James Gunn and Nathan Fillion have been working together for quite a long time now. When the former was making his directorial debut back in 2006 with Slither, the latter was on-board to play the male lead, and the two have worked together on all of Gunn’s directorial efforts since (though Fillion’s Easter egg cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was left on the cutting room floor). Their latest collaboration is The Suicide Squad, which sees the actor play the mysterious character known as T.D.K., and this recently made me wonder: what would happen if all of the Fillion’s characters in Gunn’s movies were put on Task Force X together? Who would survive?
To my amazement, as captured in the video above, Nathan Fillion quickly knew the answer to those questions when I posed them to him amid the virtual press day for The Suicide Squad. During an interview where Fillion was paired with co-stars Flula Borg and Jai Courtney, I asked who among his characters in Slither, Super, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the new DC film would survive on a secret mission to save the world, and his response came with surprisingly little hesitation:
Bill Pardy [from Slither]. He's ill-prepared, but he'll do what needs to be done. He's pragmatic. He's a very practical man. I think he might get out of there.
In Slither, Nathan Fillion’s Bill Pardy is the police chief in the fictional Wheelsy, South Carolina, and while his life in the small town is typically uneventful, that changes in a big way when an extraterrestrial parasite arrives via a meteorite. The creature slowly begins to infect residents, starting with a wealthy asshole named Grant Grant (Michael Rooker), and Pardy works with Grant’s wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks) to stop the invasion before it’s too late.
Bill Pardy’s success against the alien slugs of Slither certainly does make him a realistic choice to be the lone survivor of a “Nathan Fillions Only” Suicide Squad – though that does make one wonder what would happen to the other guys.
In James Gunn’s sophomore film Super, Nathan Fillion plays a heavy-handed Christian superhero named The Holy Avenger who winds up inspiring Rainn Wilson’s protagonist to become a costumed vigilante – but I suppose that God may not be on his side if he were to do something that would lead him on a path to be one of the convicts signed up for Task Force X.
Nathan Fillion’s Guardians of the Galaxy character, meanwhile, would fit right in with colleagues in a Suicide Squad. He doesn’t have a name, merely credited as “Monstrous Inmate,” but he notably has the one requirement to be a part of the group: a criminal background. That being said, considering how easily Groot is able to sideline him in the Marvel movie – by simply sticking a couple of extending fingers up his nose – one could understand why he wouldn’t make it through a mission.
And as for T.D.K.? Well, I won’t say too much, and instead will merely let you enjoy his surprising presence in The Suicide Squad. The new blockbuster, which co-stars Idris Elba, Margot Robbie, and John Cena among many others, is arriving in theaters and on HBO Max this Friday, August 6.
