Let's talk about that 'Suicide Squad' mid-credits scene
Warning: This post contains spoilers for the ending of Suicide Squad. If you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to bookmark this page and come back later.
Taking a page out of Marvel’s successful playbook, Suicide Squad uses a mid-credits scene to set up the bigger DC Films universe with two of its most high-profile non-superpowered figures.
Following the defeat of the Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) in a hellacious Midway City climax, Task Force X is enjoying the fleeting benefits of a job well done when the Squad’s puppetmaster Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) meets with billionaire Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), aka Batman.
Amanda wants Bruce’s protection in keeping the reason for the destruction of Midway City under wraps. In return, she gives him a series of classified files on superpowered metahumans — not only Enchantress but also Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and the Flash (Ezra Miller), guys Bruce is trying to round up for his supergroup (see: the upcoming Justice League movie).
As Bruce is leaving, Amanda makes a knowing crack about how he’s looking tired and should “stop working nights.” Unamused, Bruce gives her a warning: “Shut it down,” he says, referring to her government-approved supervillain team. “Or my friends and I will shut it down for you.”
OH. SNAP.
The sequence not only teases a potential Suicide Squad vs. Justice League faceoff, but writer/director Ayer says it also showcases the “ecology of power” between Amanda and Bruce. “There are a lot of dynamics and that’s what’s so fun. If you go back to comic books, all the characters interact and cross paths at some point. It’s like a wild cocktail party and that’s the feeling I wanted for this, that anybody could show up.”
The Batfleck gets a few scenes of Squad screen time in full cape and cowl, opposite Will Smith's Deadshot in an early sequence as well as a chase involving Harley (Margot Robbie) and the Joker (Jared Leto). But Ayer was equally excited to have the actor play the dude under the mask.
“He’s this big, tall handsome guy and he feels like a senator or something. He’s such a presence,” the filmmaker says of Affleck. “When I was a child, I read Batman comics and connected with Bruce Wayne, so it was an honor to have Ben there playing that role.”
It also hit Davis, a Super Friends fan as a kid, right in her childhood as well. “I was bullied and Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman were always in my fantasies, as if I could conjure them up and somehow they could save the day," says the actress.
Sitting across the table from Bruce Wayne, “I felt like a little girl,” Davis adds. “And my daughter wanted to meet him so bad. All she kept saying was ‘I want to meet Batman!’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s Ben Affleck, Genesis. Say Mr. Affleck. It’s not Batman.’ When she finally met him, she was more interested in his trailer than she was in him, I think: ‘He’s got a nice trailer!’ ”