Viola Davis’ ‘Waller’ to Get Her Own DC Series on HBO Max

Here is a very strange but seemingly true fact: The most tenured DC Comics hero in movies right now isn’t Superman, or Batman. It’s Amanda Waller.

Viola Davis first played the Machiavellian leader of the Suicide Squad in (checks notes) Suicide Squad in 2016. She reprised the role in 2021’s The Suicide Squad. She played Waller again in that film’s spinoff series Peacemaker. She had a cameo in Black Adam. Now Davis will star in her own Waller series on HBO Max, spinning out of the events of both The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker.

The show was officially confirmed as part of “Chapter 1” of the new DC Universe that includes ten new films and shows. According to Warner Bros., Waller will star Viola Davis, and “features Team Peacemaker and will be written by Christal Henry (Watchmen) and Jeremy Carver (Supernatural).”

Waller is typically depicted as the government bureaucrat in charge of the Suicide Squad. Curiously, while she has been the subject of an occasional one-shot, she has never starred in her own ongoing comic book; she’s always been a member of the cast of books like Suicide Squad. I’m not sure if that makes her the first comics character in history to get her own TV show without first having her own comic series, but at the moment, I can’t think of a single other example.

Waller does not yet have an official release date on HBO Max, but it joins a quintet of other new DC shows coming to the streaming service in the years ahead as part of “Chapter 1” of their new universe including the animated Creature Commandos and the live-action Booster Gold, Lanterns, and Paradise Lost.