Warning: SPOILERS for the Peacemaker episode “Another Rick Up My Sleeve” are ahead!
2021’s The Suicide Squad didn’t waste time showing just how dangerous the missions the DC supervillains part of Task Force X go on can be. Namely, almost all of Amanda Waller’s “first” team was killed on that beach in Corto Maltese at the beginning of the movie, including Jai Courtney’s Captain Boomerang, who’d previously appeared in 2016’s Suicide Squad. As if that wasn’t bad enough, The Suicide Squad writer and director James Gunn revealed that Courtney learned about his character being killed off pretty jarringly.
This was brought up on Peacemaker: The Official Podcast with James Gunn when Gunn and actors Jennifer Holland (who’s also married to the filmmaker) and Steve Agee were speaking with Joel Kinnaman, who reprised Rick Flag Jr. in the latest Peacemaker episode to premiere on the 2025 TV schedule. While Gunn was asking Kinnaman if he’d been told ahead of time that Flag would die in The Suicide Squad before getting the script, he said this about Jai Courtney:
I know Jai told me that nobody fucking told him. It's not funny, really… He got it. He's excited to read the script. He dies on page four, ten or something. And nobody told him. And he's like, ‘Ah, I can't wait to read this James Gunn script with my character, Captain Boomerang, reprising his role.’ And he finds himself getting totally chopped up on… But his agents were told.
Yeesh, couldn’t Jai Courtney’s agents have broken him gently before he cracked open that script? Considering how was one of the more important members of Suicide Squad’s ensemble cast, I can imagine how shocked he was to learn that Captain Boomerang, a.k.a. Digger Harkness, was being snuffed out so quickly. Joel Kinnaman couldn’t remember if someone had warned him about Rick Flag Jr.’s fate, but at least he had a much meatier role. Besides, Peacemaker Season 2’s third episode gave him the opportunity to both play his original Flag in a flashback scene, as well as an alternate universe version of him.
In Captain Boomerang’s case, he was accidentally killed as collateral damage when his teammate Mongal was trying to bring down one of the Corto Maltese army’s helicopters. However, Jai Courtney indicated in May that James Gunn seems open to the possibility of bringing Boomerang back. That would be possible because The Suicide Squad was a DCEU release, and now we’re in the DCU continuity. So although many of the events from that movie are still canon in this universe, perhaps Boomerang’s death could be retconned.
If that happens in any of the upcoming DC movies or upcoming DC TV shows, you can be sure we’ll talk about it. For now, feel free to revisit Jai Courtney’s two Captain Boomerang outings by streaming both Suicide Squad movies with a Max subscription.
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