The Suicide Squad's Secret Guardians Cameo: Where To Spot Pom Klementieff
Warning: This post contains light spoilers for The Suicide Squad.
James Gunn's The Suicide Squad has a hidden cameo by a Guardians of the Galaxy actor that the director has revealed few people have spotted so far. It's one of a multitude of secret Easter eggs, references, and DC comics homages (including a cameo by John Ostrander himself), and given the levels of action and the sheer number of moving parts, it shouldn't come as a surprise that it's well hidden. But here's where to find it.
The Suicide Squad is packed with characters, despite having some of the most personal stories in the DCEU so far, and as well as character cameos by the likes of Calendar Man, Double Down, and other low-level DC figures, there's also a surprisingly rich vein of MCU actors in it. Director James Gunn appears to have rounded up as many Guardians of the Galaxy actors as he could possibly fit in his Suicide Squad sequel for a reunion under the banner of the so-called Distinguished Competition. Those actors include Sylvester Stallone (King Shark), Michael Rooker (Savant), Steve Agee (John Economos), Nathan Fillion (TDK), and of course, his brother Sean Gunn (who is the stand-in for Weasel and plays Calendar Man as the trailers revealed).
But as Gunn revealed in an interview leading up to The Suicide Squad's release, there's another hidden Guardians cameo. That is courtesy of MCU Mantis actor Pom Klementieff, who was rumored to be cast in a role way back in 2019. As it turns out, that role is so minor it counts as a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo that happens as Task Force X take on their mission on Corto Maltese. She appears very briefly in a scene inside the bar shown in the trailers where the Suicide Squad cut loose and are shown dancing (with John Cena's moves a notable highlight).
In all, Klementieff appears on-screen for a matter of seconds but is pretty notably framed as the Squad take on the undercover portion of their mission. She's made-up, but doesn't have a mask or any sort of disguise (which Matt Damon famously employed to hide his Deadpool 2 cameo), so it's a little shocking that the cameo went unnoticed for so long after The Suicide Squad's global release. Perhaps audiences are most familiar with Klementieff in her Mantis costume?
There's another notable cameo in the same scene, as revealed by the trailers for The Suicide Squad. Troma legend Lloyd Kaufman appears as a dancing patron of the same bar in his latest cameo in a James Gunn movie. Not only is that an apparent homage to Gunn's past as a Troma film-maker, but it's also particularly pertinent in this case because the movie almost feels like the gore elements were channeling Kaufman and Troma.