James Gunn’s new Suicide Squad movie has a massive cast and plenty of big names to go around between familiar faces like Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and newcomers like Bloodsport and Peacemaker (played by Idris Elba and John Cena, respectively). But one name on the cast list piqued the interest of many fans–fan-favorite Taika Waititi has been signed onto the project in a mystery role for months.
First, many guessed that Waititi would be voicing King Shark, a giant, anthropomorphic man-eater in board shorts who would definitely be hilarious with Taika’s familiar New Zealander accent, but Gunn himself squashed those rumors early on. He explained that he had actually got Sylvester Stallone to do the voice acting for King Shark, so fans would have to keep guessing.
Minor spoilers for The Suicide Squad below.
But the movie has finally arrived on HBO Max and in theaters, meaning we now have a definitive answer: Taika’s cameo is Ratcatcher 1, the father of Ratcatcher 2, who gets a couple of flashback moments to really establish Cleo’s character. According to her, he was a genius inventor with an unfortunate heroin habit that left the two of them struggling on the streets of Portugal, where he used his inventions to summon rats to aid them.
Tragically, Ratcatcher 1 eventually died, leaving Cleo on her own, and she wound up in jail after a botched attempted robbery.
All told, we only get a couple of lines from Taika at the very end of the movie in a second flashback, where he relays to a young Cleo that rats may be the lowliest animals in the world but they “have purpose”–a memory that inspires Cleo to use her rat-controlling technology to overwhelm and take out Starro once and for all.
The Suicide Squad is now showing in select theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
