Harley Quinn has become one of DC’s most popular characters, and that’s in a universe that includes Batman and Superman, among so many others. Is Harley a good person, or is she really just a bad person to the core? It’s a question that has kept many fans guessing and following the former prison psychiatrist’s adventures.
In an interview, Margot Robbie says that Cathy Yan, director of Birds of Prey, wanted to highlight the softer side of Harley, but she wanted to bring her back to her villain roots. "I had to keep being like, 'She's a bad person, still. She can't be good. She is a sh*tty person.'" Is she better off as a supervillain, or in her new, more complex status as an anti-hero? There are reasons for both points of view.
10 Villain: She Was Practically Immune
As seen in Birds of Prey, once Harley splits up with The Joker, she’s on her own. She's also emancipated herself on the new DC animated TV series, soon to be available on HBO Max.
Now, all of the people she’s wronged in the past can seek revenge, and that list is very long! Harley spent years as a force of chaos, and her idea of fun was often violent and crazy. That involved many of Gotham’s worst villains, and now those chickens can come home to roost. There is no justifying the toxic relationship between Harley and the Joker; all that means is that the Joker was a toxic and violent person to everyone, therefore deterring them from seeking revenge on the Joker or Harley.
9 Anti-Hero: She’s Ditched The Joker
We don’t see it much on-screen in either the animated series or live-action movies, but Joker’s tormenting of Harley in the comics was horribly cruel. Now that she’s free, she’s left that life behind for good.
Now that she has left The Joker and his toxicity behind, Harley, and the writers, have been able to discover who she is outside of the abusive relationship.
8 Villain: She’s Not Much Of A Team Player
In the Harley Quinn animated series, she forms her own supervillain team with her best friend and confidante Poison Ivy along with Clayface, King Shark, and others, but Harley does not, generally speaking, work well with others – and an anti-hero on her own is a vulnerable anti-hero.
As a villain, it’s expected that her allegiances will shift around according to what’s best for No. 1 (herself), but any kind of positive collaboration generally requires at least some level of trust, something our fun-loving anti-hero/villain does not inspire.
7 Anti-Hero: She Can Finally Act On Her Own Ideas
As we learned in Birds of Prey, Joker often took credit for some of Harley’s craziest (and most successful, criminally speaking) ideas. As previously mentioned, now that she’s cut him loose, she can keep going in her own direction.
Harley can come up with an endless stream of creative ideas, some of which turn out well, and all of which result in entertaining adventures for her fans to follow. Whether it’s the live-action version or the animated Harley, she seems to be doing just fine working on her own brainpower.
6 Villain: She's Too Unpredictable
We'd like to give Harley the benefit of a few good impulses here and there, but her record speaks of a psyche makes her a bit unpredictable. Just one example is that time in the New 52 relaunch, when she made Deadshot wear the Joker's face.
Or, when she danced with the corpses of the lawyers she'd just killed, and let's not forget that, of all the DC villains, she chose to kill her boss and break her Puddin' out of prison well before he tossed her in a vat of chemicals. Speaking of Joker, she tried to have him killed on their wedding day, and once threw his child into traffic. In this case, she's better off being thought of as a villain, pure and simple.
5 Anti-Hero: Inside The Madness, Harley’s Got A Heart And Now She Can Act On It
Yes, her path through the DC Universe is littered with bodies and stolen goods, but Harley is also capable of acts of real kindness, and now she can act on them at will. In Suicide Squad, she gives up the Enchantress’s offer in favor of her found Squad family.
In the comics, she had her Gang of Harleys, a group of wounded women she took under her wing. She’s also an animal lover who rescued Bud and Lou, the hyenas, from Gotham Zoo, and in one storyline, also from the Joker’s abuse. She also liberated an entire pet store of animals who were at risk of being put down and took them in to take care of on her own.
4 Villain: Harley's Own Creator Thinks She's Definitely In The Bad Guy Group
Paul Dini was one of the original co-creators of Harleen Quinzel/Harley Quinn. He writes about her persona in the introduction to a deluxe edition of Mad Love released in 2015, (as described in The Perspective), and his verdict describes her as a villain. “I don’t think of Mad Love as a victim’s tale, but a cautionary one about what happens when someone loves recklessly, obsessively, and for too long.” She's at her best as a villain; she can't help it if they wrote her that way.
3 Anti-Hero: She Can Be A New Style Of Crime Boss For Gotham City
Beyond the implications for Harley’s own storyline in various media, her ascent from pure supervillain to complicated anti-hero is good for Gotham City itself. The poor citizens of Gotham deserve the kind of crime boss who’d spare an orphanage and steal diamond necklaces from the 1 percent instead.
Gotham City would be in better hands than it is now, and in the live-action movies along with animated series and films, Harley is already on her way to the top of the criminal food chain.
2 Villain: As A Supervillain Sidekick, She Had More Back-Up
One thing that can’t be denied is that as Joker’s sidekick, and someone well-connected to the Gotham underworld as its queen, she had plenty of back-up when things went sideways. It’s not just the will, it’s the resources.
In Suicide Squad, Joker had a helicopter and obvious constant surveillance to help him track Harley down and give her a chance to ditch the Squad, and later, he engineered her prison escape. She’s got new friends and allies in her new path, but they don’t have the Joker’s reach or power.
1 Anti-Hero: She Can Explore Her Relationship With Poison Ivy
Birds of Prey saw Harley connecting with other women to fight for a common cause, at least for a while. And even then, when she did ditch Montoya et al and steal Black Canary’s car, she took Cassandra Cain with her.
In the television series, things are getting hot between Harley and Poison Ivy, and it looks like that direction will see even more action in the future. Can a supervillain explore girl power and love with different people? We’re thinking a softer side is more of an anti-hero thing.