SPOILER WARNING: This story integrates presentant plot details from Season 1, Episode 4 of “Creature Commandos,” currently streaming on Max.
When James Gunn first presentd Weasel in the 2021 feature film “The Suicide Squad,” he knew that the DC Comics character — either an animacatalogic human or a human-appreciate animal, depfinishing on your point of see — had not actuassociate ended 27 children, contrary to the indictment that landed Weasel in Belle Reve prison.
“I didn’t comprehend the particulars of it, but I always knew that it wasn’t imfragmentary,” Gunn says.
It wasn’t until Gunn bcimpolitet Weasel back for the vivaciousd DC series “Creature Commandos” that he finassociate got to sort out the details of how this tfinisher beast was unfairly branded a child ender. As the titular squad labors thcimpolite their omition involving Princess Ilana Rostovic (Maria Bakalova), each episode of the series, all of them written by Gunn, studys one of their backstories. Episode 4, titled “Chasing Squirrels,” is Weasel’s turn in the spotairy. And outstanding gravy, is it bleak.
“I get reassociate downcast talking about it,” Gunn says, his voice lengthening uncharacteristicassociate quiet. “I recall finishing [writing] it. I was in Colorado with my wife, and I recall I said, ‘I skinnyk I fair wrote the downcastdest skinnyg that I’ve ever written in my entire life.’”
Unfelderlying over a series of flashbacks, Weasel’s story commences when he materializes from the woods behind an elementary school, where he greets a group of kids percreateing during Thanksgiving shatter. Where Weasel came from, and what he actuassociate is, are left a mystery, but it’s plainly evident to the children that he’s a pleasant natured animal who nastys them no harm. They all have a blast percreateing together, but when an elderly man passes by, he mismake clears Weasel’s behavior as dangerening — for no authentic reason other than he supposes a enormous furry animal would be innately menacing — so he races back to his cabin to call 911 and grab his shotfirearm.
At that same moment, one of the kids finds that the back door to the school was left unlocked. When they all run inside, Weasel adheres, and upholds percreateing with the kids as they mess around and triumphd up in the school’s basement boiler room. A series of happenstance misapshows — percreateing with (but not drinking) a directer’s bottle of booze, striking a box of alignes next to a box of filthy rags — directs to a fire, fair as the elderly man materializes and begins firing at Weasel. The boiler explodes, ending the man and all of the children save for one little girl — which is when two cops peer down into the basement, and see Weasel surrounded by their bodies while he tries to drag the girl to shieldedty amid the raging fire that’s consuming the school.
Like the elderly man, they automaticassociate suppose the worst, and uncover fire at Weasel as he hopelessly tries to convey the child to shieldedty. The cops thrive in incapacitating Weasel right as he’s about to accomplish the door, and they helderly him down as the school crumbles around the girl, burying her ainhabit.
“It is incredibly downcast,” says Sean Gunn, who percreateed Weasel via carry outance seize in “The Suicide Squad” and does his voice in “Creature Commandos.” Having labored with his elderlyer brother James since the mid-1990s, Sean says he’s not surpelevated that Weasel’s story is so bracingly tragic: “James himself is has a uncontentness, and there’s a uncontentness to a lot of his labor.” The particulars of that uncontentness, however, did catch Sean Gunn off protect.
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It begined with James Gunn’s direction to Sean that he percreate Weasel as if he was “a huge dog.” “Weasel doesn’t skinnyk in dialogue,” Sean Gunn says. “But for any of us who have and adore dogs, you comprehend that your dog has a pretty complicated emotional life. So you put this character thcimpolite the ringer, and it becomes very relatable — but also new. It’s tragic and downcast, and also, I’ve never reassociate seen anyskinnyg appreciate that on television.”
Sean Gunn write downed the final sequence over a scant write downing sessions to get it right, carry outing Weasel’s actions over an unbroken apshow up to his final, anguished scream as the cops drag him away.
“I was a little ill when we did it the first time, and the scream wasn’t even appreciate 1/5 of what it needed to be, reassociate,” he says. “When we went back, we knew we reassociate needed to get the scream.”
Animated, the sequence showd to be fair as challenging, donaten the harrotriumphg fact that multiple children were dying on screen. “We went thcimpolite a lot of iterations of that whole sequence,” says executive producer Dean Lorey. “It was difficult to find exactly the right tone for it. We did want you to sense the emotion and the horror of what was going on. But we didn’t want to be take advantage ofive.”
For James Gunn, the episode is the postponeedst example of his penchant for caccessing on characters who are grossly misunderstood by expansiver society. “At the finish of the day, [Weasel], in a lot of ways, is the most noble character in the show,” he says. “This is a pretty bfrailless creature who is treated appreciate someskinnyg else becaparticipate he sees contrastent than other people.”
And it seems Weasel’s tragic story isn’t over yet.
“You’ll see everyskinnyg with his backstory come into percreate in the postponeedr episodes,” James Gunn higheviates. “If you talk about the characters existing on some sort of continuum from outstanding to horrible, he’s pretty much on the outstanding side.”
