WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Harley Quinn Season 2, Episode 5, "Batman's Back Man," now streaming on DC Universe.
While DC Universe's Harley Quinn has been no stranger to making meta-references and jokes, the series' latest episode, "Batman's Back Man," bumps things up a notch, taking on two particularly vocal sections of their respective fandoms: Those calling for the release of the "Snyder Cut" and people who hated Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
In 2017, Warner Bros. had high hopes for the DC Extended Universe's Justice League film. However, the movie had a tumultuous production, with original director and DCEU architect Zack Snyder stepping away from the project after the tragic loss of his daughter. He was replaced with Avengers director Joss Whedon. Following the movie's underperformance at the box office, many fans started calling for the release of Snyder's original version of Justice League. Since then, actors associated with the project and Snyder himself have stoked that fire. This has resulted in campaigns -- including a banner flown at Comic-Con International in San Diego 2019 -- to release the project, which coincided with a significant donation to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. On several occasions, Snyder Cut fans have bombarded various Warner Bros.-associated Twitters with demands to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut.
As for The Last Jedi, the film proved immensely controversial upon its release in 2017 with certain segments of the internet. While the movie was a hit with critics, there was significant backlash over the film's perceived political agenda: Including prominent and powerful women. Some of these critiques included protagonist Rey being a "Mary Sue" due to her ability to use the fictional Force. This resulted in a petition to remove the movie from Star Wars canon. The backlash was so vitriolic Kelly Marie Tran -- who played Rose Tico in the film -- eventually quit social media over the abuse being hurled at her.
Both of these are reference occur right at the start of Harley Quinn's latest episode. "Batman's Back Man" opens with two guys smoking pot and talking about the logistics of Gandalf just dropping the One Ring from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series into the fires of Mount Doom by flying in on an eagle, a common critique of the story's plot. The first man is wearing a "Release the Snyder Cut" shirt, and insists it would be impossible for Gandalf to use an eagle to destroy the ring, a fact he's clearly laid out on the "LOTR subreddit." The man to whom he's talking is wearing a "The Last Jedi Is Not Canon" t-shirt.
The man wearing The Last Jedi t-shirt suggests they watch DC Universe's Harley Quinn, and the Snyder Cut guy spits out his drink, insisting he's never seen the show and would never see the show due to its feminist themes and its treatment of Joker. He is, however, deeply knowledgeable about the show and has, in fact, reviewed it online. One of the Snyder Cut guy's complaints is that Harley Quinn's titular has "Mary Sue powers" and the show hardly features Batman. However, when the episode description promises a Dark Knight-centric outing, he jumps at the opportunity, exclaiming, "But if it sucks, we're watching Family Guy!"
The episode focuses quite a bit on Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, with Batman eventually deciding to hand the role of Gotham's Caped Crusader to her until such a time as his injuries from his near-death at the end of Harley Quinn Season 1 are healed. Although The Last Jedi guy likes the episode, the Snyder Cut guy remarks, "Batgirl should have smiled more." However, he's down to watch another episode and rages when the weekly distribution model prevents that, eventually deciding to just "torrent some hentai" instead.
Overall, the two bearded nerds don't factor much into the episode, but what time they do spend on screen mostly features the Snyder Cut guy repeating common, easily recognizable critiques used to complain about women being featured prominently in media. While the episode doesn't have The Last Jedi guy repeating those same things, it's still clear there's an overlap between these two aspects of those fandoms the episode is pointing out and lampooning. Of course, the episode itself just features two fans, who may or may not be representative of everyone's beliefs within those fandoms. Still, this tongue-in-cheek potshot at the two real world fandoms is definitely in line with the series' sense of humor.
DC Universe's Harley Quinn stars Kaley Cuoco, Lake Bell, Diedrich Bader, Alan Tudyk, Rahul Kohli, Christopher Meloni, Tony Hale, Ron Funches, Wanda Sykes, Natalie Morales, Jim Rash, Giancarlo Esposito, Jason Alexander and J.B. Smoove. New episodes air on Fridays.