Headscratchers / Harley Quinn (2019)

Replacing male trees with female trees

• Isn't the vast majority of tree species hermaphroditic?
• Also, how could Ivy of all people forget that male trees are needed for pollination?
  • She didn't. Her goal in this case wasn't about causing plant life to spread. It was to screw over Wayne Pharmaceuticals, as the lack of male trees would reduce pollen, and as such, there wouldn't be a need for the allergy medication they sell.

Why is Ivy vegetarian?

• There are a few explicit points that establish others having vegan or vegetarian dishes in reference to Ivy as part of her eco-minded characterization. The thing is, Ivy loves plants more than animals. While I can accept her opposing the meat industry and how much land gets clear-cut to be farmland just to feed livestock………I think as a self-identified eco-terrorist she would focus on tearing the industry apart rather than boycotting it. Also, multiple points equate sap and plant moisture to blood from Ivy’s perspective. I doubt she’d go full carnivore, but wouldn’t she be offended by plant-only diets?
  • Ivy might love plants, but is also a scientist and she knows plants are non-sentient (apart from Frank) which ethically means is okay to consume them. Many animal species in-universe (and in real life) are sentient but not sapient which is one of the reasons why a lot of people choose to go Vegan.

Where did Clayface go during the "big crazy moment" in Season 3?

• During Season 3, Clayface finally manages to get an acting gig in a big movie. He goes a bit mental with trying to research his role as Thomas Wayne, even going as far as to try and get pointers from a memory. During the Zombie Apocalypse, he learns that "absolutely everyone" is back in Gotham and runs off with no explanation. This is never acknowledged at any point going forward. So… where'd he go?
  • Given the circumstances, you'd think he'd head to the Wayne graves, but the only person who ends up there is King Shark.
  • Huh. I actually thought he was referring to Billy Bob Thornton but you're right, they don't really follow up on that.

The Fate of the GCPD (Season 3)

• In a Season 3 episode, the Gotham City Police Department gets dismantled. This leads to two problems later on:

1. Jim Gordon just up and ''vanished'' after this episode… After promising total commitment to his neglected daughter, albeit. Barbara doesn't acknowledge the change, nor does he show up in the season finale.
2. During the season finale, the mayor sets up a "sting operation". How…is that even possible when all the cops are out of a job?
   • From the looks of things, the Joker still has his goons, who are now taking over as the police.

Nightwing could be Harley's nemesis?

• Why does Harley never even consider seeking out Nightwing as her nemesis? He really is her good-guy equivalent, right down to outgrowing his sidekick position and forming his own team.
  • Between Batman's clear lack of parenting experience and Damian's appearance implying he's a Composite Character with Dick Grayson, there's a strong possibility Nightwing doesn't exist in this continuity.
  • Nightwing also has his own city of Bludhaven, Harley seems to want to stick to Gotham, kind of hard to have a rivalry with someone when you are rarely in the same town.
  • That didn't stop her from trying to get Superman...
    • In some continuities (recent ones in fact) Metropolis and Gotham are just a river apart. Superman's easy to reach, comparatively speaking.

Poison Ivy's tears

• What are those black tears-like in her eyes sometimes? We see Poison Ivy crying in the series, and her tears look normal. The explanation of the black fluids from her eyes as tears of physical pain do not make sense, since she had her chest pierced by a spear and her tears for the pain were normal. So, what are specifically those black tears?

Clayface impersonating Aquaman

• I mean, isn't he made of mud?
  • He can keep his body together with enough focus, even in water. Since water is a traditional weakness, consider it a power upgrade.

No use of normal weaponry?

• Why does everyone use such weird guns, even mundane criminals like the ones Harley and Joker kill at the beginning of the first episode? Even the old BTAS used normal guns, and that was a barely PG series overall.
  • It's Gotham. Do you want to be seen lugging around a conventional weapon while your colleagues/competitors are using state-of-the-art?
  • Pretty much every criminal in Gotham has been a villain henchman at some point in their career. Why would they go back to normal guns when they have some funky supervillain tech from their old job?
  • Gordon was seen using a normal gun. He's a cop and deals with normal criminals though, something not easily seen in the superhero genre let alone Gotham City.

