‘Harley Quinn’ is quite simply one of the best animated TV shows in history, and one of the best ‘comics to screen’ adaptations in years.
The central story of this season (last season was Harley finding her independence from Joker) is the realisation that Harley and Ivy aren’t just best friends, they are in love, and the series brilliantly depicts the ups and downs along the way to them realising this. (I’ll dive into all this much more in the bottom half of the review with spoilers, which will be marked as such).
As for the rest of the characters this season, we get a lot less Batman and Joker, although they do appear and could be set to have much bigger roles again going forward, but for such great characters, they aren’t particularly missed, as there are so many to take their place.
Jim Gordon remains one of the funniest characters on the show and his story is further complicated this week when his daughter Barbara steps up in Batman’s absence and becomes Batgirl.
There are so many other great characters this season, a raft of all the classic villains from season 1, the Justice League, a newly introduced Catwoman, Darkseid, and many more, but the other stand out characters for me were King Shark and Bane.
Both are very much supporting characters but every time they are on screen they steal the show, with brilliant voice work and hilarious lines.
*Below features spoilers for Harley Quinn Season 2.
The hints began early in the season, but the second half of this season was almost entirely focused on this. From the kiss, to the fling at the bachelorette party, right up until Ivy’s wedding to Kite-Man.
It deals with Ivy’s repressed feelings and sexuality, Harley’s love for Ivy but also her irresponsible behaviour, and many more complex topics that people don’t often see in this sort of animation.
The ending of the season is perfect, with Ivy and Harley finally admitting their love for each other and riding off into the sunset, Thelma and Louise style. A great Easter egg is that the car they drive off in is the same car from the classic Harley and Ivy scene in 1993 in ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ showing yet again the attention to detail in this show.
The title card at the climax of the episode reads ‘The End?’ and while this would be a perfect ending to the show, I think ‘Harley Quinn’ is such a perfect series that it deserves to run for so many more seasons beyond its initial two (hopefully we will have an update on the shows future soon, potentially at August’s DC Fandome event).
Rating = 4.5/5
