The Suicide Squad is dead, kind of. Long live the Suicide Squad kind of. Almost a full year after its launch, RocksteadysSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaguecame to an end this week with its last major update. Said ending is a bit of an odd duck: after finally whittling down the final Brainiacs health bars, players watch an animated cutscene narrated by Harley Quinn wherein the Squad and the living, now-free Justice League members who Brainiac had clonedand had been on the receiving end of the Squads sometimes juvenile brutalityteam up to take the Coluan down before going off to set everything right, both in their universe and others the various Brainaics terrorized. Its a somewhat definitive end that also feels like it came suddenly, especially when you think about how quickly Warner Bros. wanted to clean its hands of this project. In any case, the question hovering aroundSuicide Squadis whats next, particularly for Rocksteady. The answer is simple, but also not, when we look at the studios contemporaries. After failing to get its Anthemrework going, BioWare pivoted to remastering the Mass Effecttrilogy and beginning full development on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Going by that logic, youd think wed be due someBatman: Arkhamremasters to ease Rocksteady back into the single-player swing, butReturn to Arkhamexists, and Arkham Knightturns 10 years old this June. (WB Montreal, which madeArkham Origins,helped withSquadsdevelopment and recently cut staff, as did Rocksteady shortly after.) Last June, sources told Bloomberg Rocksteadys immediate future is helping put together a directors cut of 2023s Hogwarts Legacy,then we dont know, but its presumably a single-player mulligan to get the studio back on track.Online, the popular expectation and hope is another Batman game, preferably one that just writesSuicide Squadoff as non-canon or doesnt address it. By now, wouldnt the studio be better served getting out of the Batman hole and tackling another DC hero? Before Squadsrelease, various (and later debunked) rumors claimed Rocksteady was making a Superman game, and of this games high points, its recreation of Metropolis is considered pretty good. And if not the Man of Steel, literally any other hero who isnt Wonder Woman would do at this point. By now, this teams been working on Batman for just over 15 years, and its more than time to let someone new take a crack at the cowl, either in Gothams present or future. Rocksteady Alternatively, it might do Rocksteady some good to get out of the DC cage completely and make its own thing. To date, its sole non-DC game is its debut title, 2006s Urban Chaos: Riot Response.Something brand new probably shouldve been the direction to go after Knight,but this is as good an opportunity as any to move on. Returningto the Arkham well once more would only make things ever weirder than it was when we learned this was canon to those games. Making the team spend years and millions of dollars creating a single-player apology isnt the best use of anyones time, and its not like we arent getting another Bat-game eventually. For all the fears folks have had about Insomniac becoming a Marvel games machine, thats very much happened with Rocksteady, which is clearly full of talented people who should get the opportunity to spread their wings. Recently, Naughty Dog and Ryu Ga Gatoku teased out their first wholly new properties in years, and Id be curious to know what Rocksteady could make outside the confines of a famous comic book property. Wouldnt it be interesting to see what an original sci-fi, horror, western, or whatever else game looks like from this team? In a fair world, Suicide Squad would get to get out on better, less compromised terms, or at the very least, Rocksteady wouldnt be stuck footing the bill for it. As is, we can only hope WB and its leadership will just let the game studio figure out what it wants to do with what its best at, and cook from there. Other studios have recovered from worse, but the ability to walk away from less than stellar titles isnt being afforded for every developer these days, and that would be a crappy full circle moment for a team thats built up a lot of goodwill up to now. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, whats next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.