Highlights

  • Ivy's character in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has undergone a big shift, with a dramatic change in appearance and a new role as a child-like character.
  • In the game, players will have to track down the revived Ivy. She wears a modified LexCorp uniform and has no memory of her previous life.
  • Ivy's gameplay role involves protecting her plants from Brainiac's minions and using her "Afflictions" to add elemental damage to the player's weaponry, with each damage type having its own downside. This introduces a risk-reward element to the game's customization system.

The release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is right on the horizon and players have just gotten a look at another important character. However, this iteration of a popular DC rogue is not one any Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League fan was expecting.

The last time Poison Ivy was seen in the Arkham series, she had sacrificed herself to cleanse Gotham of Scarecrow's fear toxin. This action runs contrary to her typical anti-human eco-terrorism, marking a pivotal point of character development before her demise. After hints of her return in leaks earlier in December, Ivy's new form has been officially shown off in a new episode of Suicide Squad Insider.

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Suicide Squad's Poison Ivy Is A Big Shift

Who Is The New Poison Ivy?

The second episode of Suicide Squad Insider shows a section of the game where the eponymous antiheroes will have to track down a revived Poison Ivy. However, upon finding her purported location, nothing but a flower sitting within an overgrown part of Metropolis can be found. The flower then bursts into an enormous Venus flytrap, one that houses Ivy in its maw. In a marked shift from the Arkham series, Ivy here is only a child, similar to how Groot returned as Baby Groot in the MCU.

Ivy's appearance has changed dramatically. Her skin is a shade of gold and her sclera is black with yellow irises, making her eyes look like miniature eclipses. Her hair is still red and seems to be composed of a leaf collage with vines running through it, causing flowers to sprout all over her.

She wears a LexCorp uniform from a facility where Lex Luthor was having her create weapons for him, as well as a cape contrived from a tattered red cloth. LexCorp-branded containers are wrangled within the bramble running down her arm. In terms of personality, she's especially excited about killing Brainiac's troops through the wrath of nature, but she has no memory of Harley Quinn or her old life.

Poison Ivy's Gameplay Role

The first mission after meeting Ivy is to protect the reborn villain's plants from Brainiac's minions so that they might release spores that will choke out the enemy horde. It is implied that Ivy's mission might serve as an early example of mechanics to send other squad members to different areas when in single-player, though how this will manifest is unknown. Nonetheless, it could offer more gameplay possibilities for how characters arriving in Suicide Squad's subsequent seasons will behave as AI teammates.

Ivy's main role will be as an NPC vendor in the same way as Penguin, Toyman, Hack, and Gizmo. Her addition to the title will be in the form of 'Afflictions'. Afflictions will add elemental damage to the player's weaponry, with each damage type taking inspiration from a different DC Comics villain. However, each damage type will come with its own downside. For instance, frozen enemies are resistant to melee damage and won't drop ammo upon death. This introduces a risk-reward element that could very well be some decent spice for Suicide Squad's extensive customization system.

With Rocksteady fighting an uphill battle against leaks, unveiling this huge twist on Ivy's established character is a bold move. It's not been received with outright positivity—indeed, the title has had its reputation soured for some time now—but, as its release draws nearer, Suicide Squad might just need such notable reveals to keep itself in the zeitgeist.