Creature Commandos streams new episodes every Thursday through January 9, 2025 on Max. UK airdates are yet to be confirmed.
Review
And just like that here we are. The finale of DC Studios’ Creature Commandos. It feels like the series only just began but after six weeks on our screens Task Force M has one last task ahead of them before they can saunter off in to the sunset and back to their cells in Belle Reve. James Gunn has masterfully steered the series through an engaging story built on truly captivating character arcs. With just one character left to explore, can Nina Mazursky (Chloe Tao) steer the series in for smooth landing?
Gunn had the right idea by stripping away the subplots of Creature Commandos to allow the finale to focus on bringing the Pokolistan storyline to a satisfying conclusion. There’s a fair amount of ground to cover in simply trying to kill Princess Ilana (Maria Bakalova). “A Very Funny Monster” is determined from the outside to do right by each of the surviving characters whilst still weaving in Nina’s backstory. Thinking back over the course of the season, it has essentially taken a little over two hours of storytelling to get here. In that time we’ve covered the backstories of six other characters as well as introducing an entirely new DCU and building out enough of that world to give agency to this story and its characters. That’s no small feat even for an accomplished writer like Gunn.
It’s also fair to say he’s left the best until last. Nina’s backstory is another less in classic Gunn-tragedy. From birth it seems the odds were stacked against Nina. Born with her lungs on the outside, her mother rejects her in ways that Gunn never strays away from portraying on screen. Yet another example of Creature Commandos (and hopefully the DCU) never side-stepping difficult conversations. Her father, a renowned geneticist, experimented to try and give his daughter the chance to breathe normally but instead mutated her in to the amphibian like creature we know today. Cue plenty of awful bullying and Nina eventually rejects everyday live and becomes Star City’s mythical sea creature in the sewers.
It turns out Nina shares a lot in common with poor Weasel (Sean Gunn). As those who look different often are, Nina is misunderstood as being nothing more than a monster. With her backstory the thread which connects each of these so-called monsters is completed and we’re able to see Gunn’s rich tapestry as a whole. Whilst their differences drove these people away from mainstream society, it brings them together as a family in Task Force M. It remains not a million miles away from the makeup of the team in The Suicide Squad but why break a formula which worked so well the first time?
With the reasons why The Bride (Indira Virma) and the rest of Task Force M feel so protected of Nina laid bare. It’s time for the amphibious creature to step up. The only way to kill Princess Ilana and therefore save humanity from entering world ward three is to attack from underwater. So Nina takes to her mission and everyone nobody lives happily ever after. With the sand in the hourglass running out Gunn still has plenty of twists left to keep us on the edge of our seats. Creature Commandos has a couple more twists left before it reaches its conclusion and so right up until its final moments we’re still not able to predict just where the story will end up.
As the sun sets on the first season of Creature Commandos Gunn wraps up the storyline with an incredibly neat bow. Characters are free to exist in the DCU moving forwards and are equally changed by the events of the past seven episodes. Each of the series’ arcs is neatly tied in to the final act of each character allowing the series to stand on its own without closing off the possibility for these characters to appear again down the line. The sense of possibility is endless which is exciting as we launch ourselves in to 2025 and the live-action debut of the DCU with Superman.
Verdict
Creature Commandos rounds out its first season with a gleefully wicked finale. James Gunn steers the series in to a satisfying conclusion which brings this story to a close without stifling any of these wonderful characters potential for the future. Action-packed, enthralling, all of the adjectives to say that Creature Commandos has been an exceptional start to the DCU.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