King Shark tries CPR

• How does King Shark attempting CPR result in wrapping his mouth around Harley's head?
  • His mouth is too big (and he has no lips) to form a seal with someone else's mouth. Enclosing the entire head to force air into the mouth and nose actually makes sense. Well, that it and it's hilarious.
  • Do we really have to ask why a shark man with an oversized mouth gets a human head inside?

Ivy doesn't know about Giganta?

• In episode 3, Ivy sees Giganta on TV with Psycho and the subtitles say she is his wife. In episode 6 she wonders who Giganta is when she and Psycho end up seeing her. Why? Shouldn't Ivy know this stuff already?
  • Ivy doesn't really give a shit about anyone whose name isn't Harley. She probably couldn't be damned to remember who Psycho's wife is.
  • Seems like a small slip-up on the part of the writers. There's no reason Ivy, an avid TV watcher with an eye out for female supervillains, wouldn't recognize Giganta after seeing her leave Dr. Psycho on a talk show.

How does Harley not now know that Bruce Wayne is Batman?

• In episode 6, Harley steals a device from Wayne Tech that turns out to be a teleporter to the Batcave. After she found the device at Wayne Tech and ended up in the Batcave, how has she not worked out that Bruce Wayne is Batman?
  • It doesn't actually follow if you don't already know Batman's identity. As readers, we know that huge tech corporations are used as private laboratories by superheroes, especially in DC (Batman, Blue Beetle, Mr. Terrific, etc.) but it's not generally assumed to be the case. The logical conclusion is that Bruce Wayne is making technology for Batman (which often leads to Bruce Wayne Held Hostage when villains figure it out).
    • That or Harley just doesn't care. Most people could probably reason out Bruce is Batman, especially someone as smart as Harley. She'd never tell Joker since she probably knows it'd upset him.
    • She also ends up near the ceiling of the Batcave and ends up getting caught on a stalactite instead of standing somewhere near Batman or his stuff. She might just think it was a coincidence and that she's lucky she didn't teleport inside something.

The Justice Leaguers sure age gracefully

• The League sealed The Queen of Fables in The Tax Code "Thirty Years Ago" but they all still appear to be in their prime, as do a few normal characters like Commissioner Gordon. There's Comic-Book Time and then there's... this.
  • There's a strong argument to be made that Superman stopped aging on reaching adulthood since "bit decay" in cell reproduction is one explanation for aging and Supes would be immune to that. Amazons don't really seem to age much, either. Masked characters could have been replaced by a similar costume legacy (Hal to Kyle, Barry to Wally). As for Commissioner Gordon, my headcanon is that anyone who becomes Police Commissioner of Gotham City ages to look like they're 70 pretty much overnight, so Gordon could be 30 in the flashback and 60 now.
  • The Joker, Bane, and Lex were part of the flashback too, and they all look the same after 30-40 years. What's more, The Queen of Fables' sentence would either be up or very close to it. So none of it makes any sense and you're probably just supposed to assume vague, non-specific Comic-Book Time.

Where are the League second-stringers?

• Joker can take Gotham, but he absolutely shouldn't have been able to keep it. Even assuming the death of the Queen of Fables made being trapped in the storybook permanent — which it shouldn't, given the number of magical Leaguers not affected — the League is an army. The Queen of Fables did all the heavy lifting, and after she's dead any number of other heroes should be stepping up. (Of course, it's entirely possible Harley and Ivy simply took Joker down before the reserve Leaguers had a chance to get their $#%# organized.)
  • I think it's just comic book logic at play. Unless a superhero is relevant to the story they may as well not exist. It's how you keep things dramatic when you need villains like The Joker to threaten a world protected by heroes like Martian Manhunter, Doctor Fate, and Captain Marvel.

