For several years now, Fox's GOTHAM has been teasing fans with the debut of Joker's twisted, tainted love, Harley Quinn. In fact, the showrunners have gone out of their way on numerous occasions to bait fans with her appearance. In the past, those close to the show have mentioned the character in several interviews and even went so far as to feature "someone" who looked and sounded an awful lot like the hyena-loving psychopath in the show. Yeah, we all remember that Arkham Asylum jail cell tease, GOTHAM!
Oh, and there was also that time when David Mazouz, who plays young Bruce Wayne on the show, stated flat-out that Harley was indeed headed to the crime-ridden alleyways of DC's most notorious metropolis. As many fans have grown tied of the "will they or won't they" nature of the situation, showrunner John Stephens has recently come forward to give fans a definitive statement on the matter.
“It’s not going to happen,” Stephens told CBR point blank during an extensive interview about the series’ upcoming season. “Let’s put it out there. The discussions we’ve been having is – Look, we know Harley Quinn is never going to be on our show.” Heh, is it me or does Stephens sound a might frustrated by the inquiry? To be fair, I'm sure that he gets this question a lot, and is clearly bored with having to set the record straight. It makes sense, especially after Stephens shared a similar statement with fans of the show while attending last summer's San Diego Comic-Con. "I had thought I had said and I might have not said it: We'll see a Harley Quinn-esque character, but we're never going to see Harley Quinn. Sorry about that."
For a while now, fans of the show have speculated that Erin Richard's Barbara Kean would indeed go on to become the character. While little about this notion makes sense (to me) in regard to Quinn's history, GOTHAM has painted Kean as a Harley-like character on several occasions. In addition to being head-over-heels crazy, Kean has also been spotted wearing Harley's iconic color combinations on the show from time to time. While the Harley purist in me would stand firmly against Kean transforming into Harley Quinn, I can understand why fans would have wandered down that dark path of thinking. When talking to CBR, Stephens weighed in on this as well by saying, “There are elements of that Harley Quinn personality that we have liked, that sense of fun and anarchy, that we said, 'Well, we can actually have those qualities embodied in Barbara without actually having to do Harley herself,'” Stephens told CBR. “I think Erin Richards carried it off really well.”
For me, nothing about Barbara becoming Harley makes sense. Richard's certainly has the look, and the chops, but shares next to nothing in common with Quinn's sordid history. I personally think it's best to leave Harley out of the GOTHAM loop, regardless of how much the show goes out of its way to do weird and wild things with the Batman mythos.
What do you think of all this? Were you hoping that Harley Quinn would one day join the cast of Fox's "Elseworlds" Batman show? Let us know in the comments section below!
GOTHAM returns to Fox tonight!