke: "Don't. Don't!" (fires his gun)
• Shadow Archetype: To Murn. While Murn was implied to have a violent history, he's shown to be genuinely uncomfortable with his past. Locke revels in the cruel life of a mercenary and shamelessly enjoys his work. The comparison runs deeper once he's taken over by a Butterfly. Murn's host took over Murn for the sake of a greater peace, while Locke's host took over in order to empower his violent faction.
• Token Evil Teammate: For Project Butterfly. While the rest of the team are morally dubious themselves, they all have a moral code and and at least attempt to do the right thing most of the time. Locke, however, is a sadistic monster who only seems to be affiliated with ARGUS so he can murder people without consequence, and makes a habit of killing civilians regardless of whether it's necessary or not.

Belle Reve Federal Penitentiary

Griggs

Warden Griggs

"Ames, if this man shoots me, I want you to kill him, and I want you to go clear my browser history."

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): Belle Reve Federal Penitentiary

Portrayed By: Ike Barinholtz

Voiced By: Serge Faliu (European French) | Martin Desgagné (Canadian French) | Kunihiro Kawamoto (Japanese) |Renan Freitas (Brazilian Portuguese)

Appearances: Suicide Squad

"You put five of my guards in the hospital, Honey. No one's gonna play with you."

The chief correctional officer at the Belle Reve penitentiary, where some of the criminals Amanda Waller seeks for her Task Force X project are interned.

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• Ambiguous Situation: The last we see of him, he's been abducted by the Joker, who is likely none too pleased with how he's treated Harley. Since he has been replaced and we don't see him in the sequel, it's possible the Joker murdered him.
• Bad Boss: When one of the guards is killed by Croc, he asks whether it was the new guy.
• Bullying a Dragon: He better than anyone should know just how dangerous the inmates at Belle Reve are, and yet he continues to abuse and antagonize them.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: He doesn't return in the sequel, and has been replaced as warden by John Economos. Judging by the last time we see him, it's most likely he's dead.
• Deadpan Snarker: Almost the entirety of his communication with his charges involves him snarking at their situation.
• Embarrassing Browser History: He specifically asks Ames, one of his colleagues, to "clear his browser history" in case he gets killed by Deadshot.
• The Gambling Addict: Griggs has a serious gambling problem, which he carries out in illegal gambling dens run by gangsters. This is what allows the Joker to get him under his thumb.
• Hate Sink: There's really nothing redeemable about this guy. His very first scene is him feeding a chunk of bread full of toenails and rat feces to Deadshot for "dinner".
• It Amused Me: Possibly For the Evulz depending on how evil you think he is, but he tortures and torments his prisoners simply for his own entertainment.
• Jerkass: To put it simply, he is an asshole who takes much pleasure in antagonizing his prisoners.
• Karma Houdini: Despite Harley saying he's screwed for giving her a cell phone under blackmailed orders from Joker, nothing bad happens to him (though it's possible that he could have been killed in the Joker's raid on Belle Reve).
• Oh, Crap!: The moment he hears the Joker talking to him, Griggs's face immediately takes on a look of abject fear.
• Tastes Like Friendship: He tries to convince Deadshot not to shoot him in the head by insisting that the cookie he included in an earlier meal was a "real cookie".
• Uncertain Doom: He's last seen being held captive by the Joker, which does not bode well for him.
• Wardens Are Evil: The highest ranking member of the Belle Reve staff, he is also an abusive asshole and a gambling addict.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He's completely absent in the sequel, having been replaced as Warden by John Economos.

John Economos

Warden John Economos

"Did this dipshit really show up in full cosplay mode?"

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): Belle Reve Penitentiary, A.R.G.U.S.

Portrayed By: Steve Agee

Voiced By: Junichi Endo (Japanese), Márcio Dondi (Brazilian Portuguese)

Appearances: The Suicide Squad | Peacemaker | SHAZAM! Fury of the Gods ^note In The Stinger | Creature Commandos

"You realize this is revenge, right? Waller knows we double-crossed her, and she's getting back at us by saddling us with this douchebag."

