Harley Quinn Season 5 Review – Was The Mess The Point?

I find it telling that there have been shows across multiple years and viewing platforms that I “shouldn’t have liked,” but I totally did. Robot Chicken, The Boys, and, of course, the Harley Quinn animated series. For four seasons now, I’ve been amazed at how the writers came together to create one of the definitive Harley Quinn storylines, and for the most part, it’s been incredibly consistent. Yet, as my Harley Quinn Season 5 Review will attest, there is a point when “going nuts with stories” leads to lesser ones being told, and we’ve reached that point.

So, if you don’t recall my Season 4 review, the season ended with Harley Quinn, Ivy, Catwoman, and Barbara becoming the “Gotham City Sirens.” I was very excited for that, if you recall, because they were to investigate the “missing corpse” of Nightwing, who was resurrected and wanted revenge on Harley Quinn. As Season 5 starts, we get…none of that. At all. It was very jarring. We get an “explanation” for it all, but…yeah, it was bad. I’m sorry, it was. They just “wrote it off” so that they could do a different story about Harley and Ivy moving to Metropolis to “do something fresh” and “rekindle the spark” of their relationship.

While not bad in theory, and having fun with WHY they decided to leave Gotham (hint: it’s far worse than usual), the message of “rekindling the spark” was one of many “mixed messages” that they threw out in the ten-episode season. That made this season, as my subtitle noted, very messy, and not in a “blood and gore” kind of way. There was plenty of that! But it was messier in other ways, too.

As we soon discover, Lena Luthor is trying to make Metropolis better than it was before, and she wants “help” from Poison Ivy to do that. Oh, and she has Brianiac helping her, too. Did I forget to mention that? Yeah, he’s on a quest for “perfection” before bottling up Metropolis, and Lena made a deal with him to rule over Metropolis once he’s done. Fun times. Harley, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what to do with herself while Ivy is at this new job, and naturally…things get nuts.

If it sounds like I’m having a hard time describing the “overall plot” of this season…it’s because I am. One of the biggest problems with Season 5 is that it keeps skipping from one plot point to another in sometimes random ways, or completely ignoring them altogether! It made it hard to understand why the writers went in the directions they did with certain characters, or what the point was of doing things the way they did.

Look, just to be clear here, Harlivy are AMAZING together once again. At this point, it would’ve taken a LOT to make me hate them. They’re almost “offensively cute” together, which is saying something. The voices of Kaley Cuoco and Lake Bell perfectly bring out the best in one another, and one can only imagine the hilarity of the two doing their lines in the VO booth. Just saying. Yes, I may not have liked everything that happened with them this season, but they always found a way to make me love them once again. Plus, they even made it VERY clear in the dialogue that their breaking up would “break the internet,” and that’s not an inaccurate statement!

Just as important is that while the humor is both dark, raunchy, and excessive most of the time (and sometimes to a fault), you can’t help but laugh at many of the amazing one-liners that happen throughout the season. Just when I thought they had “gone too far” with one of their LONG bits (which did happen often this season…), they suddenly pop in a one-liner and I’m laughing again.

Plus, the animation is as crisp as always, and this season they REALLY weren’t afraid to get violent in unexpected ways. Ivy, in particular, took a LOT of abuse, and it shocked me.

Speaking of shocking, I was impressed (for the most part) with how Brianiac factored into things. They took much of “what comic fans know” about the character and flipped it on its head at times to bring a little more depth to the character. Again, not everything worked, but there were key moments where even I went wide-eyed at what happened to Brainiac or what Brainiac revealed about himself. RIP, Koko the monkey.

The problem, as my Harley Quinn Season 5 Review will now reveal, is that it didn’t push things in meaningful directions at times because they didn’t let them breathe or they straight-up shunted them to the side because…well…”reasons.”

For example, remember the Gotham City Sirens stinger? Not only did they ex-nay that with extreme speed, they retconned their own season ending to have Dick Grayson return as Red X to kill Harley Quinn. Damian was the one who resurrected him alongside Talia, and yet that’s not addressed in the slightest. Also, how did it take a year for Dick to make his move against Harley? Why the Red X persona? We don’t know! Plus, they literally threw that away to make it seem like resurrecting Dick was Alfred’s plan all along (which makes no sense) so he could get revenge on Harley, Ivy and Joker. He even induced himself with Venom to get the job done! Huh?

Then, at the end of that episode, Lois Lane asks Harley Quinn to help her figure out why they were having “skull dreams” (due to Harley having her memory partially erased by Brainiac after he tried to kill them), and I was looking forward to that! Then, at the literal start of the next episode…they ditch it entirely! That would’ve been a hilarious combo that we don’t see happen in the comics or other media, and yet they got rid of it so they could have Clayface and Harley…make a musical about Brainiac’s plan. Say what, now?

This even happens with arguably one of the more important storylines of the lot when Ivy meets her “creator” via Dr. Jason Woodrue, has a panic attack upon seeing him, and gets better just long enough to get revenge…which turns him into the Flouronic Man…and then Harley kills him the next episode. Are you seeing that pattern here? They rushed through Ivy’s trauma, bid for revenge, and then how that “made her feel” all so Harley could just dismember him and be done with it. And no one really addresses it aside from Lois with her article. That’s REALLY odd because Lena threw a big fit about Ivy blowing up at Woodrue and then…nothing.

What made these plot disruptions so maddening for me, at times, was that we got more focus on other characters who didn’t really add much to things outside of just “being there.” Case in point, Clayface. He went from a “top draw” in Vegas to somehow failing to be a stage actor and literally taking over the “role” of Perry White to turn the Daily Planet into a version of TMZ…and NO ONE could tell it was him outright. Uh-huh…

Or how about Bruce, Joker, Bane, and King Shark? They all just “happen to go to Metropolis” right when things start happening…and honestly don’t do too much of consequence. I rolled my eyes a LOT whenever Sean and the other “shark kids” showed up, and while Bane did have some great moments (including defending the kids during the robot attack), I could’ve done without a lot of their scenes, especially Clayface’s. Plus, to be blunt, it gets annoying when you have characters like Bruce Wayne fail to have “real growth” and just “fall back into bad habits” because it’s “funnier” in the creator’s eyes. Remember, Bruce intentionally got himself out of prison to help save Gotham, and he just…stopped…only to become a “loveless loser,” which raises all manner of questions.

And that leads to the “logic problems” that happened throughout the season. Some I pointed out before, but there were more. What happened to Perry White? We don’t know. How did Superman unshrink Metropolis? We don’t know. How did Joker go from being tortured by James Gordon for what he did to Barbara to just…being around for his stepdaughter (who now is with Damian…which is honestly hilarious)? We don’t know!!! And yes, I get the irony of trying to make sense of a “Harley Quinn show that’s intentionally nutty,” but there’s a difference between going nuts and “going off the rails with no clear rhyme or reason.”

Even Harley and Ivy near the show’s climax had a “Wait, why are they doing this?” moment for me where Ivy was arguing with Harley for a completely illogical reason, and it was eye-rolling, especially when a single line of dialogue undid it. Yes, it was a very sweet line of dialogue…but still.

Finally, but just as important, I wish we didn’t go right from Lex Luthor last season to Lena Luthor this time. I wish they had kept it about Brainiac, because that was far more interesting.

Look, as I wrap up my Harley Quinn Season 5 Review, I do want to make clear that I didn’t hate the season. However, when you’ve seen something like this show do well for so long, and then they go away from what makes it truly special, you wonder why they did that shift. I am glad that we got a nice “capper” on things, should we not get a Season 6, but I do wish that this season was less messy and instead built up on what made it so successful previously.