Review: Harley Quinn “Devil’s Snare”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Harley and her squad do their best against the giant killer trees, but Ivy’s powers have no effect on them. Jim Gordon seems pretty eager to roll through the streets in tanks, but Batman just tells him to evacuate the park…not that he listens. The Justice League soon arrive and understandably blame Harley’s group for this, but the lasso of truth reveals they aren’t responsible. Queen of Fables then shows up and imprisons the league in her book, but then sends Harley’s team up a beanstalk, meaning she’s likely teamed up with the legion. Their only hope seems to be Kiteman, who Ivy admits to dating. God help us all.

Once back on the ground, they use Gordon’s tank to aim at the Legion’s HQ, but it blows up on its own. Rising from the ashes, Joker’s tower…towers over Gotham with the Queen of Fables at his side. The only solution turns out to be Ivy drinking some plant enhancing juice to grow to kaiju size, but she also reconciles with Harley and…CONSIDERS Kite Man’s marriage proposal. She then makes quick work of the fear plants while Harley’s crew storm the castle and kill the queen, but then Ivy gets a mortal wound from Joker.

OUR TAKE

Anyone else feel like this one fell back a bit too hard on the typical superhero show tropes? We have a swarm of giant monsters that threaten a whole city and our protagonists having an albeit flimsy reason to save it, we have them needing to go up against AN EVEN GREATER EVIL in the form of the Joker and the real heroes like the Justice League being taken out early on, and of course the cliffhanger best friend death after both a reformed friendship AND a marriage proposal. It’s not quite as forced as in Suicide Squad, but I did get a real impression that this was trying to build up Harley and her crew as HEROES when they should be doubling down on the villains these people are supposed to be.

Heck, I don’t think many of the jokes really landed for me this time either, which is surprising for this show. I didn’t get much from the Jazzfest gag, the thorns giving Sy his walking back is taken straight from Family Guy, and most everything else fell kinda flat. Just about the only thing that got a chuckle out of me was Ivy killing a tree monster and saying “oh, it was just a kid” after counting the rings. I understand that this is probably the season finale (at least I assume, based on how things are building up) but I think the main strength of this show has been how Harley and company get up to character driven selfish antics and NOT making them be in positions to save people to make them likable. They’re already plenty likable, they’re just bad people!

But yeah, next week looks to be the season finale, where Harley comes full circle and confronts the Joker with his biggest weakness, Batman. It certainly feels like the best way to conclude things from where they started, but with the Legion of Doom supposedly destroyed, what does this mean for Harley’s quest to make a name for herself as a villain? Hard to say, but hopefully, however it’s resolved, we get some solid comedy out of it. Harley Quinn as a show has made its impact, at least on me, by standing out through how different it is from its sibling shows, so I hope it keeps to that in both the finale and future seasons. If not, well…that will just be a damn shame, I guess.