James Gunn Reveals The Suicide Squad Alternate Ending and the Character He Couldn’t Kill

Warner Bros. gave James Gunn carte blanche to kill off anyone he wanted in his supervillain-slaughtering The Suicide Squad, but there's one character Gunn says he "just couldn't kill" — so he changed the ending of the movie. Spoilers for The Suicide Squad. When Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) recruits a new Task Force X for a suicide mission to infiltrate the dictator-controlled Corto Maltese and destroy "Project Starfish," she assembles a squad of expendable supervillains like Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and the assassin Bloodsport (Idris Elba). The mission becomes the Suicide Squad vs. Starro — a planet-conquering alien starfish — and the creature crushes the pitiful Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian) before it's toppled by the rats controlled by Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior).

Gunn never planned on killing Robbie's Quinn or Elba's Bloodsport, but his original pitch for The Suicide Squad ended with two team casualties: Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and Ratcatcher 2.

"There was a change. The original ending that I pitched, one main character died and one main character did not die. And the main character who died was was Ratcatcher 2," Gunn told Variety. "She was so sweet, I just felt like it was just too dark. Not that we don't love Polka Dot Man. We do. I just couldn't [kill Ratcatcher 2]. So I relented."

The Guardians of the Galaxy filmmaker hand-picked the characters who appear in The Suicide Squad and had no obligation to bring back Suicide Squad characters Harley, Flag, Waller, and Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney).

"[Warner Bros. and DC] said I could keep [all the characters] or do away with them all," Gunn previously told Games Radar. "I could do a completely new squad – which I considered – and they said, 'You can kill anyone.' Warner was pretty much on board [with the story] from the beginning – it was pretty much firmly in place from the inception of me taking on the project."

After surviving The Suicide Squad, Melchior hopes to return to the DCEU as a supervillain "for real."

"She had the opportunity to talk about her father, so I would love to see a little bit more about it," Melchior told Entertainment Tonight about her DC future. "But I would love, also, to see Ratcatcher learning from, I don't know, why not Bloodsport? How to shoot a gun, how to fight with someone, I would love to see her debut as a supervillain for real."

Starring Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney, Peter Capaldi, David Dastmalchian, Daniela Melchior, Sylvester Stallone, and Viola Davis, The Suicide Squad is now playing in theaters and streaming on HBO Max through September 6.