The new warden at Belle Reve.

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• Action Survivor: Even though he has little combat experience and enough anxiety to make him vomit at the sign of danger, he has, among other things, gunned down a group of armed white supremacists with a submachine gun, T-boned Judomaster's car with his van before beating him into submission with a pipe, and rushed into battle with a chainsaw to save his team from a Butterfly-possessed gorilla.
• Adaptation Personality Change: In the comics, Economos is a self-assured and competent man who had a string of divorces behind him. Here, he's an insecure bumbler who admits he's never even had a girlfriend.
• Adaptational Dumbass: In the comics, Economos was in charge of taking care of the behind-the-scenes logistics and finances requires to run Belle Reve and the Suicide Squad, and extremely competent in this role. Here, he's a bumbling dolt whose main role seems to be serving as Mission Control. However, he's also a surprisingly badass Action Survivor, while the comics Economos never went out in the field.
• Ascended Extra: Alongside Emilia, he went from having a relatively small role in The Suicide Squad to being a main character in Peacemaker.
• Berserk Button: Mentioning the fact that he dyes his beard is a massive sore spot for him.
• Big Damn Heroes: As he's often left behind on missions, he gets ample opportunity to suddenly show up and save the day when the other protagonists are pinned down. He takes down Judomaster, the butterfly-gorilla, and most of the White Hoods in this fashion.
• Butt-Monkey: He's the butt of most of the team's insults and verbal putdowns.
• Cerebus Retcon: Peacemaker spends much of the early episodes mocking Economos for his apparently poorly-dyed beard. In the season finale, Economos confesses to a group of Butterflies holding him up that it is indeed dyed... because he's a depressed and overworked man bereft of any strong emotional connections who wants to feel attractive. He also reveals that Peacemaker's potshots at his beard genuinely hurt his feelings. When Peacemaker overhears this, he looks genuinely regretful at how he's treated him.
• Chainsaw Good: When Charlie the Gorilla has his team on the ropes, he sneaks up on the Gorilla and uses Vigilante's chainsaw to save the group by giving Charlie a gnarly Back Stab.
• Commonality Connection: Peacemaker doesn't like Economos much from the start, and that feeling only deepens after he learns that Economos accidentally framed Peacemaker's father for Peacemaker's actions. However, they begin to bond after realizing that they both are big fans of the same music.
• Covering Up Your Gray: Economos vehemently denies dyeing his beard, despite the fact that the top half is visibly grey. In the season 1 finale, he reveals that he started dyeing it but wasn't very good about colouring the roots, and eventually gave up when he started thinking nobody cared about him enough to actually notice.
• Everyone Has Standards: Economos shows clear discomfort at Waller being willing to threaten DuBois' daughter to get him to cooperate.
• Failed a Spot Check: The stink eye Waller gives him when Weasel drowns implies it was his responsibility to check if their team were all capable of swimming.
• Gentle Giant: Played by the tall Steve Agee, and he's a fairly nice guy.
• Hidden Depths: In Monkey Dory, he reveals that as a teenager he backpacked to Finland to see Hanoi Rocks perform, which earns him a lot of respect from fellow metalhead Peacemaker.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: While being held up by Butterflies, he confesses that he dyes his beard because he wants to feel attractive and therefore wanted, on account him being so overworked that he has no time to actually form relationships with anyone. Thankfully, the ending of the first season does indicate that he has come to see the rest of the 11th Street Kids as his friends.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's involved with some pretty morally dubious stuff (being a member of Waller's team) and the circumstances of his employment turn him into a surly jerk for much of Peacemaker, but Economos is fundamentally a goofy, good-hearted guy who refuses to cross certain moral lines. Even early on in Peacemaker, Adebayo singles him out as "very easy to talk to" (which gets a happy, appreciative chuckle out of him) and Character Development slowly sees him mellow out toward Peacemaker.