Ivy likes NASCAR?

• I preface this with knowing that the whole scene with Wonder Woman's lasso is supposed to be above all else Rule of Funny, but I'm having trouble trying to square Ivy being an (incredibly destructive) environmentalist with her liking NASCAR when said cars are really big gas guzzlers at an average of 5 MPG. At least jazz has nothing to do with helping or hurting the environment (ok, natural environment), and thinking paper straws suck I can easily consign to her thinking they're too impractical.
  • I think you understand it just fine. Cultured and eco-friendly Ivy should think NASCAR is awful but loves it anyway. The intended humor is in the subversion of expectations. Nothing more to it than that.
  • Apparently this version of the Lasso of Truth compels you to share whatever you might be hiding in addition to truthfully answering questions - it seems that most of what she was hiding were things she does or thinks that run counter to her environmentalism.

The show's timeline

• The third episode repeatedly states that the Justice League was active 30 years ago, in the 1980s, with a team including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Zatanna. So is Batman really supposed to be pushing 60 in this continuity? Lois Lane's youthful appearance in a later episode doesn't seem to support that.
  • Considering this series' Genre Savvy sense of humor, it wouldn't surprise me if it is In-Universe Comic-Book Time.

Joker's plan

• So Joker allies with Scarecrow to create an enhanced fear toxin using Poison Ivy's pheromones that turn trees into ravenous monsters. So far, so good At the same time he uses his tower to destroy the Legion of Doom's headquarters presumably killing most of them. Okay. And then he suddenly rules Gotham with an army? How does that work?
  • If there's one thing about the Joker that's kept consistent across his portrayals is that he doesn't do things halfway, underneath all his crazy he's actually pretty intelligent and he's extremely petty. The Lo D voted against his tower idea, inspired by Harley who not only humiliated Joker by breaking up with him on her terms but also trashed his lair and is effectively his equal as a supervillain now that she's a member of the Legion. Also, he's in a love-hate-something relationship with Batman who is dedicated to protecting Gotham. So:
    • Building his tower under the Legion's headquarters not only gives a massive 'screw you' to the Legion for voting down his idea but also allows him to kill at least some of them so they don't get in his way again.
    • Kidnapping Ivy and using her pheromones to create a monster-tree army gets back at her for convincing Harley to dump him and hurts Harley at the same time.
    • Taking over Gotham with a new, human army also lets him get one over on Batman since with the Legion and Justice League being gone, the GCPD severely outgunned and Batman all on his own (apart from Harley and her crew), there's not really anything anyone can do to stop him sending his troops on a killing spree throughout the city... which hurts Batman in a way that no other villain has before, meaning that - if nothing else - Joker's position as Batman's nemesis is secure for all time.

Harley and her crew are happy the city is destroyed

• So Harley, Ivy, and the rest of the crew are risking their lives to stop Joker's plan to destroy Gotham City in "Harley Quinn Highway" and "Devil's Snare". Then when Gotham is destroyed Joker sets off explosives in "The Final Joke, they are happy with what they see. What gives? In the previous two episodes they were trying to save Gotham, if they were happy to see the city burn, then why didn't they just let Joker's plan go ahead? All dialogue gives the idea that the intent was to keep the city from being destroyed, it had nothing to do with spiting the Joker.
  • This troper thinks that their main line of thinking was: Joker hates us because Harley's our leader, and we hate Joker because he's an asshole who's working with Queen of Fables (who hates us) and Scarecrow (who captured Ivy), all of whom are trying to kill us.
  • It's certainly a bit confusing. Maybe Gotham's destruction takes on a rosier tint in light of The Joker's demise, the removal of The Legion of Doom and The Justice League, and Batman's disappearance. With all of them gone Harley is the top villain of Gotham, which was one of her stated goals.

"I trust you with my life, but not my heart."

