James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad was one of the most fun films that we’ve gotten this year and it’s got a lot of people very excited about the upcoming Peacemaker spin-off on HBO Max. What a lot of people don’t know is that the relatively happy ending almost went in a much different direction. The news came out in a new interview between Gunn and Cinemablend.

Here’s what he had to say about his original ending plans:

“Waller blew up her head, after they went back to the prison. At which point, Harley tries to talk Bloodsport — Bloodsport’s freaking out, because he’s connected to this person, like a daughter. And he’s freaking out, and Harley is actually being sort of kind, in a weird way, trying to talk Bloodsport into just letting it go. But Bloodsport ends up shooting Waller in the heart with a combustible bullet and threatening to blow her up.”

“He shot her right below the heart with one of the exploding bullets, which we see Peacemaker using earlier in the movie. And so now she has to do what he says.

While a lot of fans might have actually gone for that ending, here’s why he decided to go the way he did:

“Just too dark for me. It didn’t really work for me. It didn’t really tell the story that I wanted to tell, which is much more about the characters’ different journeys, emotionally. And for me, really, the ending with Bloodsport petting the rat… that, to me, was the perfect ending for the movie.”