A new Creature Commandos Season 2 video from Dean Lorey proves James Gunn made the right choice in hiring the showrunner as his replacement. Gunn wrote all seven episodes of the DC Studios animated series' first season, then stepped back and handed the Season 2 scripts to Lorey, who now leads a full writers' room. The decision put the DCU’s first show in the hands of a veteran who already guided Season 1 from the showrunner’s chair.
Creature Commandos showrunner Dean Lorey shared the story in a video on his Instagram page, part of One Thing, his ongoing series of filmmaking lessons posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He revealed how a Season 2 scene starring the Bride, voiced by Indira Varma, fell flat in its first animatic, the rough moving storyboard used to test episodes before final animation, and how one note about emotion saved it.
Lorey opened with a confession, admitting the sequence "was exactly what [he]’d written, and it didn’t work:"
"Creature Commandos’ Season 2 had a moment in the first animatic that was exactly what I’d written, and it didn’t work. The Bride walks into an airport, closes her eyes and spins around, and whatever destination she sees when she first opens her eyes, that’s where she’s going. So, that’s what I put in the script and that’s what I got back, and it was flat. I wasn’t feeling her joy."
The fix, Lorey continued, required just one note, and what came back was "straight out of a ’40s musical:"
"Now, I could have piled on notes. 'Louder, faster, bigger,' whatever. Instead, I told them the result I wanted. I wanted to feel her joy in that moment, a sense of possibility. That’s all I told the director and artist and what came back was straight out of a ’40s musical. Bride’s point of view, eyes closed, destinations whirling around her in a montage in her mind. It’s beautiful and it’s nothing I ever would have thought to ask for."
He ended the video with a lesson on the importance of trusting creatives "to bring you something better than you imagined:"
"I’m Dean Lorey and one thing I learned making 'Creature Commandos,' when you give notes, before you tell a great artist how to fix something, tell them what you want the audience to feel, the plot beat that you want to come through most clearly, and then trust them to bring you something better than you imagined."
The clip sums up why Creature Commandos is in good hands. Lorey wrote studio features like Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday and Major Payne in the 1990s, produced comedies including Arrested Development and My Wife and Kids, and co-created and ran Harley Quinn before steering Creature Commandos through its first season. Those decades across live-action and animation show how quickly he read the situation. He understood why a moment that worked on the page died in storyboards, and he knew which note his director and artist actually needed. This sort of instinct comes with experience, and not many showrunners have it.
Just as striking is the humility on display. Lorey pinned the failure on his own script, credited his artists with the save, and celebrated the result, despite it turning out better than what he had initially written. An attitude like that makes him easy to work with and brings out the best in the creative team.
This sort of humility is nothing new to him either. In an earlier episode of the same video series, Lorey recalled the humbling experience of running Season 1 while Gunn wrote every episode and admitted the arrangement initially left him “a little terrified:”
"Creature Commandos’ Season 1 was the first show I ever ran that I didn’t write or at least run the writer’s room. The writer was James Gunn and I was a little terrified. I mean, James is a big deal, but that wasn’t why I was nervous. See, I’d always written the shows I ran before but when I got this job, James was the writer of every episode and he had already written the first four of the seven scripts. I read those eagerly. I love them. And then, I had to wait for each new one and it was like waiting for a new episode of 'Game of Thrones' or 'Breaking Bad.' I had no idea what was coming. I loved that as a viewer, but I wasn’t used to it as a showrunner."
Rather than fighting for control, Lorey embraced his place as the show’s first viewer, an experience he came to view as "a superpower for producing the show:"
"And then, it hit me. Here, I was the audience. I was enjoying these scripts the way an audience would and that turned out to be a superpower for producing the show, because I could bring that enthusiasm to highlight the moments that thrilled me as a fan, without the burden of already knowing everything that happens. I’m Dean Lorey and one thing I learned making ‘Creature Commando,’ read every script like the audience will, for the first time through fresh eyes and then bring that clarity and enthusiasm to making it."
Season 2, which opens with an episode titled "Starry Night," has no release date yet. However, Gunn indicated on Threads that the show will arrive on HBO Max not long after Man of Tomorrow, his Superman sequel, which releases on July 9, 2027.
Will Creature Commandos Season 2 Be as Good as Season 1?
Creature Commandos Season 1 set a high standard, launching the DCU with what the studio called a record-breaking debut and earning some of the best reviews of any DC project in years. The encouraging news is that Season 2 has unique elements that could make it as good or even better than Season 1.
For starters, Season 2 is 10 episodes long, three more than the original. More episodes provide the runtime needed to push the story even further. It also indicates that the story will be bigger than Season 1, especially now that several new characters have been added.
The finale teased the new additions, which include King Shark, Nosferata, and Khalis. Additionally, Task Force M now answers to the Bride, which will create more drama given her quick-tempered nature and love of violence. Lorey also told The Direct the lineup would be "at least somewhat accurate" when the show returns, so a surprise or two may still be waiting.
King Shark arrives as a proven scene-stealer from The Suicide Squad, while a vampire and a mummy widen the monster-movie palette that made the first season feel unlike anything else on superhero television. These elements, alongside an experienced writer and producer like Lorey, give Season 2 the potential to be one of the best entries of the DCU.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
