Harley Quinn Has the Best Bisexual Representation and Romance in Any Show Ever
Love is a risk. Even for superheroes and supervillains.
The Following Contains Spoilers for both seasons of Harley Quinn, Proceed at Your Own Risk
Harley Quinn is a character that I’ve felt done with for a long time. It’s not that I didn’t like her, she’s a fun bit of chaos that is a good injection in even the worst things she’s in. But there are just so many Harley Quinn things in the world. As one of DC’s most popular characters, she’s often just shoehorned into stuff and that made me tired of her.
Then 2020 happened and it actually brought to me a lot of good Harley Quinn media that I had a great time with. I enjoyed the live-action Birds of Prey movie more than most people, there was an amazing trade paperback called Harleen from Stejepan Sejic which I adored, and also this show.
The animated show took me a while to get around to. The handful of clips I saw beforehand made me think I wouldn’t like the sense of humor. It was also on the DC Universe app and I didn’t want to get a new streaming service. I just really never felt compelled to watch it.
But then something hit me in the middle of quarantine and I thought “eh why not let’s give it a shot”. I booted up HBO Max and I started my adventure through it.
And, oh man, did I have the wrong impression of this show because by episode 2, I was hooked.
I was enamored and engaged by this show's iteration of Gotham. It’s the first version of the city and DC lore I have felt invested in years. The characters are funny and fully fleshed out, and still utterly and completely true to their traditional selves while leaning on a more comedic edge.
Superman particularly is always a sticking point for me, because so many writers just misunderstand that character. Yet, this show’s version nails it in his short screen time. He’s powerful, yes, but he’s not a God in attitude. He’s just an everyman, and you completely get that with his back and forth conversations with Batman and Wonder Woman. He remains powerful but he talks like a normal person.
But let’s get to the heart of the show. The relationship between Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Kite Man, and Joker. Along with the emotional cores and conflicts, each of these four characters brings to the show.
What so many writers get wrong with Harley and Joker is how they handle their relationship. Most aren’t satisfied with just making them legitimately in love with each other with no abuse present. I actually think when writers take the interpretation that they are a legit healthy couple that it creates some of the more compelling stories with the character.
It’s kinda fun to see what type of person Joker would fall for and who would fall for him when they’re legitimately in love and have a healthy relationship while also being villains. It’s fun. Like an evil version of Gomez and Morticia Addams.
When writers do take the abuse angle it’s not that it’s a bad idea, it’s that it’s often mishandled. Because the audience likes the couple being together. So, if you continue to have them date after addressing all the abuse issues but not fixing any of them, it ends up saying something bad to its audience.
This show is the only time I ever feel like it handled the subject matter of abuse in a realistic way. It’s hard for Harley to leave and it takes the help and support of her friends to help her pull out of the relationship. When she does leave, she still struggles with the mental repercussions of the relationship. It isn’t a complete victory that she left, and she still needs time to deal with her trauma.
Just because she left didn’t heal her, and that’s not a topic most media ever wants to address. Because in a three-act structure it just makes more sense to go “and then the victim left the abuser and lived happily ever after.” But while that can (rarely) work for a story, it doesn’t make it realistic in any way.
The show wonderfully handled her recovery from the Joker which led to a very amazing development between her and Poison Ivy.
What I like about Harley and Ivy’s relationship in this cartoon compared to most of the comics, is that it feels like they are around each other for an actual reason. In most comics, I feel like just put them together to sexualize the characters, especially when they deal with the characters as a couple.
But in the show, I genuinely believe these two characters have a deep connection from their first scene together. They act like real friends do and have their own cadence of conversation. It’s instantly clear they have a deeper connection than Joker and Harley ever did.
Their friendship grows naturally as they eventually become each other’s significant other by the end of season 2. Normally when shows handle this style of story, female friends becoming lovers, it is often much more exploitative. When it isn’t exploitation, stories will often erase bisexuality by saying the women were gay all along and were just discovering themselves. Which is also fine and that is a valid experience that absolutely does happen in real life. But it’s nice for once to see a show showing bisexuality as a normal thing that doesn’t have to be explained away. It just is the way it is.
I’m still shocked at how well the show handles Harley’s and Ivy’s romance. Another thing the show does that I enjoyed was how Ivy grew to accept Harley’s love in particular.
Ivy was in a relationship with Kite Man before she got together with Harley, and they show didn’t take the easy way out of having him be a bad boyfriend. Kite Man had his own issues and he clearly wanted different things out of the relationship than Ivy did. But he still was a perfectly sincere, genuine person who wanted his girlfriend to be happy.
It made things feel that much more real, made the tension between her and Harley tenser, and made for some pretty good drama.
Because Ivy was happy enough in her relationship with Kite Man, it just led to a place she wasn’t interested in. And even Kite Man eventually picked up on that.
The fact that the relationship was actually nice made the stakes higher and added a level of relatability that engaged me as a viewer even more than if the story had been “Ivy is now the one who needs to be pulled out of a toxic relationship by Harley”.
Because that would’ve been the easy way out, and the most obvious story to tell that’s been done a thousand times.
Another way in which the show doesn’t take the easy way out is Joker’s character arc. He seemingly dies at the end of season one, but that would have just been too simple.
The decision to make Joker actually grow as a person, loses his memory, and regain it to find out he basically became a boring, suburban dad was wild as hell.
Even wilder than that, once he regained his Joker persona he still retained his growth as a character. He tried to go back to his old ways but it was no longer satisfying to him.
So he decided to go back to the woman he fell in love with when he lost his memory.
This show had Joker wear cargo shorts and move to the suburbs to help raise children in a positive environment. And more than that, doing this felt earned and tonally consistent.
I think the Joker and Ivy character arcs in particular sums up best why I like this show, and why it’s bisexual representation hits my bi heart like a truck.
The show, while set in a comic universe and being about magic and superheroes that focus on comedy, treats their characters like people.
The issues and storylines they deal with are often grounded in very realistic and empathetic wants and needs. The show still has villains that are reprehensible and will never change, like Dr. Psycho, but they’re the outliers.
Most of the heroes and villains in this show are just trying to get by. Sure, they need to go through their wacky comic book schemes, but their reasoning for doing so is grounded in reality. Whether it’s they want money to pay for rent or they’re trying to get back at an ex.
These characters are petty, they’re flawed, and they often step in the way of their own growth. Just like regular people.
Because of this, they feel much more fleshed out than any iteration of these same characters I’ve seen in comics, TV, or film.
So when a show has multiple characters be a part of the LGBTQ community, and it’s not a big deal and no one really cares, that’s saying something powerful.
That’s what normalizing things is. And I just wish more media would take that approach.
You can find more of this writer by following him here on Medium, or here on Instagram where he’s currently upset he can’t go to that cool looking Nintendo theme park that opens in Japan soon.
