It Only Took 5 Years, But We Finally Know What’s Canon In The DCU
Let’s work it out on the podcast.
When a franchise is rebooted, you can usually draw a line between what came before and what came after. In Star Wars, for example, Disney rendered the Extended Universe novels, comics, and games non-canonical when it acquired Lucasfilm. The DC Universe underwent a similar leadership change when the Snyderverse ended and the franchise passed to James Gunn, but Gunn’s reboot had a bit of a rocky start.
By the time the new DCU officially launched with Superman, Gunn had already released Creature Commandos and Peacemaker Season 1, and both were grandfathered into current DC canon. Sort of. To set the record straight, Gunn is turning to the medium made for working out complicated topics: podcasting.
“To celebrate DC Super-Villain month, we’ve decided to lay down the law on whether The Suicide Squad is canon in the DCU — and discuss other behind-the-scenes fun facts along the way in a new Official The Suicide Squad ‘Is It Canon?’ Podcast,” Gunn wrote in a social media announcement. He will host the podcast alongside Peacemaker stars Jennifer Holland and Steve Agee.
Before now, the confusing rule of thumb was that all parts of the pre-Superman DCU mentioned in projects released after Superman are canon. For example: the characters of Peacemaker Season 1 are canon because they appear in Season 2. However, Season 1’s ending, which featured the Justice League, is not canon because Season 2 retconned it.
The canonical status of The Suicide Squad will finally be settled by James Gunn himself.
The James Gunn-directed The Suicide Squad is easily the most divisive of these semi-canonical projects, so this podcast will officially answer a question fans have wondered about for years now. In 2025, Gunn said on BlueSky that “I think of it as an imperfect memory.” He paints the movie as an unreliable narration, so Gunn’s new podcast will presumably reveal what actually happened. Hopefully the fact that an entire podcast is apparently needed to clarify things doesn’t just make it all the more confusing.
James Gunn has been fielding questions about canon since Superman premiered. Hopefully this will finally put the matter to bed, and we can move on to more important questions, like the implications of Gorilla Grodd attending college or Peacemaker committing multiversal identity theft. The fandom may never stop debating, but at least it can change the subject.
