How Does Superman's Role in the DC Extended Universe Impact Suicide Squad?

08/05/2016 01:38 pm EDT

While there were a pair of Justice League members in Suicide Squad, the presence of a third was felt arguably as strongly as either of the two who actually appeared on camera.

That would be Superman, who was killed at the end of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Amanda Waller, who runs the Suicide Squad, used the death of Superman as a justification for putting the project -- apparently something she'd been rejected in trying to assemble -- together finally.

"We got lucky with Superman," she says at least twice, reiterating the idea that with the loss of the world's most powerful and most heroic being, there's nobody to stand in the way of the next metahuman-driven catastrophe.

(Of course, if you watch Suicide Squad, you'll notice that said catastrophe ends up being essentially her own fault.)

With vendors selling "remember" t-shirts outside of a restaurant and footage of Superman's funeral, the events of Batman v Superman were pretty explicitly referenced and felt throughout Suicide Squad.

It feels a bit like when Superman died in the comics. The month it happened, heroes around the DC Universe continued their normal storylines, but many of them wore black memorial armbands with Superman's emblem on it. It didn't upset the existing storylines of the DC Universe, but it was a way of acknowledging that the hero's life had touched so many that in a shared universe, his death would be a factor for everyone.

It feels good to be bad…Assemble a team of the world's most dangerous, incarcerated Super Villains, provide them with the most powerful arsenal at the government's disposal, and send them off on a mission to defeat an enigmatic, insuperable entity. U.S. intelligence officer Amanda Waller has determined only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to lose will do. However, once they realize they weren't picked to succeed but chosen for their patent culpability when they inevitably fail, will the Suicide Squad resolve to die trying, or decide it's every man for himself?

Suicide Squad hits theaters today.

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