Warning: Spoilers for Suicide Squad #14!
After the events of War for Earth-3, Amanda Waller has left the multiverse behind, and now she’s just ensured that the Suicide Squad will never be able to continue without her! By using scorched-earth tactics on her ex-team of ex-cons, Waller has effectively put the Squad between a rock and a hard place, with no clear way out or around their unfortunate situation.
As seen in the opening moments of Suicide Squad #14, by Dennis Hopeless, Eduardo Pansica & Julio Ferreira, and Dexter Soy, this issue serves as a follow-up to the recent crossover event titled War for Earth-3, that saw Amanda Waller abscond with the entire planet of Earth-3 — her new and improved Crime Syndicate team of supers in tow. Reeling in the aftermath of Waller’s decisive win against them, the remaining members of Waller’s old Suicide Squad along with Rick Flag’s ragtag Task Force X team are doing their best to pick up the pieces in an attempt to understand just how Waller pulled off the impossible.
Transported back to Belle Reve, a prison where Waller usually operates from, Flag is understandably confused and beyond annoyed at their current predicament. But soon after realizing that he and his comrades are more than Waller and her implanted neck bombs — that they’re a real team that can still make a difference — Waller’s final act erases those dreams with a heaping dose of flames and chaos.
Triggering “The Waller Contingency” now that Waller has gone M.I.A., Belle Reve is utterly destroyed by a fleet of attack helicopters, leveling the entire place to the ground in the span of moments. And as the prison’s infrastructure and computer systems — and by extension, everything the Suicide Squad has had access to in terms of resources and information — are wiped out, warnings flash that exclaim “Belle Reve Prison: eliminated”, “Task Force X: disbanded,” “Suicide Squad: disbanded,” mercilessly erasing a popular group of DC characters from any future superhero shenanigans.
Defunded and discarded now that Waller no longer needs them, Rick Flag and the other surviving members of the Suicide Squad are going to have a hard time continuing as the efficient team they’re used to being in the field, a fact made even more apparent now that they’ve lost near everything that’s helped them become a functioning team in the first place; the loss of Waller’s leadership and guidance notwithstanding. But being a group that has been destroyed, disbanded, rearranged, and repurposed more times than they can count, fans shouldn’t put it past Rick Flag, Peacemaker, Lady Clayface, Bloodsport, and even Ambush Bug to pull themselves together and continue fighting the good fight in whatever way they can.
So while the remnants of these Task Force X teams might be able to limp along for a little longer without the backing of their nefarious one-time leader, don’t expect them to be anything close to what they once were. The Suicide Squad may officially be disbanded and essentially erased from the DC Universe, but knowing these bunch of lunatics, they won’t be gone for long.
