Following the events of Harley’s take down of the Joker in the first season of DC Universe’s Harley Quinn, the new season picks up with Gotham in complete shambles and the city up for grabs by Gotham’s criminal underbelly.
Scheduled to debut April 3, Harley Quinn season 2 will also welcome a few new faces including Barbara Gordon and Catwoman. co-showrunner Patrick Schumacker even goes to describe Selina as Poison Ivy’s Lady Gaga.
This new season not only introduce new characters however, but will also explore Harley and Ivy’s romantic tension and how that will affect their relationship.
Newsarama had the chance to talk to Schumacker and his co-showrunner Justin Halpern about what fans can expect from this upcoming season. We talk in-depth about Harley and Ivy’s relationship, how this shift will affect Ivy’s romance with Kite Man, and take a deep dive into Batgirl and Catwoman’s debuts on the show.
Newsarama: Patrick, to jump straight into it, what can you tease about Harley Quinn Season 2?
Patrick Schumacker: It picks up right where the first season left off. Gotham is in shambles, quickly into the first episode we find out, sort of inspired by the “No Man’s Land” comic book run, the city has been divvied up by several of the high ranking members of Gotham’s rogues’ gallery. So, we track Harley as she makes her way in this new post-apocalyptic world of these territories. All the
while, over the first season, Harley’s starting to realize her relationship with Ivy and her view of Ivy is changing into something more than the friendship that they had.
Nrama: How do you feel the sophomore season is different from your first? How do you feel the first helped you build to these moments?
Schumacker: We had the advantage of writing them all back-to-back – we did 26 episodes all in a row. There was kind of a nice consistency there and the ability to have season one fresh in our minds as we jumped right into season two.
Justin Halpern: Season one we really wanted to make sure that it was just about self-discovery and Harley extricating herself from a bad relationship and we wanted to play that – as crazy as it sounds, for a show so fucking batshit, we wanted to play that out as realistically as we could.
Like how hard it is to break up with somebody you’ve been with for a long time, who was also really abusive, and we felt like that takes a long time to do. You can’t just be like I’m done with you and then it’s over. We wanted to spend that first season doing that and getting Harley to a place where in the second season her mind is cleared enough to start to ask the question, what do I want now that I’m not living my life for someone else? What is it that I want?
And that’s really what the second season becomes about. I think it helps that we spend 13 episodes before asking that question because I think otherwise it wouldn’t have been as fun to explore all the different avenues of what Harley thinks she wants in the second season. That was the benefit that the first season allows the second season to just be this really fun ride that ultimately becomes emotionally complex, but it allows us to do that.
Nrama: We see a few familiar faces in the trailer, including Catwoman and Batgirl. Can you tease a bit about their appearances?
Schumacker: Episode two of season two is the first appearance of Barbara Gordon. When we meet her, she’s a college student in Gotham and her university has been commandeered by the Riddler. So, that episode becomes a bit of a Batgirl origin story. She’s kind of coping with living under lockdown with The Riddler as the dean of this university. Also, her father, Jim Gordon, is her roommate – kind of against her will. He’s shacking up with her while he is spiraling towards his lowest points. So, his misery along with the absence of Batman and because of her determination, she ends up becoming Batgirl.
Then Catwoman shows up right after that in episode three of Season 2, episode 16 overall. She’s an old friend of Ivy’s, the only person in the world that Ivy melts over with admiration towards. The way we portray her is that she’s just cooler than cool, just gives zero f***s, and Ivy gets uncharacteristically giddy when she’s around her. Like she’s just this icon, she’s Ivy’s Lady Gaga.
That sort of defines their dynamic and Catwoman comes into the picture when Harley and Ivy need to extricate a certain weapon, which is under lock and key, at the National History Museum, which has been booby trapped and they need someone who is experienced in being slippery around booby traps. So Catwoman is a no-brainer and that is what unites the Gotham City Sirens.
Halpern: There’s a writer on our show named Sarah Peters who introduced this idea that sometimes you just have this friend where everything they wear just looks good and then you buy that same stuff that they wear and you look like shit. And she was like I want that for Catwoman. And I remember when she pitched that in the room, we we’re all like, that’s a really interesting thing to build around that personality type.
Nrama: In many different versions of Batman continuity, Jim Gordon does not know his daughter is Batgirl; is this something you wanted to continue with your version of Jim and Barbara Gordon?
Schumacker: We do get to it later in the season that she becomes a vigilante and Gordon does not know the wiser. He even bristles with the fact that there’s someone who’s acting in Batman’s place, because he’s so moony over Batman, and even though Batman is gone and there really are no vigilantes in Gotham anymore other than Batgirl – he’s kind of like “Who’s Batgirl? She’s ridiculous. I mean, Batman’s amazing, but Batgirl she’s ridiculous.”
Then they end up becoming unwitting partners at one point in the show. Even then he’s oblivious to the fact that it’s his own daughter so we lean into the comedy of that. Just the comic book logic that Clark Kent could never be recognized as Superman by wearing a pair of Warby Parkers.
Then eventually things happen – he gets wise, I’ll leave it at that. But other than that, I’ll say, Barbara is very much a part of Gordon’s redemption story. I think one of the reasons that DC allowed us to portray Gordon as so pathetic at times is because we always promised and tried to deliver a redemption story at some point.