• "Bachelorette" ends with Harley finally confessing her feelings to Ivy, only for Ivy to reject her. Instead of the reasoning being "I love Kite Man and want to marry him," she reasons that Harley would eventually get bored of her and move on. There's just one teensy problem with this: the entire first season made it clear that it is tough for Harley to stop listening to her heart. She kept going back to Joker because she loved him despite all common sense screaming that he didn't love her back. Now we have a scenario where Harley is in love with someone who genuinely cares for her in return, and Ivy is convinced that Harley would leave her at some point. What the actual hell?
  • Harley's relationship with the Joker is a terrible metric to judge how serious and stable would she be in a romantic relationship, as she didn't come back out of genuine love but because she was psychologically conditioned by the Joker's sick manipulations. On the other hand, it also means Ivy has no real frame of reference to make such a call, so she is either being awfully judgmental based on nothing but Harley's general quirks of character, or she is bullshitting her way out of the relationship because she doesn't want to hurt Kiteman.
  • Ivy doesn't have much of a frame of reference for Harley's romantic relationships, but she's had two seasons to map out Harley's impulsivity and self-importance. Most of the conflict of the first season comes from Harley doing the first thing that comes to her mind while refusing to heed Ivy's advice. On top of that, Harley kept getting drawn back to The Joker because of his cycle of abuse, which led to a lot of exciting (if extremely toxic) conflict that Harley found challenging. Ivy's concern is that Harley will begin to lose interest when the novelty wears off and there's nothing to keep things fresh and interesting. Ivy isn't saying that Harley will inevitably lose interest, just that their hypothetical relationship would be a gamble whereas Kiteman is safe.

Robin's random bleeding

• Has there been any kind of explanation for why Robin bleeds so much during the episode "Finding Mr. Right"? He has a nosebleed when he and Superman confront Harley at the Daily Planet, again when dangling above King Shark, and blood from his mouth after Harley rescues him.
  • He bleeds from his nose because he's a little kid and from his mouth because Harley rams into him when saving him from King Shark.
  • The first time he started bleeding from his nose, Superman tapped him on the back of the head, and even a gentle pat could cause damage to someone who hasn't had the same amount of training as adult heroes or those who are naturally very durable.

Finding The Book Of Fables

• Why exactly did Harley have to bring the Joker back to get it? Even if he can't remember you would think she could just ask where his new family lives, then go there and force them to let her search the place for it (the house isn't that big)
  • Because she doesn't know that it's at Beth's house.

Is Queen of Fables Actually Dead?

• When Harley knocked her head off with her bat, the head landed on the ground and spoke 2 words. This would indicate that getting her head knocked off didn't actually kill her. Maybe she'll be back at some point.

No really, why DID they make a cancer ray?

• Specifically, it's made by Wayne Enterprises, which has some pretty big in-universe Unfortunate Implications for Batman (unless someone working there invented it and he has no idea.)
  • It is much easier to test cures for a disease when you have a victim of the disease on hand. The cancer ray was made so that you could give lab rats cancer in only a few seconds, thus leaving you free to go about testing cancer cures on them. It's much more efficient than trying to get the rats to smoke a bunch of tiny cigarettes until they get cancer the "normal" way.
  • It's possible it was meant to do something else, but it caused cancer as an unintended effect and so they labeled it the "cancer ray" specifically so people wouldn't accidentally use it, that or maybe they misunderstood what cancer ray means, and its actually a ray that targets cancer cells as an attempt to cure cancer (though that begs the question of why a medical tool is shaped like a gun, maybe it was meant to fight cancer?)

CAN Poison Ivy get drunk?

• Harley's sexual encounter with Ivy was chalked up as a bad decision made while drunk. The thing is, Ivy can't be poisoned so that means no intoxication meaning no getting drunk. If her poison immunity is limited to plant-based poisons, well, hops and fermented grain are plants.
  • The feeling of drunkness is caused by alcohol molecules interfering between the synapses of the brain cells, that effect will still happen even if she's "immune" to toxicity. Alcohol intoxication is not the same as drunkness in fact you can get drunk without getting intoxicated. Other drugs with similar effects on the brain, like cannabis, also affect her for the same reason.
• Perhaps Ivy's resurrection made her more vulnerable, like a new plant weathering things for the first time.

