Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy Will Stay a Couple In a Potential Third Season of the DC Universe Cartoon
Harley Quinn finished its second season on DC Universe but isn’t renewed for a third yet. If one is greenlit for the streamer we know for sure we are getting more of the Harley-Poison Ivy ship.
Showrunner and executive producer Justin Halpern told SyFy their on-again, off-again romance would continue in season 3 without impediment or cessation.
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Halpern stated that keeping them together and mentally stable, as unlikely and weird as that sounds, is the goal.
He explains, “For us, we wanted to make sure that the characters were in a mentally healthy… it sounds crazy, because it’s a silly cartoon where we do lots of sh*t. But we wanted to make sure the characters were in a mentally healthy place where we could do a Season 3 and not have to make it about, ‘Are they going to break up? Are they not going to break up?’ and just have them be together.”
He wanted the show to take the time and build to Harley and Ivy hooking up to avoid criticism.
Halpern details, “Putting Harley and Ivy together in our show was always going to be messy, and so we didn’t want it to be something that happened quickly. We didn’t want anyone to say, ‘Oh, they just threw them together just to throw them together. They didn’t do the work’.”
Therefore, season one was about “self-discovery” between the two, as Halpern put it, “We wanted to make sure, in the first season, that it was just that Harley self-discovery. And we felt like it was hard to do a self-discovery story if you take Harley out of one relationship and put her into another one.”
He added, “And then also we thought, ‘I don’t think she’s ready to be in a good relationship right after getting out of a historically bad one’.”
Self-discovery and coming out of her shell was essential for Ivy’s character in the series, Halpern continues:
“And when we were drawing the characters and figuring out their specific personalities to our show, Ivy felt like someone we were catching right as she was learning to like people — or at least some people — and learning to come out of her shell because of Harley a little bit. So she was in this very emotionally closed place up until the moment our show starts.”
Halpern also wants to avoid a third-season arc where the only stake is “Will they or won’t they break up?”
He explains, “When we were talking about where a third season could go, the first thing we both said is, ‘We don’t want to do a third season where it feels like the stakes are [whether] Harley and Ivy stay together.’”
He continues, “It’s much more interesting to do a show about how you navigate these very different personalities being in a relationship. And what are the fun things that can come out of that? What are the outside influences that can make that relationship tough but without the stakes being, ‘Are they going to break up? Are they not?’”
“So yeah, if there’s a third season, which I hope there will be, the stakes will not be, ‘Are Harley and Ivy going to stay together?’ They’re a couple,” Halpern added.
Where does that leave Kite Man other than left at the altar at the end of season two? According to co-EP and showrunner Patrick Schumacker, he figured in over time and became a favorite among the writers, so there may be something for him. They’d have to figure it out:
“Kite Man was originally just a plot device and a cipher for male supervillains that aren’t that powerful — or, in Kite Man’s case, don’t have any power but sort of act like they’re all-powerful. And then it just evolved because Kite Man became kind of a favorite character to write in the writer’s room.”
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And Joker? He was supposed to serve the function Harley had in their dynamic for decades, an accessory, said Halpern:
“We bring the Joker back for the first time in Season 2, but we bring him back almost as a plot device to tell the story of when Harley really fell in love with Ivy for the first time. And somebody in the writer’s room, I can’t remember who it was, made the point that in so many Harley stories she’s the plot device for Joker. So it was a fun thing to do in this show, to have him service her story and be a plot device in a more important relationship for her.”
Whatever happens, they might want to change the title to “Harley & Ivy” if season three is all about their coupling. Criminal tag team, besties, or lovers, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy have been a thing since the 47th Batman: The Animated Series episode of the same name.
Both seasons of Harley Quinn stream exclusively on DC Universe.
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