Review: Harley Quinn “Bottle Episode (But Not a ‘Bottle Episode’)”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While Bruce, Joker, and Lois fight past Brainiac drones, Harley, Ivy, and Sharon make their way to the ship to stop Lena.

OUR TAKE

We reach the penultimate episode of the season, and possibly the series, bringing every plot thread together for the grand finale and making things feel actually pretty full circle in some ways. A reformed Joker is fighting WITH a reformed Bruce who actually gets to show off some of his Batman Badassery for the first time since…the third season? Maybe by the end, he’ll don the cape and cowl again and it’ll feel pretty earned given this specific Bruce’s journey, especially alongside THIS Joker. Lois is also a character who has been around since the first season, although her emotional connection to all of this feels kinda surface level. Like yeah, having complex feelings about having this reliance on and link to Superman is kind of interesting, but we really haven’t seen a lot of that throughout her sporadic appearances in the past few episodes and it’s kind of late to start building it up now. And then there’s the stuff happening with Bane and Clayface pretending to be Perry White, which looks like it’ll be a pathway for Lois to take over the Daily Planet, but felt like a poor use of two characters I really enjoyed more during the early parts of this series.

Speaking of characters I enjoyed more in the early seasons, Harley, Ivy, and Lex…and Sharon. I mean, Sharon’s just there to make Neurotic Jewish Mother jokes, so that sums her up. Lex, meanwhile, is now on his FOURTH VOICE ACTOR. We had the great Giancarlo Esposito for the first four seasons, then when he had a scheduling conflict they ended up changing him out for the great LATE Lance Reddick for most of the Kite Man show…but then Reddick sadly passed away, forcing them to throw in Amuche Chukudebelu for the last two episodes. And now, for the last two episodes of THIS season, Wendell Pierce, who will be playing Perry White in the upcoming James Gunn-directed Superman movie, is here to check another Superman character off his list. All this to say that now Lex has joined with his attention-starved sister Lena to become the leaning-a-bit-too-far-into-incestuous power couple to kick off the finale. Oh yeah, and Harley and Ivy are also there. Did you think they were gonna break up? Well no, they weren’t. And you were dumb for thinking that. But yeah, one more episode to go, and I’ve actually not hated the last few of these, so here’s hoping they can, in some way, stick the landing on what has been a pretty mediocre season.