The last time we saw the Weasel, he miraculously survived drowning after leaping off a Task Force X transport into the sea just of the coast of Corto Maltese; but as the bug-eyed, rodent person tottered off into the night, there was always a sense that we’d somehow see him once again – not least because James Gunn loves his anthropomorphic animals and Weasel is played by his brother, Sean.
However, it seems that with Creature Commandos’ dedication to giving us expansive origin stories to formerly mysterious villains, it’s now the Weasel’s turn to catch the spotlight while we keep bouncing back and forward between a typically tragic past and the more superperson centric present. But while the Pokolistan story line has been more of a series of action sequences, it’s time for the “A-story” to start flinging some surprises at us as the show attempts to humanise a blank-faced, fuzzy, half-wit.
In the wake of the defeat and arrest of Circe, she’s shipped to Belle Reve to answer for her assault of Pokolistan, however, after her angry claims that it is Princess Rostovic that is the major threat, Amanda Waller seems to think it’s worth investigating. Flag, of course, finds this idea ludicrous, primarily because he’d make the beast with two backs with the young blonde fairly recently, but despite his protests, Waller allows Circe to use her clairvoyant powers to project her alleged proof into her skull.
It’s armageddon, for lack of a better word. A world conquered and laid to waste by the forces of Pokolistan; murdered superbeings hoisted up on pikes; whole cities raised to the round and the sight is enough to rock even the stoic Waller back on her heels. However, when she orders Task Force M back to Pokolistan to kill Rostovic Flag – presumably thinking with his little head – quits, leading to the Bride being named new leader. But when he gets home he gets something of a shock in the form of a very angry Frankenstein who has got it into his stitched head that his beloved Bride is in love with Flag.
Meanwhile, after discovering that the Weasel not only has a lawyer – the diligent Elizabeth Bates – but he also has a name (sort of) in the form of John Doe and from here we get a slightly different form of origin story for the gibbering creature.
While we don’t get to see what actually created the Weasel, be it mutation or funky birth defect, we do see what happened to land him in Belle Reve in the first place and it turns out to be a truly harrowing tale of mistaken identity and horrific bad luck that results in the accidental death of 8 (not 27) children. However, because of the fact that the tragic Weasel has the IQ of a door mat, the real truth that he was actually trying to save lives will probably never surface.
So, once again, another episode, another dive back into the devastating past of one of our unhinged cast members. However, seeing as the Weasel is more of a blank slate than all of the other hapless members of Task Force M (he doesn’t even speak), it means that because the back ground of “John Doe” isn’t as sprawling as a woman created from body parts in 1831, or a World War II era robot with a violent one-track mind, we actually get to spend a bit more time in the present to move the actual plot along and there’s a fair bit to take in.
For a start, we get to spend more time with some more alumni from both The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker as we once again see the return of Viola Davis as Amanda Waller and Steve Agee’s John Economos as they probe into the validity of Circe’s clairvoyant claim of an impending apocalypse. This leads to our first real glimpse at the new and upcoming DCU and even though everyone’s dead and partially mutilated, it still technically stands as our first official time spend with Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman… or at least, their corpses. OK, so it’s hardly a comprehensive overlook at what’s to come, but at least the show is making inroads with a (hopefully) bold new future, rather than confusing us with whether it’s just Gunn’s DCEU stuff that’s still only cannon. Of course, the big twist is that the formally innocent Princess Rostovic is a wrong ‘un and no mistake and it makes her agressive seduction of Rick Flag Sr. all the more suspect. However, this information has still technically come from the mind of a supervillain, so proof is still required – but not for Waller.
We also get some progression for the Bride who steps into a more leader-y role after defending Nina from other prisoners back at Belle Reve and her ascension to team leader should prove to be highly entertaining. However, if we’re speaking of the Bride, then we have to mention David Harbour’s gargantuan Frankenstein who’s attitude to love and relationships makes Glen Close in Fatal Attraction seem like a caring, well adjusted, relationship expert. Instantly leaping to the far fetched conclusion that the Bride now loves Flag, Frankenstein attempts to take out his imagined love rival in his typically smash mouth style and we get some more insight into David Harbour’s lovesick lummox who seems to be utterly divorced from reality when it comes to love in general (his take on Titanic is… unique).
However, the character we mainly are here to focus on is the Weasel and if you thought the story behind G.I. Robot (who goes strangely unmentioned after his death) was horribly unfair, wait until you get a load of this one. Prepare to have your heart strings unexpectedly twanged to an unbearable degree as a relatively story goes devastatingly bad in no time at all. You see, it starts out almost like a variant of E.T. as the bedraggled beast crawls out of a hedge one day to play with a group of kids who seem to immediately think the world of their bug-eyed new friend. However, while we know that Weasel is just playing and jumping around, all the elderly caretaker of the local school sees is some weird, savage wolf man pouncing on a bunch of kids. The police are called and the man arms himself with a shotgun, but in the chaos, a stray bullet hits the boiler of school causing the building to go up like a bomb, killing all but one of the children and Weasel, but as the weirdo tries to drag the wounded girl to safety, he’s repeatedly thwarted by trigger happy cops who seem more interested in bagging the creature than protecting the innocent. It’s truly gut wrenching experience and the moment when Weasel shrieks in horror as he’s restrained while his little friend in buried in flaming rubble is genuinely heart breaking and not only makes you look at the pathetic differently here, but also back to Gunn’s Suicide Squad sequel too.
This, of course, is Gunn’s entire point and while you may not be completely prepared for just how cruel the episode is, it proves to be a remarkably raw 28 minutes of animated television that makes you empathise with tongue lolling, unfocused wretch whose only crime is being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Pretty impressive when you think about it…
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