• Jerkass to One: In Peacemaker, he's openly disdainful towards the titular character (for good reason), although it slowly dies down thanks to Character Development and the two bonding (and also Economos saving Chris' life a few times}.
• Mission Control: Subverted in Peacemaker, as his attempts to remain this in a team that is not only much smaller than the one in The Suicide Squad but works out in the field against a dangerous subversive enemy prove futile. He is forced to engage in the "cosplay" madness he derided and once safely observed from miles away, having to personally incapacitate Judomaster, a rampaging gorilla, and gun down a bunch of Klansmen in the span of four episodes.
• Never Live It Down: In-Universe. His utterly boneheaded decision to pin Peacemaker's crimes on his father almost immediately backfires, and lingers throughout the entire first season, causing nothing but headaches for Murn, and makes Peacemaker resent him for pretty much the season's entire run. When the charges against Auggie fail to stick, even the normally stoic Murn silently mouths a "FUCK. YOU." at him simply because of how much trouble it's causing his team.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: During the heat of the moment, he frames Peacemaker's father to take the fall after Peacemaker gets in trouble with the local police. To keep things brief, this action "butterfly-effected" into world-conquering, body-snatching aliens taking over an ENTIRE police station, policemen and prisoners alike, which makes his job of defeating said aliens much more difficult.
• No-Respect Guy: Peacemaker keeps accusing Economos of dying his beard, and Harcourt calls him a pussy straight to his face. It winds up being deconstructed via Cerebus Retcon, when he confesses that he does actually dye his beard because he wants to feel attractive enough for people to want him.
• Redeeming Replacement: He takes over Griggs's job following his unexplained disappearance, and in contrast to how Griggs was a massive Hate Sink with no redeeming qualities, John is a Nice Guy with a plethora of standards for somebody in charge of keeping criminals in line, with his only real flaw being that he is too wimpy and spineless to stand up against Waller.
• The Smart Guy: As a member of Murn's team, he's tasked with providing field support and gathering information.
• Took a Level in Badass: Goes from a Non-Action Guy to an incredibly competent Action Survivor in Peacemaker. He doesn't want to be involved in field work and would prefer to stay Mission Control, but his time on the field sees him beating Judomaster (with, granted, the help of an armored van), taking down Charlie the Gorilla with a chainsaw, mowing down all of White Dragon's psycho Neo-Nazi Klansmen followers with a P90 and dragging himself across a field to deliver a crucial item after breaking his leg with visible bone. His tendency for surprise rescues is part of what causes Peacemaker to stop treating him like shit.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Getting reassigned to Project Butterfly (which he views as Waller trying to screw him over) and forced to work with Peacemaker makes Economos a lot grumpier and more unpleasant. Enough time to bond with Peacemaker slowly sees him working back into his nicer, more jovial characterization, albeit still with added snark.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His decision to pin Peacemaker's crimes on his father backfires in a spectacular way, as the police still manage to follow his trail, and Auggie decided to finish his son off due to perceiving him as a danger, leading to the Butteflies taking over the Evergreen PD and the White Dragon interfering with the team's plans.
• Wardens Are Evil: Averted. Unlike Griggs, John is a decent guy whose only major flaw is letting Waller walk all over him.

Dr. Fitzgibbon

Dr. Fitzgibbon

Species: Human

Citizenship: American

Affiliation(s): A.R.G.U.S., Belle Reve Penitentiary

Portrayed By: John Ostrander

Voiced By:

Film Appearances: The Suicide Squad

'"Good dog."

The physician who implants explosives in the necks of the Task Force X recruits.

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• Bullying a Dragon: Delights in doing this, and given his position, can get away with it.
• Creator Cameo: He's played by comic book writer John Ostrander, whose run on Suicide Squad is considered the most influential.
• Mad Scientist: He's got the look down pat, with his stringy hair and coke-bottle glasses. Not to mention, injecting bombs into the necks of participants that aren't fully willing doesn't say much about his sense of morality.

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