The cast for James Gunn’s THE Suicide Squad mulligan has been taking shape for the last several months, including additions of Taika Waititi and Idris Elba (now playing an unknown role, as apparently Will Smith wants to hang onto Deadshot in case Gunn successfully reboots this franchise). Friday afternoon, Gunn officially announced the new Squad on Twitter:

That is quite a cast, though beyond the people reprising their roles from the first movie, there are no confirmations on who anyone is playing. I hope Gunn goes for some deep, weird cuts from the DC bench, this is a chance to have some fun with the wackiest villains in the rogue’s gallery. And the key art and hashtag are all about the reimagined title: The Suicide Squad. I’ve been pronouncing it with an emphatic “thee” just to make clear that this is not A suicide squad but THE suicide squad, unlike all other suicide squads, please forget about that other one, we don’t talk about them, we’re all going to pretend like they never happened, even though a few of them are back for this new, improved, this-time-we-really-mean-it suicide squad. 

Also, we have Gunn telling us not to “get too attached”, which I take to mean most of these people will die. I assumed when we learned of Taika Waititi’s casting that he would die, simply because he doesn’t have time to spend five months filming a movie right now. But looking at this cast, I bet at least two-thirds of them die over the course of the movie. It is, after all, a “suicide squad”. The whole point is that they are considered expendable, just cannon fodder for whatever death-trap mission Amanda Waller sends them on. (I am very glad to see Viola Davis returning as Waller, she was one of the few highlights of the first movie.) It’s a little stupid only one dude died in the first movie. This time, I expect the majority of the squad to go, maybe even in some kind of Deadpool 2 X-Force disaster scenario. We have two years until this movie comes out, plenty of time to speculate.