Highlights

  • Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will feature an extended cast of DLC characters, including the controversial new Joker from an alternate dimension, which risks diminishing the impact of the previous Arkham series.
  • The new design of the Joker in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League falls short of the iconic and simple appearance of the previous Joker.
  • The introduction of the multiverse concept in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League comes at a time when audiences are fatigued with multiverse plots in superhero media, and the recurring presence of the Joker adds to the villain's already stale reputation, making the world feel smaller.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will host an extended cast of DLC characters. One of these characters, despite their fame, has more than a few struggles ahead when it comes to being accepted by fans. Indeed, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is already a controversial game and the Joker doesn't look to be helping matters.

Suicide Squad's third Insider showcase revealed a great deal about the title's content. Among demonstrations of multiplayer and cosmetics, Rocksteady unveiled the Joker as Suicide Squad's first free DLC character. Fans may find this announcement strange considering that, in the Arkham universe, the Joker has been dead for years. However, Brainiac's meddling has led to a Joker from an alternate dimension entering the Arkham timeline.

harley quinn, king shark and deadshot in the suicide squad game
Related
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League – How To Play Early

Players can assemble the Suicide Squad a few days before everyone else if they know what edition of the game to purchase.

Suicide Squad's New Joker Is Facing Too Many Problems To Count

Joker Risks Diminishing The Impact Of The Arkham Series

While it's important to note how Suicide Squad's new Joker is not a revival of the old, there's still a degree of diminished stakes in his return. The Joker's death in Arkham City was an important plot point with wide-reaching consequences, for instance, and filling the void he left undoes some of that impact.

There are holes to critique in multiverse stories where it is assumed that characters are inherently replaceable, but the role of Joker is still one that ought to be left absent. It's not every day that the Joker actually dies in Batman canon, and Rocksteady ushering in a new one doesn't exactly help pave the way for new stories to be told authentically.

The Joker's New Design

The Joker's Arkham design is incredibly iconic, rocking a simple color scheme with an infected visage and especially bright lips. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's new clown falls short of his predecessor's appearance. His outfit is especially busy with multiple patterns and bright, clashing colors.

His crudely painted smile does little to truly invoke the mad grin of Jokers from the past and the misplaced hair strand he sports detracts more than it embellishes. Though it may have some unique new ideas and some good color choices (by their lonesome), this new design tries too many things at once and ultimately creates a Joker that's confusing to behold, bearing more resemblance to Jared Leto's highly controversial Joker than anything else.

Multiverse Fatigue (And Joker Fatigue)

Multiverse plots have been creeping in all over superhero media with astonishing frequency. One of the most notable was last year's The Flash, which turned out to be a catastrophic box office failure. The Flash's poor reception dealt a massive blow to the multiverse's reputation, and middling MCU projects combined with general oversaturation have turned audiences against the trope in a big way. Given this, it seems weird to introduce this Elseworlds idea here during an existing deluge of multiverses, though it's probable that a playable Joker was already in development years in advance.

Joker's prominence has led to the villain becoming somewhat stale, which is only compounded by his incessant recurrences. He's the Caped Crusader's main foe in most comics, video games, movies, and shows with countless iterations that have been discussed to death and back. Given that Rocksteady is trying to open up the Arkham universe to the vast weirdness of the wider DC canon, bringing back the Joker only makes the world feel smaller. He already got a starring role in much of the Arkham series, so he can afford to sit on the bench for a while—even if this is technically a different Joker.

Cynicism Around Suicide Squad and DLC

Suicide Squad has been synonymous with delays, almost all the way back when its marketing began. Rocksteady does seem back on track now with a detailed post-launch roadmap out in the wild; however, while it's great to see that the Joker will be free DLC, the title's live service elements have already drawn a great deal of ire from the community. It'll be interesting to see how this DLC and the perception of Joker changes between now and his release in March.