Amanda Waller may not be the greatest supervillain of all time - or even a villain in the traditional sense - but she absolutely does have one of the best motivations going.
The handler of Task Force-X, aka the Suicide Squad, Waller presides over one of the US Government's most secretive black ops units and does so because she believes it's in her country's best interests. All Waller wants to do is safeguard her nation's security, but of course, it's the way she goes about it that proves to be an issue.
Supervillains though they may be, Waller's treatment of DC's Dirty Dozen violates every law in the book and promises the false hope of a pardon in exchange for embarking on near-impossible missions. Not only that, but should they disobey in the field, they get treated to an explosive collar, killing them in an instant.
Never mind the fact she's matched wits with Batman, the fact Waller straddles a moral grey area makes her all the more compelling, whether or not you deem her brand of evil necessary.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
