Creature Commandos: The Non-Human Suicide Squad

Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), the leader of ARGUS, has had her Task Force X team (a.k.a. The Suicide Squad) disbanded and is not allowed to force human prisoners to be used as operatives due to the 2021 events in Corto Maltese where Col Rick Flag jr. was killed.  Two years later, the kingdom of Pokolistan is under attack from an Amazonian Sorceress called Cerce (Anya Chalotra), who is attempting to become ruler of her homeland of Themyscira.  To protect Princess Ilana Rostovic (Maria Bakalova), Waller assembles a team of monsters held at the Belle Reve Penetentiary, finding a loophole since they are technically not “human”, and uses General Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) to lead them in protecting Pokolistan and the Princess. In addition to Flagg, the team called “Task Force M” or the Creature Commandos, consists of, G.I. Robot (Sean Gunn), an android who was build with only one mission, to kill Nazis; Weasel (Sean Gunn), a feral animal like creature; Doctor Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), a man whose skin burns with a flaming type of radiation; Nina Mazursky, an amphibious humanoid scientist; And The Bride (Indira Varma), an undead woman put together from multiple body parts to be the love interest to Erik Frankenstein (David Harbour), a similarly created man. Flagg takes the team and gets settled in, but things quickly go awry when Dr. Phosphorus tries to escape and grapples with Flagg while The Bride leaves the castle to find something important to her from where she was “born”, followed by a reluctant Nina and while out are attacked and captured by Cerce and her goons, The Sons of Themyscira.

Creature Commandos is an adult animated series based on the DC comics team. This is the first installment of the new DCU (DC Universe) since James Gunn and Peter Safran became Co-CEO of DC Studios.  The new DCU is a soft reboot of the DCEU (DC Extended Universe) and they are keeping some characters and storylines and discarding others.  The 2021s The Suicide Squad and the 2022 series Peacemaker have been kept.  The idea is to create a united continuity between live-action, animated and gaming platforms. Existing stories that do not fit within the DCU are now branded DC Elseworlds.  Creature Commandos premiered on December 5, 2024, streaming the first two episodes on MAX, and was met with mostly positive reviews, praising the performances, animation and storytelling.  All episodes were written by James Gunn helping to keep the continuity of each episode intact with a consistent storytelling style.

I am not sure what I think of the show so far, having watched both the episodes that were released.  I did enjoy the animation style and the eastern European styled metal music that was chosen.  The script and story were intriguing, but it did take my brain a bit to adjust to the more adult language and sexual scenes in an DC animated film, but once I accepted these things I was able to enjoy it a bit more.  The characters created by the cast is very well done, with Sean Gunn doing an excellent job as G.I. Robot.  There is an innocence and sweetness to the character even when all he is talking about is killing Nazis.  And Zoe Chao was very relatable as probably the most amiable of the creatures.  I am not even positive about why I am unsure of what to think, there just was something missing but I can’t quite put my finger on what it was, there was just something slightly unsettling to me about it.  I am not a huge fan of anti-heroes, so that is probably what it was.