Season three of Harley Quinn appears to have found a winning formula. Each episode begins with some gnawing romantic disconnect between Harley and Ivy, and even though it may not end up the central focus, it usually sets the stage for an episode in which those tensions intersect with the larger plot — usually in minor ways — and a conclusion where the two continue to depend on one another. The show may still be a farcical comedy, but at its heart, the new season is a pretty nuanced relationship drama, exemplified this week by Ivy’s entwined (heh) short temper and self-doubts and, furthermore, by a surprising Catwoman-Batman subplot involving musical couples therapy.
While Ivy searches for her kidnapped plant friend, Frank, by accessing “the green†— a shared plant consciousness rendered up close in early 2000s X-Men opening-credits fashion — a supportive, enthusiastic Harley attempts to check in and cheerlead while crunching potato chips. It’s well-meaning, of course, but ultimately a distraction. However, distraction turns out to be exactly what Ivy needs, since she can’t seem to use her neural abilities to their full potential. As it happens, the couple has long-standing (and long-forgotten) plans with Nora Fries a.k.a. Mrs. Freeze (Rachel Dratch), the recently thawed-out wife of Mr. Freeze who’s been catching up on 25 years of lost time by living her best life. Which, in this case, means adopting a college party-girl persona — keg stands and all.
Of course, when you’ve got a big project on the brain, playtime becomes work time, so the trio’s hangout soon turns into a New Orleans side quest to capture and freeze DC’s Lovecraftian mainstay, Swamp Thing, the only creature with a more powerful connection to “the green†than Ivy. At a NOLA dive bar, the ladies run into suave superhero exorcist John Constantine — voiced by Matt Ryan, who played the live-action character on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow — whose connection to the occult is the perfect avenue to finding Swamp Thing. However, rather than Constantine’s usual fetch-quests to open various hell dimensions, the solution turns out to be hilariously simple: Everyone gets plastered, and when they wake up, they nab Constantine’s magical map that demarcates Swamp Thing’s location with some dashed lines and an “X†à la cartoon pirate treasure. Harley and Ivy’s verbal jokes may have become repetitive (in that each one depends largely on repetition; in this case, of the word beignet, a fried New Orleans–style pastry), but the show’s visual gags, and its jabs at the larger DC universe, remain on point.
Speaking of which, Bruce Wayne is finally granted some emotional focus, as Selina — on receiving Bruce’s gift of her very own toothbrush to keep at his place — decides she needs some time to herself. She displaces Clayface and King Shark from her penthouse to get some much needed R and R in her bathtub, but Bruce can’t bring himself to leave her the hell alone even for a day. There’s a fun parallel between the two romances, in which Ivy and Selina are both fierce, independent types, while Harley and Bruce’s unresolved issues (Joker trauma and survivor’s guilt, respectively) make them the clingy ones in their relationships. However, while Harley is (overly) enthusiastic, Bruce is overbearing, going so far as to show up at Selina’s to shower her with even more presents: a pair of Persian cats. While Harley at least makes some kind of effort to stay cognizant of Ivy’s needs, even though she often fails, Bruce seems far more concerned with his own desire to stave off loneliness and fill the void left by his murdered parents. He even names the kittens Martha and Thomas after his mum and dad.
Alfred, ever Bruce’s watchful protector, sees the emotional disaster afoot and tries to get ahead of it. Unfortunately, he does this by drugging and kidnapping Bruce and Selina and forcing them to confront their inability to communicate. The resourceful butler employs the talents of Music Meister, a show-tune obsessed villain from kids’ show Batman: The Brave and the Bold reimagined here as an R&B singer and musical therapist, whose powers force the vigilante couple to sing emotional confessions in the form of a dazzling, kaleidoscopic music video. Bruce doesn’t want to be alone. Selina does. It’s simple, and yet it gets to the heart of each character in moving and amusing fashion.
Harlivy’s disconnect isn’t quite so binary, but with much of the focus falling on Ivy this week, the Bruce-Selina conundrum raises some questions as she makes her way through the Louisiana swamp — specifically, as she luxuriates in the natural surroundings, far away from Gotham’s concrete Monopoly board (even if the humidity does mess up her hair). Between this and her conception of Eden in the season’s premiere, it’s hard not wonder if this is where she belongs or if she and Harley can make things work from a purely logistical and geographic standpoint — a looming possibility made all the more tragic when Harley is nothing but supportive, reminding Ivy not to be too self-critical.
However, before there’s time to ruminate on these details, Swamp Thing shows up (voiced by Sam Richardson). As these things normally go in Harley Quinn, this monstrous presence from the comics turns out to be a soft-spoken, regular dude who has a man-bun, loves chai, and instantly falls for wild-child Nora. It’s the kind of inversion that has become unsurprising in the series, which makes it all the more surprising when Swamp Thing, on discovering the trio’s plan to freeze him, does in fact lose his cool with Ivy and turns his swamp into a gloomy horror realm out of an Alan Moore comic. This leads to another dramatic inversion, in which it turns out this chilling transformation is underpinned by a simple emotional story: Swamp Thing and Ivy were once friends, but Swamp Thing was made to feel that Ivy only looked out for her own needs.
This realization helps Ivy better understand her reactions to Harley — like when she sharply shuts down Harley’s attempts to check in on her — and through some convenient mumbo jumbo about possessing the power all along (which the show also lampshades), she’s able to get further in touch with “the green†and track down Frank after all. A happy ending — or at least it would be if not for its cliffhanger twist: It turns out that Frank’s kidnapper is Bruce Wayne, and he has caught wind of Ivy’s attempts to supercharge Gotham’s plant life. Uh oh!
Jokes Gallery
• This week’s funniest moments all happen in one conversation, when Bruce presents Selina with the Persian cats, so I’m going to transcribe the whole thing here:
Selina: Is the only thing you know about me that I like cats?
Bruce: These cats are special. They’re Persian. I named them Martha and Thomas.
Selina: After your dead parents?
Bruce: I … didn’t realize. I just considered them to be strong Christian names.
Selina: I’m not taking those Anglo-Saxon pseudo-parent cats, Bruce.
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• As a bonus, Bruce continuing the gag while speaking to Alfred (after dressing the cats up as his parents) is just as good:
“Mother — uh, Martha, you’ve hardly touched your tuna.â€
“I’m fine, Alfred. Soon I’ll learn cat and be able to communicate with my parents.â€