Rick Flag was one of only four characters from David Ayer's 2016 film to return for The Suicide Squad along with Harley Quinn, Amanda Waller and Boomerang, but actor Joel Kinnaman has now revealed that it almost didn't happen.
The Swedish-American actor was shooting his Apple TV+ series For All Mankind when he got the call from Gunn, and the scheduling conflict meant he almost had to pass on the opportunity to reprise the role. Fortunately, the hurdles were overcome, and Rick Flag was able to lead Task Force X into battle once again.
“My manager, Shelley Browning, and my agents, Boomer Malkin and Andrew Finkelstein, definitely won the agent Oscar for this because it was a really, really tricky scheduling situation,” Kinnaman tells THR. “And I also have to thank [For All Mankind creator] Ron Moore so much and everyone at Apple for helping out. Warner Bros. was in first position, but they couldn’t budge because it was such a big cast. So it was a really tricky scheduling thing, and it took them several months to figure it out."
At one point, Warner Bros. execs advised Gunn that he might have to write Flag out of the script altogether. "There were actually people at Warner Bros. that told James, ‘We might have to rewrite this because the scheduling is not going to work out.’", added Kinnaman. "So I was definitely on edge, but then they figured it out.”
Warning: Major SPOILERS from this point on.
Unfortunately, Corto Maltese marked Flag's final mission. The former military man was killed by Peacemaker after threatening to leak the Starro files, and while it wouldn't exactly be unheard of for a comic book movie character to return from the dead, the chances of us seeing Kinnaman back in the role are very slim.
The Suicide Squad is now playing in theaters and on HBO Max. You can check out our 5-star review below.
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Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.