HBO’s ‘Lanterns’ Officially Canonizes The Suicide Squad’s Starro in the New DCU

A quiet throwaway line in episode 6 of HBO’s Lanterns has just settled one of the most debated continuity questions in James Gunn’s DCU: the giant alien starfish rampage from The Suicide Squad officially happened in the new shared universe. In a scene that mirrors the climactic Kryptonian battle from Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the episode shows ordinary citizens bracing for destruction on a city street where collapsing buildings and crashing extraterrestrials read less like superhero spectacle and more like mass catastrophe. The moment does more than raise the question of what it means to be a normal person in a world of gods and monsters — it canonizes a major DCU event that had remained deliberately murky for years.

The reference arrives during a presentation delivered by John Stewart, the Green Lantern who handed his ring to the Guardians of the Universe a decade earlier and has since reinvented himself as an architect. He founded Stewart Brothers in Midway City, where he is now pitching a series of football-stadium-sized panic rooms designed to shelter the city’s four million residents. “We all saw what happened in Metropolis, right?” Stewart asks his local government representatives. “But our city doesn’t have a Superman.” He then wonders aloud what citizens might do the next time “a giant starfish” starts wreaking havoc across the globe.

A Starfish That Was Never Officially Canon

That hypothetical is no longer hypothetical. Starro’s rampage — previously depicted in Gunn’s 2021 film The Suicide Squad — apparently also took place in the new DCU, and the show treats it as a real, widely understood historical event. The continuity surrounding the film has always been deliberately fuzzy. Released as part of the old DC Extended Universe launched by Zack Snyder, the movie predated Gunn and Peter Safran’s takeover of DC Studios and their reboot of the franchise. Several of its characters and storylines were carried forward into Peacemaker, Creature Commandos, and the broader DCU, but Gunn has resisted declaring that the entire film unfolded exactly as audiences saw it.

“Only Creature Commandos forward is pure canon,” Gunn explained on Bluesky. He described Peacemaker as largely consistent with the new continuity while calling The Suicide Squad “an imperfect memory.” That framing means events from older films can become canon individually, one acknowledgment at a time. Discussing references in Creature Commandos, Gunn put the rule plainly in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter: once a new series talks about something from The Suicide Squad or Peacemaker, “those things automatically become canon.” Under that rule, Lanterns confirms that a giant alien starfish attacked Earth before 2026.

Image: Warner Bros.

That does not necessarily make every detail of the film part of the DCU, but it strongly indicates that some kind of Suicide Squad fought and defeated Starro. The events presented in the movie might not neatly match up with what is considered canon at this point. Gunn’s “imperfect memory” description implies that plenty of the finer details could differ. But the core event — Starro escaping the Jötunheim laboratory and rampaging through Corto Maltese before Bloodsport, Harley Quinn, Ratcatcher 2, King Shark, and Polka-Dot Man fought it — is now firmly established as having occurred.

Once the new series talks about something from The Suicide Squad or Peacemaker, those things automatically become canon.

James Gunn

More Than a Continuity Argument

The reference also does more for Lanterns than settle a continuity debate. Stewart’s presentation illustrates how ordinary people and the institutions they belong to are responding to a world populated by superheroes, kaiju, and aliens. Metropolis has Superman. Midway City has four million people and nothing to protect them — at least until John finally decides to wear the ring again.

All of this makes the Starro reference both a clear piece of DCU canon and a revealing update on John’s life. He may have walked away from the Green Lantern Corps, but he never stopped designing ways to save people. As the show quietly confirms one of the DCU’s most contested events, it also reminds viewers that even the Corps’ most celebrated architect is still building shields for a world that keeps ending the world.

Looking Ahead

With this canonical confirmation in place, the door is now open for future DCU productions to reference, expand, or reinterpret the Suicide Squad’s Corto Maltese saga without contradicting the new continuity. The finer details of the film’s timeline and cast may remain subject to revision, but the foundational event is no longer up for debate. For Lanterns, the payoff is clear: John Stewart’s return to the ring is no longer just a character beat, but the natural next step for a hero whose entire life’s work has been preparing cities for the exact kind of destruction that has now become the new normal.