Birds of Prey's Black Canary Caught Savant - Suicide Squad Theory Explained
The Suicide Squad introduced many new characters, of which most didn’t make it past the first minutes of the movie, and there was a special focus on Savant, who DC Comics writer Jim Lee suggests was caught by Birds of Prey’s Black Canary. After the debut of Task Force X in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad in 2016, the team went through some big changes for the sequel, as part of the shift in tone and more that the DC Extended Universe has been going through in recent years. The (standalone) sequel, simply titled The Suicide Squad, is a combination of dark humor, action, and some touches of gore, and it reunited most of the original Task Force X team and introduced new (albeit strange) villains.
Directed by James Gunn, The Suicide Squad sees Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) bringing back Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), and Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) to team up with new villains to go on a dangerous new mission, but little did they know, there was a second Task Force X team as part of the same mission. The Suicide Squad opens with new character Savant (Michael Rooker) at Belle Reve enjoying some alone time before he’s called back in by Waller to join the team. Although it all initially pointed at Savant playing a big role in The Suicide Squad, he (along with most of the first team) was killed minutes later, and so many questions about him were left unanswered, such as what his special skills are and how he ended up at Belle Reve.
This, of course, has made way for different theories, but there’s one that has caught the attention of the audience not only because it’s plausible but because of who came up with it. In the aforementioned opening scene with Savant, he’s sitting on a bench and throwing a tennis ball to specific points on the wall creating a trajectory, showing how skilled he is as a marksman, but the audience quickly gets a taste of how ruthless he also is. A yellow bird lands in one of the corners, and Savant throws the tennis ball again, with its trajectory ending where the bird was, killing it instantly. This scene made DC Comics writer Jim Lee believe that Savant could have been caught by none other than Black Canary, who viewers met in Birds of Prey, thus subtly connecting these two movies.
The theory is possible not just because of a connection between both movies but also because Savant has a history with Black Canary in the comics. Brian Durlin a.k.a. Savant is the spoiled heir to an enormous fortune who arrives at Gotham City to become a self-styled vigilante, but after Batman discourages him, he turns his formidable computer skills into a profitable blackmailing business. He later kidnaps Black Canary to try to torture her for information about Oracle (Barbara Gordon) and the identity of Batman, but he is ultimately defeated by her team. Now, in the DCEU, Black Canary is a singer at Roman Sionis’ nightclub who by the end of Birds of Prey teams up with Renee Montoya and Helena Bertinelli and forms the title team, and what she has done since remains unknown. It’s possible, then, that Black Canary caught Savant in one of her missions with the Birds of Prey and that’s why he targeted that innocent bird at the beginning of The Suicide Squad, as a sort of revenge and also because he’s not exactly a kind-hearted man.
James Gunn tends to add this type of details to his movies, so it wouldn’t be surprising if Savant killing the bird at the beginning of The Suicide Squad was a hint at how he ended up at Belle Reve, thus connecting both movies and also giving Harley an indirect link to one of her many new (but short-lived) colleagues. Until Gunn or Birds of Prey 2 confirm or deny the theory, it’s up to viewers to decide if Black Canary was the one who sent Savant to prison or not, and what he could have done to catch the attention of the Birds of Prey.