Modest Giant Ivy

• Why the hell did the animators slap some Magic Pants and a top onto Poison Ivy when she turned into a giant? It's one thing to have this kind of inexplicable modesty in media intended for kids. But Harley Quinn is NOT a kid's show. All that gratuitous violence, yet a giant, green-skinned naked woman is where they draw the line?
  • This is American TV: all the blood and gore you could wish for, but never the morality-sapping indecency of female nudity. God forbid.
  • If the Hulk can keep Bruce Banner's pants on in transforming, then Ivy can do the same.
    • There have been two movies which showed that even the most iconic example of the trope in question has its limits in preserving the not-so-jolly green giant's modesty. And those movies were geared more at teens than adults, unlike Harley Quinn. I think my question still stands.
  • If Ivy's clothing is plant-based, and her pants at least do look like they could be made of leaves, then she could grow them along with herself. But for practical reasons, it'd be a lot harder to animate around a fully naked Ivy even if they censored it themselves it's still a lot more work.

King Shark's blood frenzy

• If a trickle of blood from Robin's nose can set King Shark off into an uncontrollable blood frenzy, what happens in the scene where Harley slays the Penguin by ripping his throat open with the jagged end of her broken bat? There is a lot of blood going on here - gallons of it - but King Shark does not seem to notice. Logically he should have become an indiscriminate killing machine.
  • Anytime we see King Shark enter a blood frenzy, it has been underwater. Sharks smell by pulling water in and detecting the particulates in the inhaled water. That's why you could have a bucket of chum on a boat and no sharks would come, but when it hits the water they swarm to it.

Ivy and Kite Man's kisses

• How is Kite Man still alive after the multiple kisses on the lips he's shared with Ivy?
  • She can probably control when her kisses are toxic.
  • Was this ever established as one of her traits in this continuity? Cause it is from B: TAS and the movie but not in every continuity. It is not in Gotham for example.

Why is Ivy in Arkham Asylum?

• Arkham Asylum is supposed to be for the criminally insane, but unlike other versions of the character, the Poison Ivy in this series does not seem to suffer from any mental illnesses. In fact, she's one of the most neurotypical and mentally stable characters in the series. There's no indication she wasn't in sound mind while committing her crimes, so shouldn't she be in a regular prison instead of Arkham?
  • It's a wise precaution because of her abilities— a woman who can sprout a tree from a single orange seed in someone's stool (still pondering the logistics of that 'un) and cultivate man-eating (sarcastic and funny as hell, but a man-eater nonetheless) plants is not to be trifled with, screws loose or no.
    • This tracts as many versions of Mr. Freeze are considered sane, but Arkham has facilities to deal with metahumans like him in various media.
  • It could also be because she used to be very insane, as insane as any other patient in Arkham, but her sessions with Harley helped her regain some sanity and somewhat tolerate being around humans. She still shows some signs of insanity, like wanting to murder all of humanity and preferring plants over humans, so that might be enough to get her into Arkham.
  • None of the characters in Arkham would really qualify as criminally insane, as they're all perfectly cognizant of what they're doing and have consistent logic that makes sense even to outside observers. They're insane under the pop culture definition of the word, which is to say violent and weird.

Where did Riddler's muscles go?

While being imprisoned by Harley and her crew, Riddler did a lot of running in his own power-generating contraption. And he was quite appreciative of his developed physique (as Dr. Psycho can attest). The last time he was seen at the Villy Awards was in Season 3 - and he became his usual slender self. What happened?

• He stopped exercising.

Going one step further

• Why didn't Harley have Flash go back to before she killed Nightwing?

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