Halpern: We would get the note like every week they’re like maybe this is the week Gordon starts to clean himself up and we’re like no, not yet.
Nrama: He shaves that 5 o’clock shadow that’s when we know he’s okay. Back to Catwoman – over the years in the comics, Selina has been playing a balancing act between good and evil. Leaning more towards good these days, do you try to do the same with your version of the character? Is she a hero, a villain, or someone who plays both sides?
Schumacker: I don’t think that we ever portrayed her as a hero. I think we portray her as an ally to Harley and Ivy, but I think she’s a bit of a sellsword. She’s looking out for number one. That’s what defines her movements in the story, even though she’s come to help Ivy, maybe there’s something else in it for her that trumps that.
Nrama: What can you tease about Harley and Ivy’s budding romance?
Schumacker: It’s steered towards a romantic relationship in the second season, that was always part of the plan. We wanted to make sure that the first season was just focused on Harley extricating herself from her relationship from the Joker, going out on her own, very focused on the career, very focused on rising up through the ranks of Gotham’s criminal underbelly. We thought her jumping into another relationship right off the bat might file the teeth off of Harley’s other drive.
We knew with the second season, once she kind of figured out that aspect of her identity, that we wanted to explore her relationship with Ivy, the complexities of it, and to move into that direction that had been done in the comics before. We thought it was time to explore that in more overt ways than had been explored in animation or any version. We’re pretty overt with it in season 2. It’s 13 episodes, it’s not a thing that we jumped into. It’s definitely the payoff for the end of the season. It’s the big focus of the end of the season. But along the way shit happens. They do stuff.
Halpern: We tried to play the reality of how messy, uncomfortable, and awkward it would be to figure out that you’re in love with your best friend. It’s messy, it takes a while, and it’s not smooth at all. And there are definitely a lot of two steps forward, one step back kind of thing going on.
Schumacker: Yeah, in love with your best friend, who happens to be in a relationship that does not seem to make sense on paper at all. Even though Ivy and Kite Man are very well intentioned and they care about each other – as much of a lovable loser Kitman is he really does care for Ivy. It complicates things.
Nrama: Will you explore Ivy and Harley’s sexual identity? Do you put a label on their relationship?
Schumacker: I don’t think that they necessarily label it, I don’t know how to put it other than that they’re physical with each other then it becomes much deeper than that as the season progresses.
There’s moments of involuntary lust, I would say, despite those complications that would bring to their lives there are things that happen between the two of them and then they have to hash that out. Like, “Why did we do that? What does that mean? Maybe we shouldn’t do that because of where at least one of us is in her life right now? That was a mistake, is it, maybe not?”
I don’t want to give away this whole season, but I suppose they are putting a label on it by the end of the day. Justin, do you think that’s fair to say that we do actually label it?
Halpern: Yes, I think they do. We tried to think of it in a way that they would actually talk about it with each other. We along with the other writers in the writer’s room, tried to figure out how it would be stepped between them, but I think it’s pretty clear that it’s labeled by the end of the season.
Nrama: You touched upon Kite Man a little bit, what is his relationship like with the team – especially Harley, because that has to be awkward?
Halpern: Harley thinks Kite Man is kind of a dope and is completely unworthy of Ivy at the start of the season, and I think that’s what we were kind of going for.
Ivy is someone who has a lot of social anxiety and doesn’t socialize a lot, period. Harley even calls her out on it in the season – “You just started dating I don’t know that you know exactly what you know you’re looking for.” Then Ivy is like you were just with somebody who tried to kill you like 20 times. Maybe you shouldn’t be giving relationship advice.
But I think through the season, Harley and Kite Man’s relationship evolves. She begins to understand Kite Man more. I don’t think she thinks he’s a genius, but there is a respect for him by the end of the season.
Nrama: Ensemble shows usually have more people join the team as the show goes on. Will this happen on Harley Quinn?
Halpern: We like introducing other characters into the show and maybe one or two of them eventually may end up in the crew, but it just gets hard to manage that many regular characters in the crew and be able to actually give them the screen time to be a satisfying character that has an interesting point of view that people want to see. Logistic wise it becomes difficult.
Schumacker: I think it’s fair to say that the second season shakes up the crew by the end of it.
Halpern: Yeah, shakes it up a lot.
Schumacker: Then that moving into a sensible season three, which by the way we have heard nothing of a pickup yet or anything like that. Besides Justin and I just noodling on it in our spare time, we have not formulated a full arc for season three. But I think it’s fair to say if we’re lucky and the show continues that the crew will look a little different moving forward.
Nrama: To wrap, do you think there’s a standout character this season – an MVP if you will?
Halpern: Besides our core characters, we definitely gave Bane a lot more screen time in the second season then we did in the first. Man, I don’t know that’s a good question Kat.
Schumacker: Yeah, that is a really tough call. If I can duck that question and just tell you the episode that I’m really looking forward to the most.
There’s an episode, it’s episode 22 overall, I don’t know the episode number in Season 2. I think I flagged it on Twitter as an important one. It will air sometime in May. Let’s just call it a girl trip to Themyscira with Harley, Ivy, Catwoman, and a couple of other spoilerly friends that has huge ramifications on Harley and Ivy’s relationship, while also having a musical number that has been in the works for a very long time that is very ridiculous and we’re very happy with. I’m very excited.