Harley Quinn "Lover's Quarrel" 2X12 Review

The penultimate episode of Season 2 of Harley Quinn is filled with action, incredible twists and turns, Michael Ironside, the Trinity and a modern twist on a classic fairytale. Darkseid, elegantly voiced by Michael Ironside providing some deadpan one liners, will grant professional sexist douchebag scum Dr. Psycho the pwoer to take over the world if he delivers Harley Quinn to him. In order to do that he mind controls Poison Ivy to make her fight till death with Harley Quinn. A kiss of true love will break the evil spell but who will deliver it?

The animation looked a lot more fluid in this episode. Perhaps because we get an awesome fight/chase scene between the mind controlled Poison Ivy, Clayface, King Shark and the Trinity. That scene is one of the best, if not the best fight scenes in the history of DC. Whenever we see fight scenes that involve superpowers, these scene often feel banal and very down to earth for the superhero genre. Here we get Clayface becoming a terrifying huge monster, King Shark unleashing his full raw shark power and Poison Ivy....


WOW. Poison Ivy proves that she is a powerhouse. Her transformation to Dr Plantoctopus with multiple vines providing mobility and agility in action is incredible. This is something that comics have hinted at, that if Ivy really wanted to destroy the Trinity or cause seriosu damage, she can BUT she chooses not to.

There are three scenes that carry the emotional weight of the episode. The first one is when a beaten Ivy is lying unconscious and Superman wants to send her to the pahntom zone forever. Harley says that if Ivy goes, she goes too because she loves her and means the world to her. This is great writing that shows an aspect of superhero comics often overlooked: how the superheores deliver horrible "justice" to people who don't deserve it. Ivy here is obviously under control of Dr Psycho but Trinity brush it off the same way they ignore how Pam and Harley helped by saving Themiskyra or releasing them from Queen of Fables trap. 

A common critique of Batman is that in his core, he is a rich guy beating up mental patients and locking them in an "asylum" that looks more like a Saw torture chamber. So it was nice to see this critique on superheroes, crime and punishment.

The second important scene is the true love breaks the spell scene. Dr Psycho makes Pammy and Harley fight till death. Dr Psycho is notoriously sexist and misogynist. What the team behind the show does here is brilliant. Let's do a small test: do a search and look at what people who feverishly want to see Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn as one dimensional villains and not antiheroes or heroes, or even sympathetic villains want to see. They commonly want to see women getting punched or killed by women, fighting till death. I have a suspicion that the writing team knows about these people and decided to implement this into the show: Dr Psycho talks and acts like a desperate, lonely, middle aged fanboy who wants to "punish women". 

Harley and Kiteman's plan is simple: True love breaks the spell. Sleeping beauty. There's a great paper by Maria Tatar on the classic fairy tale. According to Maria Tatar, the Sleeping Beauty tale has been disparaged by modern-day feminists who consider the protagonist to have no agency and find her passivity to be offensive. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13110/marvelstales.28.1.0142?seq=1

BUT in this case Poison Ivy is definitely not passive and is pretty much a fighting powerhorse till the end. And it's not a man who gives the wake up kiss but a woman, her lover, Harley Quinn. AND it's not a magic spell but Dr Psycho temporalily losing his mind control over Poison ivy because he gets horny watching the two women kissing each other.

The scene is magical. Animators and writers of the show love Disney movies (i.e the "Under the sea" parody ) and this is one of the strongest moments of the show with a 360 spin animation of the kiss and the power of it. The power of love.

The third scene is Harley Quinn confessing her love to Poison Ivy. Full disclaimer: I actually was not a very big fan of Harley Quinn till this show. And her speech - which I can't spoil because it's so damn powerful you have to watch it - her fight, her struggle, her passion to save Poison Ivy, to show her love to her, to free her from Psycho, to save Gotham, to change, to hope, to fall in love, to forgive herself, to fix past mistakes... to make new mistakes. It's so well written. It's so emotional. It's the lost sould of comics. This show is the lost soul of comics. This show made me care again, made me want to discuss about it, made me fall in love with Harley and Ivy.

Everything is not perfect though. It feels that the Kiteman thing took a bit too long and too much and that Ivy is used as a device. Her commitment to Kiteman and insistence to marry him stop being believable mid season. This doesn't feel like Ivy at all and it made a lot of fans, me included, who originally like Kiteman to never want to see him again in a potential 3rd season. Also as dear friend, E.I.C and kick ass woman Autumn Ivy says "It's tiring that LGBTQ+ folks can't get the payout they want till the last episode." I hope there are more seasons and that the team behind the show looks at this criticism because it's important to fans to get some positive representation but it's also important to have small victories during the story.  

This show made the whole comics and animation world, every DC fan wait for Poison Ivy's answer in the final episode. It made us hang from her lips.

We need more seasons. Like Now. And we need this passion, this storytelling, these character, this love to come back at comics. Harley and Ivy has been erased by DC in comics. The versions that exist now don't work for me. This works. Thank you.

There is no biggest secret, it's basic clickbait, we just loved this episode and wanted to say a big thank you. Now let's get #RenewHarleyQuinn Trending.

Want to Read More? Vines N' Roses Issue #2 Is out now! Chek it out! https://vinesnroses.blogspot.com/p/vines-n-roses-zine-issue-2.html