The Suicide Squad
A expendable team of imprisoned supervillains is deployed to a South American island to destroy a Nazi-era facility, uncovering decades of illegal American experimentation on a mind-controlling alien starfish that escapes and threatens the population after their coverup mission goes catastrophically wrong.
The Suicide Squad Plot Summary
The Corto Maltese Mission
Intelligence officer Amanda Waller assembles two separate Task Force X teams, both drawn from inmates at Belle Reve penitentiary. The program, colloquially known as the “Suicide Squad,” operates on a simple premise: criminals agree to carry out dangerous government missions in exchange for reduced prison sentences. Each participant has explosives implanted in their bodies that Waller can remotely detonate if they disobey orders or attempt escape.
The target is the South American island nation of Corto Maltese, where an anti-American regime has recently overthrown the previous government through military coup. Waller’s assignment requires the teams to destroy Jötunheim, a massive laboratory facility dating back to the Nazi era. The facility houses something called “Project Starfish,” a secret experiment whose nature remains classified even from most of the squad members.
The first team makes landfall on a Corto Maltese beach and immediately encounters the island’s military forces. The soldiers slaughter most of the team members in brutal fashion, demonstrating overwhelming firepower and tactical positioning. Harley Quinn is captured alive and taken into custody. The team’s leader, Rick Flag, manages to escape the massacre and flees into the jungle.
Elsewhere on the island, a second team enters Corto Maltese territory without detection. This team is led by Bloodsport, a highly skilled assassin whom Waller coerced into service through blackmail. Waller threatened to send Bloodsport’s estranged daughter Tyla to prison unless he agreed to participate. The team also includes Peacemaker, a violent vigilante committed to achieving peace regardless of methods; King Shark, a humanoid shark with limited intelligence but enormous strength; Polka-Dot Man, whose skin produces weaponized polka dots; Ratcatcher 2, who can telepathically control rats and keeps one named Sebastian as a pet; and several others.
The second team’s successful infiltration reveals Waller’s actual strategy: the first team was a deliberate decoy, meant to draw military attention while the real strike force entered undetected. The deaths on the beach were calculated sacrifices that Waller accepted as necessary for mission success.
Rebel Alliance
Waller contacts the surviving second team with new orders: locate and extract Rick Flag, who is being held somewhere in Corto Maltese. Intelligence suggests Flag is at a rebel base operated by forces opposing the new military dictatorship. The team locates the compound and launches an assault, massacring the rebel soldiers in a violent firefight.
After killing numerous rebels, the team discovers that they attacked the wrong people. The rebellion leader, Sol Soria, had actually saved Flag’s life and was sheltering him as an ally rather than holding him prisoner. The squad has just slaughtered people who opposed the same dictatorial regime that Waller sent them to undermine. Despite this catastrophic mistake and the deaths of her soldiers, Soria agrees to help the team infiltrate Corto Maltese’s capital city, recognizing that their mission to destroy Jötunheim aligns with her own goals.
Harley Quinn’s capture leads to an audience with Silvio Luna, the island’s new dictator who seized power in the recent coup. Luna becomes infatuated with Harley and proposes marriage, envisioning her as his partner in ruling Corto Maltese. During their interactions, Luna reveals his plans for Project Starfish: he intends to use whatever the experiment produces as a weapon against political dissidents, eliminating opposition through scientific horror rather than conventional execution.
Harley’s response to learning about Luna’s plans is characteristically direct—she kills the dictator herself and escapes from the palace. She reunites with the rest of the team, who have captured the Thinker, the scientist responsible for overseeing Project Starfish. The Thinker possesses the knowledge and access codes necessary to infiltrate Jötunheim.
Jötunheim Infiltration
Using the Thinker as their unwilling guide, the squad enters Jötunheim. They promise to spare his life in exchange for his cooperation, though such promises from criminals operating under government orders carry questionable weight. The team begins placing explosives throughout the facility, rigging the structure for complete destruction once they extract whatever intelligence Waller requires.
Flag and Ratcatcher 2 enter the Thinker’s laboratory to investigate Project Starfish directly. What they discover is Starro the Conqueror, a giant alien creature resembling an enormous starfish. Starro possesses the ability to create smaller versions of itself that attach to human faces, killing the host and reanimating the corpse as a controlled puppet.
The Thinker explains the horrifying history behind Project Starfish. American astronauts encountered Starro in space decades earlier and brought the creature to Earth. The U.S. government has secretly funded experiments on Starro for years, using Corto Maltese as a testing ground specifically because the island’s isolation and political instability made it ideal for illegal research. The previous dictatorship—which the United States supported—used Project Starfish to strengthen its authoritarian rule, employing Starro’s mind-control capabilities against political enemies and using ordinary Corto Maltesean citizens as test subjects in brutal experiments.
