Starro is technically the main villain of James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad in the DCEU, and a surprise antagonist I really did not see coming. A giant killer Patrick Star from outer space? Nobody predicted that, which is one of the great things about the movie. It is very hard to guess where the story is going, and Starro is no exception.

I do not remember all the details, but apparently this creature’s full name is Starro the Conqueror. After being discovered in outer space by American astronauts, it was captured and experimented on. The United States government eventually had it relocated to the fictional country of Corto Maltese. The main mission was to erase any connection to it, and of course that went completely wrong.

Just when you think one giant starfish is bad enough, what makes it worse are the thousands of smaller starfish it produces. That raises the question: was Starro already carrying them during captivity, or can it reproduce asexually with very little prep time?

Most of the local citizens fall victim to these smaller starfish, which latch onto their faces. It sounds painful, but instead of killing their hosts outright, they turn them into controlled slaves of Starro. Still, that is pure nightmare fuel.

Starro is the kind of threat that would normally require the Justice League, or at least Superman, so it presents a serious challenge for the Suicide Squad to even damage it. Ratcatcher 2 uses an overwhelming swarm of rats to weaken the creature, and Harley Quinn moves in for the kill with a javelin to the eye. It sounds a bit like video game logic, but Starro works as a solid antagonist in a very fun, dark superhero comedy.