Creature Commandos S01e06 Msv ›
The flashback to WWII-era Pokolistan is not just a mission briefing; it’s a haunting. We see a younger Flag Sr. receiving the news of his son’s death while in the field. His reaction is not tears or rage—it is a glacial shutdown. He doesn’t go home. He doesn’t bury his son. He buries the feeling instead. This decision is the episode’s tragic fulcrum. By refusing to grieve properly, Flag Sr. became a “creature commando” in the emotional sense—a weaponized human who functions perfectly in chaos but is utterly inert in the face of personal love.
This is the episode’s masterstroke. Flag Sr. has been drowning in grief for his own lost son. To save the present, he must dive for a symbol of another father’s loss. The music box is a literal, ticking reminder that grief is universal—that every leader, every king, every soldier carries a bathtub inside their mind. By handing the toy to Ilana, Flag Sr. finally performs an act of transitive healing. He cannot save his own son. But he can retrieve the childhood of someone else’s daughter. “The Merry Little Bathtub of Finnegan Oldfield” recontextualizes the entire series. The Creature Commandos are not a black ops team. They are a mobile mausoleum —a collection of beings who have died (often literally) and been resurrected by violence. Their mission is never about the Circe conspiracy or the crown of Pokolistan. It is about Rick Flag Sr. learning a lesson that the Bride learned in her first minute of life: You don’t survive. You endure. And endurance requires letting go. creature commandos s01e06 msv
9.5/10 Essential viewing. A masterclass in using genre animation to explore clinical depression and paternal grief. Bring tissues. The flashback to WWII-era Pokolistan is not just
In the landscape of James Gunn’s burgeoning DCU, Creature Commandos has served as a chaotic, bloody, and surprisingly tender thesis statement. Episode 6, “The Merry Little Bathtub of Finnegan Oldfield,” is where that thesis crystallizes. Moving past the high-octane monster mayhem of previous episodes, this installment delivers a devastating character study that redefines the series’ central theme: Monstrosity is not what you are, but what grief does to you. His reaction is not tears or rage—it is a glacial shutdown
We learn that Flag Sr., after the death of his son (Rick Flag Jr., the ill-fated soldier from The Suicide Squad ), has taken to submerging himself in water to trigger the near-death sensation of drowning. It is a form of self-flagellation—a way to feel something other than the hollow numbness of loss. The episode draws a direct parallel between this ritual and the creation of a monster: just as Frankenstein’s creature was born in a bath of amniotic fluid and electricity, Flag Sr. attempts to rebirth himself in a tub of stagnant hotel water and cheap booze. But instead of a monster, he remains a man—which, the episode argues, is far more terrifying. A recurring motif in James Gunn’s work is the flawed, absent, or abusive father figure (from Ego in GotG Vol. 2 to Rick Flag Sr. here). Episode 6 reveals that Flag Sr.’s entire stoic, military-hardened persona is a performance built on the corpse of his parenting.
The episode is, on its surface, a flashback bottle episode centered on the Commandos’ de facto leader, Rick Flag Sr. But beneath the WWII trappings and the whiskey-soaked melancholy lies a profound meditation on survivor’s guilt, the illusion of control, and the fine line between a broken man and a monster. The episode’s title is deliberately absurd—a classic Gunn signature—but “The Merry Little Bathtub” is a misnomer. There is nothing merry about Flag Sr.’s drowning ritual. The bathtub in his seedy hotel room is not a place of cleansing; it is a self-made confessional and a drowning machine.
