Harley Quinn showrunners won’t break Harlivy up
Harley Quinn showrunners seem to know their audience, as they’ve pledged in a new interview that they’ll never break up the Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy (also known as Harlivy) pairing on their show.
The Harley Quinn animated series is currently airing its third season on HBO Max, conveying a new, but exciting relationship between the two anti-heroines after they ran away together at the end of Season 2. The couple even starred in their very own comic, but that hasn’t stopped fans from worrying whether Harlivy will face trouble in their relationship that’ll lead to a breakup.
However, as established in a recent interview with the AV Club, showrunners Justin Halpen and Patrick Schumacker have promised not to break the couple up – despite some fans of the show wishing just that.
One of the questions asked by AV Club was whether there was a part of canon that the two showrunners simply didn’t want to bother with on the show. “For me, we still have the occasional fan reaction of “I don’t like Harley and Ivy together. She should get back with the Joker,” which we’re never going to do.” Schumacker answered. “Harley and Ivy will never break up in the series as long as we have a say. That’s something that we never want to touch again.”
The showrunners also discussed working up to the relationship between Harley and Ivy, which had always been hinted at even during the show’s first season where Harley had to figure out who she was after her breakup with Joker. This exact same phase of trying to find out who she is was also touched upon in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, as well as Cathy Yan’s Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey. Because of how messed up Harley and her relationship with the Joker was, the two wanted to give Harley some time to heal.
“This person is so fucked up and just coming out of a terrible relationship.” Halpen told AV Club. “When have you ever in the history of human beings seen someone leave a terrible relationship that they’ve had for a really long time and instantly make the next relationship work perfectly? It doesn’t happen a lot. So we wanted to sort of taking our time with [Harley and Ivy’s relationship.]”
The two also discussed how, being two white straight men and telling a prominent queer story, they couldn’t have done as well as they have without the queer people that they work alongside. One standout, in particular, being Sabrina Jalees – a queer writer on season two of Harley Quinn. They told Halpen and Schumacker to restrain themselves from writing a ‘coming out’ story, which they both admit was their initial instinct.
“Probably left to our own devices, we would have fucked up.” Halpen said. “But because we had other people there who were like, “Hey, this is how it should be done.” It was like, “Oh, all right. Yeah, you’re right.”
Season 3 of Harley Quinn: The Animated Series is available to watch now on HBO Max.
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