The DCEU’s greatest achievement was a film career for Harley Quinn
Some things end with a bang, some with a whimper, and some with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Thanks to a mix of creative and corporate overhaul, the sequel to a film that made over $1.15 billion has been rendered as little more than a postscript to the dissolving DC Extended Universe project. Set to be replaced by a new shared universe in the next few years, one overseen by comic book whisperer James Gunn, all that’s left now is to clear through the rubble of what was once Warner Bros.’ attempt to rival Disney at its interconnected game and see what was done right.
The main answer to that is pretty easy to glean: Harley Quinn. A character that first emerged as the fanatic gun moll to the Joker in the classic Batman: The Animated Series was given a live-action shot on the big screen thanks to the DCEU, and she would end up being perhaps the most consistent thing about it. The DCEU’s biggest impact lay far away from the familiar territories of Batman and Superman — it was always best when it shied away from the familiar and allowed characters like Harley Quinn to shine.
That’s not to say that Harley Quinn had been somehow rescued from obscurity. Along with Marvel’s Venom, she’s the most famous bad guy introduced in the modern era of comics. Thanks to her appealing mix of naivete and bloodthirstiness, she quickly grew to rival the infamy of the clown she’d been paired with, and many of her episodes in BTAS (like “Harley and Ivy” and “Mad Love”) are considered some of the best in the series. Creators at DC Comics put her development into overdrive in the 2010s, with a spot on a revamped Suicide Squad and her own still-running series, which built a life for her outside of Gotham City and had her emphatically break up with
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