The following contains spoilers for Harley Quinn Season 3, Episode 2, "There's No Ivy in Team," now streaming on HBO Max.
The Harley Quinn animated series loves poking fun at every single DC character, but writer/producer Patrick Schumacker feared its portrayal of Nightwing would go too far.
Schumacker told ScreenRant at San Diego Comic-Con that depicting a comedically moody Nightwing left him and co-producer Justin Halpern apprehensive as Harley Quinn neared its Season 3 release. As he explained, "That's one of the characters that I was really nervous about, because our interpretation of him for our show is much more of a brooding, emo sort of [riff] on the Titans series version of Dick Grayson. He's kind of antithetical to the Dick Grayson of the comics right now."
Some of Schumacker's fears stemmed from the success of Tom Taylor's ongoing Nightwing series, which he professed to love. Concerned that comic readers would be turned off by the shift in personality, Schumacker admitted "We were doing this concurrently, and I'm like, 'God, are people gonna hate that we're showing brooding Dick Grayson?'"
Emo Nightwing Is Dealing With A Lot
Though he first appeared in issue 3 of the canonical Harley Quinn: The Eat. Bang. Kill Tour comic, Nightwing made his animated debut on the Season 3 episode "There's No Ivy in Team." Voiced by What We Do in the Shadows' Harvey Guillén, this Nightwing is depicted as overly serious and desperate to emphasize his independence, frequently reiterating this around the Bat-Family. However, when they and Harley's crew fall victim to Riddler's death trap escape room, Nightwing breaks down and confesses to Poison Ivy that his solo work in Blüdhaven has not gone well.
Picking up where the Eat. Bang. Kill Tour miniseries ended, Harley Quinn Season 3 sees Harley and Ivy return to Gotham City after romantically traveling the world together. Breaking Clayface and King Shark out of prison, the four attempt to follow a new villain plan of Ivy's design to terraform all of Gotham, but this work is quickly complicated by her and Harley's newfound relationship issues. These problems also coincide with Commissioner Gordon's run for Mayor of Gotham, having campaigned on a platform of locking Harley Quinn up.
Season 3's trailer teased a number of future conflicts for Harley, her allies and Batman, most notably Joker's decision to enter the Gotham mayoral race. A running B-plot for Season 3 involves Clayface attempting to be part of a James Gunn-directed Thomas Wayne biopic, only to accidentally kill lead actor Billy Bob Thornton and secretly take his place in the film. Though no other cameos for Bat-family members like Batwoman, Spoiler, or Red Hood have been announced yet, Schumacker recently confirmed that "The Bat-Family is instrumental in Season 3 in terms of Harley’s discovery of where she lands on the moral compass of things."
New episodes of Harley Quinn stream Thursdays on HBO Max.
Source: ScreenRant