Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is Wrong to Bench the Perfect Task Force X Recruit

Highlights

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League DLC characters seem to include Joker, Victoria Fries, Zoe Lawton, and Slade Wilson’s Deathstroke.
Red Hood’s absence in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a missed opportunity for Rocksteady to expand the story with his compelling character.
The decision to include Deathstroke as a playable character raises questions about why Red Hood, an Arkhamverse character with more depth, was excluded.

This article contains potential spoilers for playable characters arriving in
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
based on reliable leaks.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has always been tremendously transparent. It made no effort to obscure its plot, even when its subtitle was believed to be a cheeky misnomer, and it seems to be plain about what characters players can expect to accompany Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark as Metropolis and the multiverse’s Task Force X.

As it stands right now, leaks have almost all turned out to be true regarding

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

and the teaser graphic for the game’s four post-launch seasons run parallel to the leaks about them.

So, leaning into the leak and how well the graphic image’s silhouettes check out, the four playable recruits will almost assuredly be Joker, Victoria Fries, Zoe Lawton, and Slade Wilson’s Deathstroke. Many characters from the Arkhamverse would’ve retrospectively been great additions to ARGUS’ unwitting and unwilling squad, though, and to not see Jason Todd’s Red Hood play a role in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League at all is a fumble of the character that Rocksteady needed to capitalize on.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League — Does Batman Die a Hero or Live Long Enough to See Himself Become the Villain?

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League paints its titular antagonists as villains, but their portrayals are far more layered and complicated.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s TFX Would Be a Perfect Role for Red Hood

Batman: Arkham Knight concludes with Jason Todd shedding the Arkham Knight mantle and becoming Red Hood. Equally vengeful and lethal, Jason doesn’t adopt a goodhearted vigilante persona but instead immediately hunts down and murders Black Mask.

Then, the only explicit mention of him at all in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a cardboard standee and an ambiguous reference from Jack Ryder at the Batman Experience museum exhibit. Rather, for Rocksteady to finally reveal Jason’s existence let alone establish him as Red Hood and then abandon him is completely wasteful.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League did make strides to distance itself from the Arkham games and to its benefit it didn’t make any obligatory cameos, but Jason was one character who Rocksteady spent quite some time crafting in the previous game and would have made a terrific expansion addition. Seeing Jason entrapped by ARGUS and having to work alongside his kidnapper and torturer’s ex-girlfriend would’ve been arresting, for example, and he’s certainly not afraid to wield a variety of guns.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Wants to Have Its Cake and Eat It Too

Deathstroke being recruited into Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League as a playable TFX protagonist crushes the argument of Rocksteady not featuring anyone from the Arkham series in its post-launch DLC roster—if legitimate, of course. Therefore, if Deathstroke was viable, it makes no sense why a character as perfect for TFX as Jason Todd wouldn’t have made the cut.

Deathstroke making the cut is also an issue of Rocksteady seemingly wanting to carve out its own path with all the wild decisions it made regarding lore and canon. Meanwhile, it evidently can’t wholly let go of popular characters. Deathstroke has far less screen time than Jason and Slade was even an understudy lackey who was only subbed in to take over the Arkham Knight’s militia.

Deathstroke surely left a more positive impression on the Arkhamverse than Jason Todd regardless of how swiftly Batman’s beaten him in the two times they encounter one another, but this dynamic could’ve also been explored in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League if they were both recruited onto TFX. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League might not receive more than its four planned post-launch expansions and while the franchise’s future is uncertain there’s a good chance players have seen all they’re going to of Red Hood, and that’s a shame.