DC Already Revealed Their New Rebooted Suicide Squad, And Nobody Noticed

Published Sep 15, 2026, 9:39 PM EDT

Nicolas Ayala is a Senior Writer for the Comics team at ScreenRant, with over five years of experience writing about Superhero media, action movies, and TV shows. 

All established versions of DC's Suicide Squad have ended, and new reimaginings of Task Force X are currently shaping up to take their place. In live-action, the Suicide Squad's popularity hit a major roadblock due to the DC Extended Universe's overall instability and premature collapse. Now, James Gunn’s DCU is carefully reviving the team's lore through Peacemaker, whose DCU similarities to his DCEU story allow several of the two Suicide Squad movies' events and characters to survive two separate soft reboots.

In the comics, the traditional iteration of the Suicide Squad underwent a radical overhaul following 2022's War for Earth-3, where Amanda Waller abandoned Task Force X on Earth-0 to consolidate her own authoritarian power base. As part of the Dawn of DC initiative, Waller established a "Dream Team", consisting of Dreamer, Bizarro, Clock King, Black Alice, Harley Quinn, and her nephew, Deon McDonald. This bizarre roster served as a smokescreen to set up Waller's ultimate endgame for Absolute Power. Through the Bureau of Sovereignty, Waller deployed Task Force VII, a legion of Amazo androids designed to siphon the abilities of Earth's heroes and completely lock down the superhuman population.

Currently, there is no Suicide Squad team the same way the Justice League, the Green Lantern Corps, or the new Teen Titans are officially established and active, though that will certainly change soon.

DC Just Set Up The Messiest Suicide Squad To Date

Rick Flag Jr Left Deadshot The Task To Assemble A Makeshift Task Force X

DC Comics is launching a chaotic new beginning for Task Force X, starting with Next Level: One Shot #1. Rick Flag Jr. frantically assigns Deadshot the task of hunting down and eliminating numerous artificial Cadmus duplicates modeled after many of DC's heroes and villains. As Rick Flag fills the vacuum left by Amanda Waller and Floyd Lawton takes Flag's field leader role, Deadshot identifies Vixen, Guy Gardner, the Doom Patrol, and the recently assembled Teen Titans as authentic individuals, instantly marking them as possible recruits for a new strike force, though Guy and the Teen Titans may be too busy in their own teams.

The situation grows exponentially more dangerous thanks to Cadmus' "drones." The evil clones of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman reveal their own dark ambitions: they intend to establish their own Suicide Squad, arguing that none of them are "getting out alive" anyway. The synthetic Trinity successfully extracts Floyd Lawyon's genetic information with the goal of adding him to their team. With the Justice League and their villains teaming up to prepare for Darkseid's eventual return, it may be up to anti-heroes like Deadshot to pit their own Suicide Squad against Cadmus' monstrous version of Task Force X.

The Absolute Universe's Suicide Squad Is Also Getting An Overhaul

Veronica Cale Has Plenty Of Replacement Members For The Absolute Suicide Squad

Introduced in the pages of Absolute Wonder Woman, the Absolute Universe's short-lived Task Force X is originally composed entirely of prominent Wonder Woman villains, assembled and led by Veronica Cale and the Bureau of GATES at Area 41. Cale controlled Zatanna Zatara, Doctor Poison, Giganta, Cheetah, and Ara the Men-Fish Queen through degradable Starro parasites with the goal of framing Diana of the Wild Isle as a public menace. Since their debut, Wonder Woman broke the parasitic brainwashing holding Zatanna and Ara and threw Doctor Poison into outer space. Giovanni Zatara sent Giganta back to her containment cell, and Cheetah died in battle.

Despite this catastrophic failure, Veronica Cale is already overhauling the Suicide Squad program. Cale kidnapped Diana’s closest mortal confidante and archaeologist ally, Barbara Minerva, and locked her in an Area 41 cell alongside Priscilla Rich’s decomposing corpse to transform her into the new Cheetah. Meanwhile, the depths of Area 41 hint at an even larger roster waiting in the wings. Cale still holds numerous classified test subjects locked inside their isolation units, including a mysterious heavily-mutated captive sporting a reptilian Killer Croc-like tail. The next generation of the Absolute Suicide Squad may be a leap forward in power, not unlike Ark M's increasingly monstrous creatures.

Which DC characters would you like to see in a new Suicide Squad team?