There is plenty to criticize about the DC Extended Universe, but one point where almost everyone agrees is that Margot Robbie did an exceptional job as Harley Quinn. The character first came to life in the Batman animated series, and the performance there was strong enough to earn her a permanent place in official Batman mythology. Robbie then took that legacy and pushed it somewhere new entirely.
One of the DCEU’s genuine missteps, though, was dropping her directly into Suicide Squad with no origin story and no prior Batman film to establish who she was or how she got there. The audience is simply expected to accept that she has been arrested at some point, and that Amanda Waller, a woman who treats information as the ultimate weapon, concluded that a baseball-bat-wielding psychopath was among humanity’s best options for stopping a supernatural threat operating at near-godlike levels of power.
Most people let that logic slide, largely because Robbie’s version of the character turned out to be genuinely… compelling to watch. Harley Quinn had never really been thought of as particularly sexy in her previous incarnations, but the combination of pigtails, short shorts, and creative eye shadow created something that male fans went crazy over. Speaking as someone who does not usually gravitate toward blondes, I understand the reaction. The fact that Harley Quinn Halloween costumes reportedly spiked in popularity by something in the neighborhood of twenty thousand percent (a joke number) tells you everything about the cultural impact of that portrayal.
When the first film came out, a certain segment of the audience romanticized her relationship with the Joker, which was always a troubling sign. Across every version of the story, that dynamic is built on toxicity and abuse, even if the DCEU kept the worst of it off screen. By the time Birds of Prey arrived, the decision had been made to write the Joker out of her story and give her independence. If you measure that change against how the character existed in the animated series, it feels almost unthinkable. In the context of the DCEU, it makes complete sense, and I much prefer the version of Harley who has cut herself free.
Making her the anchor of Birds of Prey was the right call. The film itself had some structural problems and did not always hold together logically, but it was an entertaining enough ride. When you consider that she had generated that level of cultural presence with fewer than four hours of screen time across two films, that is a remarkable return on investment.
When James Gunn took over for The Suicide Squad, she came back as one of the few holdovers from the original roster, having apparently managed to get herself arrested again. There is something mildly absurd about that detail given that Amanda Waller is portrayed as someone who sees and knows virtually everything, yet somehow Harley Quinn was able to wander Gotham City long enough to end up back in custody on her own timeline rather than Waller’s.
She was enjoyable in the film without completely dominating it, which made sense given how strong some of the other performances were. As for what comes next, it is genuinely unclear whether Gunn intends to carry Harley Quinn forward into his new DCU. Even given his history working with Robbie’s version of the character, I do not picture him casting her. Whatever actress eventually picks up that baseball bat will be stepping into a very big shoes.