The revelation clarifies Waller’s actual mission objective: the team was not sent to Corto Maltese to prevent a weapon from falling into anti-American hands, but rather to destroy evidence of decades of American involvement in crimes against humanity. The mission is a coverup operation designed to eliminate proof of U.S. government complicity in torture and human experimentation.
Flag is enraged by this discovery. He decides to leak a hard drive containing documented evidence of American involvement in Project Starfish, intending to expose the truth regardless of orders or consequences. Peacemaker, however, operates under separate instructions from Waller specifically designed to prevent such leaks. When Flag attempts to leave with the evidence, Peacemaker kills him, eliminating the threat to operational security.
Chaos and Destruction
While Peacemaker and Flag confront each other over the evidence, the rest of the team engages Corto Maltese military forces throughout Jötunheim. During this skirmish, Polka-Dot Man accidentally triggers the planted explosives prematurely. The detonations begin destroying Jötunheim’s structure before the team can evacuate safely.
As the facility crumbles, the hard drive containing evidence of American crimes falls into Ratcatcher 2’s possession. She attempts to escape with it, but Peacemaker pursues her with orders to eliminate anyone who might expose the truth. Before Peacemaker can kill Ratcatcher 2, Bloodsport shoots him, saving her life and securing the evidence.
Jötunheim’s destruction releases Starro from containment. The massive alien creature emerges from the rubble and immediately begins its assault on Corto Maltese. Starro kills the Thinker and large numbers of military personnel before turning its attention to the civilian population. The creature spawns countless smaller versions of itself that spread throughout the capital city, attaching to citizens’ faces and creating an army of mind-controlled hosts.
Waller contacts the surviving squad members to inform them that their mission is officially complete. She orders them to evacuate Corto Maltese immediately, leaving the island to deal with the Starro outbreak on its own. The crisis was not part of their assignment, and Waller has no interest in risking her assets to save Corto Maltesean civilians.
Bloodsport makes a different decision. He chooses to lead the team in fighting Starro despite Waller’s direct orders to withdraw. This represents open rebellion against Waller’s authority and a violation of their operational parameters.
Rebellion and Sacrifice
Waller’s response to the team’s disobedience is immediate—she attempts to execute all squad members remotely by detonating their implanted explosives. However, her subordinates in the command center, having monitored the entire mission and witnessed Waller’s willingness to cover up American atrocities, rebel against her. They physically assault Waller, knocking her unconscious and preventing her from executing the team.
Free from Waller’s immediate control, the squad engages Starro in the streets of Corto Maltese’s capital. Polka-Dot Man uses his abilities to weaken the giant creature, inflicting damage through his weaponized polka dots. However, Starro kills him during the battle, reducing the team’s numbers further.
Harley Quinn identifies a potential vulnerability—she pierces a hole through Starro’s eye using available weaponry. The breach provides an opening for Ratcatcher 2 to exploit using her unique abilities. She summons every rat in the capital city, telepathically commanding the massive swarm to enter Starro’s body through the eye wound. The rats chew through Starro’s internal organs, devouring the creature from the inside until it dies.
With Starro defeated and military forces diverted by the chaos, Sol Soria and her rebel forces seize control of the Corto Maltese government. She promises to establish democratic elections, replacing the dictatorship with a legitimate representative government.
Blackmail and Aftermath
Bloodsport confronts Amanda Waller with the hard drive containing evidence of American involvement in Project Starfish. He uses the information as leverage, blackmailing Waller into agreeing to specific terms: she must release him and all surviving squad members from custody, drop all charges against his daughter Tyla, and provide complete pardons. In exchange, Bloodsport agrees to keep the drive’s contents confidential, protecting the U.S. government from exposure.
Waller reluctantly accepts these terms, recognizing that the alternative—public revelation of decades of illegal human experimentation—would be catastrophic for American foreign policy and her own career. The surviving squad members are extracted from Corto Maltese via helicopter.
During the flight out, Harley Quinn proposes that she and Bloodsport become friends. She frames this as honoring Rick Flag’s memory—he was a common friend to both, despite their different relationships with him, and his death deserves acknowledgment through continued connection between survivors.
Post-Mission Revelations
A mid-credits scene reveals that Weasel, an animalistic member of the first team who was presumed dead during the beach massacre, actually survived the initial assault. The creature runs off into Corto Maltese’s jungle, its fate unknown.
A post-credits scene shows Waller punishing two of her subordinates who knocked her unconscious during her attempted execution of the team. Emilia Harcourt and John Economos are assigned to a new mission as penalty for their insubordination. Their assignment involves working with Peacemaker, who survived Bloodsport’s gunshot and is recovering in a hospital. Waller’s decision to assign them to work with Peacemaker suggests both punishment for their betrayal and recognition that Peacemaker’s willingness to follow orders without moral hesitation makes him valuable despite his injuries.
