Harley Quinn Season 2 Episode 7
And it was all going so well… after Harley and Ivy successfully took out most of the Injustice League, things were looking up for the pair. Ivy is engaged to Kite Man. Harley is finally free from the Joker, or at least we thought she was. After accidentally awakening the Clown Prince of Crime from his acid-induced normalcy, the terrible twosome were caught by Two-Face. And as this new episode starts, we join them in a very questionable courtroom. With Bane presiding, the duo are condemned to life in a very familiar looking prison filled with iconic Batman rogues. No, we’re not visiting Arkham this time around but instead The Pit, a place made famous by Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. That’s all this episode takes from Nolan, though, as no women die and it’s actually a light-hearted romp with a happy end. But we’ll get to that later as before the big moment Harley and Ivy plan to escape The Pit via a comedy show, which is – as you can imagine – a ridiculous setup. It’s actually funny that after so much buildup to Harley and Ivy’s eventual relationship this is the closest that the second season has had to a filler episode. That’s not to say there isn’t fun to be had in “There’s No Place to Go But Down.” It’s filled to the brim with hilarious villains like Victor Zsasz, Killer Croc, and Bane. Silly jokes and the standard Harley crudeness abound. But it all feels a little bit like the team is just trying to get to the final moments, which of course they are. Ever since the animated series began fans have been wondering if the show will commit to the Harley/Ivy romance that has meant so much to so many. The first season didn’t deliver, instead hooking the latter up with Kite Man and setting up what would seem to be a slow burn journey of self discovery for both of the troubled yet powerful women. Harley Quinn has excelled at exploring the unexpected mundanity of the superhero world. That makes them potentially turning Harley and Ivy’s (maybe) love affair into a more realistic exploration of how it feels to fall in love with a friend or to have an awkward hookup with a workmate seem very fitting. We rarely get queer representation on screen and when we do it’s often delivered with a side order of trauma, or as a side order to a main course of the aforementioned horror. That makes many viewers hope for something fairytale-esque, a happy ending that many of us don’t get in real life. The end of the episode doesn’t make any promises either way, leaving the kiss open to interpretation. At this point we’re just as likely to see Ivy marry Kite Man as we are to see her and Harley ride off into the sunset.
