Main cast: Indira Varma (The Bride), Sean Gunn (GI Robot, Weasel), Alan Tudyk (Dr Phosphorus), Zoe Chao (Nina Mazursky), David Harbour (Eric Frankenstein), and Frank Grillo (Rick Flag Sr)
Director: Sam Liu
In Chasing Squirrels, things are happening. Movement! Plot progression! Action! Characters making decisions that will have consequences! It only took us four episodes to get here, but hey, better late than never, right?
After Circe was captured last episode, all she has to do to convince Amanda Waller — you know, the cold-blooded, ruthless, “I will literally explode your head without blinking” Amanda Waller — that she’s been misunderstood is to show her a vision of Princess Ilana Rostovic taking over the world with Gorilla Grodd by her side.
Waller just… believes her. Immediately. Without question.
She calls Flag and orders him to kill Ilana NOW.
Wait, what?
Boy, for a supposedly smart and heartless big boss, Waller seems rather… gullible, doesn’t she? You’d think someone with a sadistic glee for exploding people’s heads would at least torture Circe a few rounds to verify the information, or run some intelligence checks at least to verify Circe’s story.
No, instead let’s just immediately believe the literal sorceress who has every reason to lie and manipulate. What could possibly go wrong?
Flag, having bonded with Ilana over a bathroom shag, balks at the order and goes rogue. He’s not going to kill his lady love! They had sex! In a bathroom! That means something, dammit!
His unlikely ally is Eric Frankenstein, who initially thought Flag and the Bride were having a thing, but the two men settled their differences with some bro talk. Nothing heals masculine tension like a good heart-to-heart about feelings and relationships.
Meanwhile, the Bride is now the leader, so off the rest of the gang goes to murder Ilana because orders are orders and they don’t have bathroom sex to cloud their judgment.
Oh, and in the meantime, the episode also flashes back to Weasel (voiced by Sean Gunn, lest we forget), revealing that he’s not actually a killer of school kids but was their friend. The kids’ deaths — oops, is it too late to put a trigger warning in this review? — were due to an overzealous crazy person who thought Weasel had bad intentions toward the children.
Well, James Gunn has to do something to show the world there’s a valid reason to keep hiring his brother, right? Better give Weasel a tragic backstory so people feel justified in Sean Gunn getting a paycheck!
While things are finally moving, the episode itself feels oddly anemic, like it’s going through the motions without really feeling anything.
Weasel’s flashback, supposedly a highlight that once again drove people to tears, is a standard “Frankenstein’s monster” tale that’s been done many times before. Misunderstood creature! Society fears what it doesn’t understand! Tragic violence born of ignorance! We’ve seen this, we’ve seen it better.
The rest of the episode is just people going from point A to B and so on. Characters move. Conversations happen. Plot inches forward. But there’s no real energy to it, no spark that makes you sit up and pay attention.
So, while this isn’t a complete filler episode, it also doesn’t take off like it should for a “things finally happened, including a twist!” episode. It’s like a car that’s moving, but only in second gear. Sure, you’re going somewhere, but you’re not exactly zooming.
