Though Margot Robbie is back as Harley Quinn, you wouldn’t call Birds of Prey a sequel to 2016’s Suicide Squad. Sure, we first met the former Dr. Quinzel in David Ayer’s villain team-up flick, but no other characters from that film feature in this one. Not even Jared Leto’s Joker. Well, almost no others. Another Task Force X-er does technically appear in BoP, but not in the flesh.
This other Suicide Squad member is Captain Boomerang, with a mugshot of Jai Courtney’s Australian thief seen pinned up on the wall of a Gotham City PD precinct. As Harley breaks into the place to free Cassandra Cain, she points to the picture and says: “Hey, I know that guy.” That’s the only reference we get to the character, but the fact that the cops are after him does heavily suggest that Digger Harkness has managed to get himself out of Belle Reve once again.
In fact, Boomerang’s photo was deliberately planted to connect with the upcoming The Suicide Squad. Producer Sue Kroll explained to ComicBook.com that the BoP production team kept the line of communication open with TSS director James Gunn and the nod to the supervillain came out of that.
“[Birds of Prey] was designed to be its own thing, standalone, singular, as is James’s Suicide Squad. But because the world is the world, there are these very interesting organic connections, I think, that end up evolving, but there wasn’t any kind of consultation among the filmmakers on the movies. And they, of course, started much later, as we were getting close to wrap, and so things were done pretty much independently. Something like, for example, Boomerang, it’s interesting when they started shooting and planning [The Suicide Squad]. His photo evolved out of that conversation, so those kinds of connections, but very organic.”
Courtney will return as Boomerang for the Suicide Squad sequel, as will Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn. It’s believed that the pair won’t interact too much in the film, as Harkness will be part of the first team that’s sent into action while Harley is part of the second. We’ve seen shots of Courtney on set in Atlanta, for instance, while no look at Robbie filming in Panama has yet materialized online.
It wasn’t much, then, but at least this small Birds of Prey cameo reminds us that we’ll be seeing Harley again as soon as next year, when The Suicide Squad arrives in August 2021. She keeps coming back, just like a boomerang.
