James Gunn, the writer and director of this year’s massively popular The Suicide Squad, while responding to a fan on Twitter has confirmed whether or not Cory Pitzner, better known by his villain alias The Detachable Kid, survived the first fifteen minutes of the film.
Played by Nathan Fillion, TDK was part of the first of two supervillains team we see Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) dispatch to the South American island nation of Corto Maltese. This was also the one that she expected to perish upon landing, used as bait to be slaughtered by the Corto Maltese military.
The first team’s massacre includes TDK using his superpower – which consists of being able to detach his limbs from the rest of his body - which makes little-to-no contribution to the fight. Last we saw him on-screen during the film he was bloodied and in pain on the sandy ground. It was fair to assume that TDK was among the fatalities of the bloodbath, and many of us did so.
However, we never actually witnessed TDK’s demise like we did most of the team, which resulted in a theory that perhaps TDK somehow managed to survive that bloody encounter. A fan on Twitter pointed out the theory to Gunn writing: “There's a theory that TDK is still alive, and I'm sure a lot of people would like to see Nathan Fillion again.”
Gunn, who interacts with fans quite regularly on social media, has confirmed that indeed TDK “was definitely still alive last we saw him”. It begs the question of whether TDK not appearing in the after-credit scene, like Peacemaker (John Cena) and Weasel, was an intentional choice. Can we expect to see more of TDK in Gunn’s future works?
Gunn is presently working on the third installment of Guardians of The Galaxy and his upcoming TV series Peacemaker is premiering next month, on January 13. Check out Gunn's Twitter response about TDK below.