How Birds of Prey Sets Up The Suicide Squad

After seeing Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), one thing is clear: the movie stands on its own as much as the filmmakers promised it would. However, with Margot Robbie reprising her role from 2016’s Suicide Squad movie and going on to portray the part again in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad in 2021, there are inevitable slight ties from one movie to the next. Birds of Prey was not completely without its foreshadowing of future stories for Harley Quinn, as she goes on to have another adventure with Amanda Waller pulling all of the strings.

First of all, some moviegoers may have noticed another member of the Squad in a photo at the police station. It appears Captain Boomerang has escaped his captivity after being taken in by Amanda Waller despite having saved the world, assuming this was some sort of “Wanted” ad. Jai Courtney is confirmed to be reprising his role from the first Suicide Squad movie and his face is the only besides Robbie’s to appear in Birds of Prey.

While producer Sue Kroll insists the film operated in an isolated space, including from a production standpoint, she does admit that the Captain Boomerang photo stemmed from conversations about future plans. “Something like, for example, Boomerang, it’s interesting when they started shooting and planning [The Suicide Squad], it evolved,” Kroll said. “His photo evolved out of that conversation, so those kinds of connections, but very organic.”

In terms of the story, characters in DC’s big screen universe are no longer afraid to kill Harley Quinn, so that could be a factor in The Suicide Squad. Robbie told ComicBook.com that the film will be set a couple of years after the events of Birds of Prey (seen in the video above).

“You get to see another side of Harley and it’s kind of interesting, you keep getting to meet her at different points in her life as if a couple of years have gone by,” Robbie said. “Of course, the films aren’t directly connected, but as an actor I can map it out in a chronological sense. So it’s fun to see her, okay, what was she like a couple of years ago when she was with Mr J? Okay, what is she like now, after they’ve broken up, and what’s she going to be like in another couple years’ time? I love seeing her at these different stages of her life.”

From a production standpoint, there was very little collaboration between the Birds of Prey team and that of The Suicide Squad, besides the few bits like Boomerang’s appearance (and probably keeping Harley Quinn alive for it).

“[Birds of Prey] was designed to be its own thing, standalone, singular, as is James’s Suicide Squad,” Kroll said. “But because the world is the world, there are these very interesting organic connections, I think, that end up evolving, but there wasn’t any kind of consultation among the filmmakers on the movies. And they, of course, started much later, as we were getting close to wrap, and so things were done pretty much independently.”

Did you catch any ties or teases of The Suicide Squad in Birds of Prey? Share them in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram or Twitter!

Birds of Prey is now playing in theaters.