There’s an Unexpected Cameo in Creature Commandos

DCU’s Creature Commandos is barely four episodes into its first season and fans already have a lot about the animated series to dissect. But in one particular scene, there’s an Easter egg inserted by James Gunn that even eagled-eyed viewers might have missed: a Scooby-Doo cameo.

The brainchild of James Gunn, Creature Commandos officially became the franchise opener of the newly christened DC Universe when it premiered on Max on December 5. It is also the first installment in the universe’s first chapter, Gods and Monsters, which would include a Superman movie starring David Corenswet as the Man of Steel, a Supergirl movie starring Milly Alcock as the Woman of Steel, and an HBO Green Lantern series with Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart. Audiences and critics alike are already in love with the Suicide Squad-esque lore, this time only featuring incarcerated monsters, evident in its impressive launch score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Season 1 of Creature Commandos is seven episodes long and debuts a new episode weekly.

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Shaggy Rogers From Scooby-Doo Makes a Cameo in Creature Commandos

By the second episode of Creature Commandos, Amanda Waller’s monster-filled black ops team, “Task Force M,” is already deployed to Pokolistan to protect its princess from Circe and the Sons of Themyscira. The episode closes with a flashback montage of one of its members, The Bride, fending off her persistent suitor, Frankenstein, over their centuries-long encounter. In one of the “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” fight sequences taking place precisely at 20:58 time stamp, the iconic Scooby-Doo character, Shaggy Rogers, can be seen among spectators, dressed in his signature green and brown wear, cigarette-in-hand and clearly under the influence.

Shaggy’s millisecond appearance in Creature Commandos is no doubt unexpected, but not entirely out of character for James Gunn. Anyone familiar with the filmmaker’s filmography can attest to the filmmaker’s knack for including Easter eggs and cameos of elements of his previous, or future, projects. In 2020, six years after the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, Gunn noted that “only 60%” of the movie’s Easter eggs had been uncovered by fans. Besides, and perhaps more importantly, Gunn wrote the screenplay of Scooby-Doo: The Movie and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, an IP whose creative rights lie with Warner Bros.

However, Shaggy’s cameo might mean much more than just James Gunn sticking to his habits; it could likely mean that the famed Mystery Inc. team is in the DCU. The 50-issue comic series, Scooby-Doo Team-Up, the 2021 limited comic series, The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries, and the 2018 animation, Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold, has already given fans a taste of such crossover—particularly with the Batman. It’s for no reason that fans are already cooking up possible “what ifs” that could be had from this cameo. Whatever James Gunn has in store, tidbits of its details will almost certainly end up in split-second shots of Creature Commandos’ subsequent episodes, and most fans would gladly accept the not-too-easy task of spotting them.

Creature Commandos is currently showing on Max.

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