Who is Harley Quinn?

Julius Schenk
3 min readMar 11, 2021

Harley Quinn (Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel) is a fictional character of the DC universe who calls Gotham Home. She is classed as a Supervillian, though having saved the world with the suicide squad, her status is generally an Anti-hero. She is truly insane, so while she may save someone and then burn down a factory, she has her own morality.

She is a Doctor of psychology, who worked at Arkham Aslum, where she unsuccessfuly treated the Joker, later she helped him escape and became romantically involved with the maniac. This scene is part of a flashback in Suicide Squad.

Suicide Squad (2016)

Margot Robbie stared in her big screen debut with her team the Suicide Squad as part of the DCEU (DC Extended Universe). While the film was a commercial failure, especially when one compares it to the success of the MCU. Harley Quinn as played by Margot Robbie was a success. The actress is now linked to the character and is pushing the role as far as she can. She has turned her into one of the most popular character, DC has produced regardless of the films.

In the film she stars as the lovable sociopath who now a prisoner herself is forced with other “Meta-humans” and powered criminals , saves the word from the supernatural threat of the Enchantress.

Is she a Meta-human?

While many characters from Gotham, like the Bat himself, have no powers other than being able to take a punch and being very well trained. Harley is an enhanced human, in the vein of Hellcat.

Skilled in hand to hand combat, using a baseball bat, gymnastic, contortion. Her physical gifts allow her to win most fights. She gained her powers when she threw herself into a vat of chemicals to prove her love to the Joker. She now has pale skin like her lover, as well as enhanced strength, agility and immunity to poison.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)(2020)

In her second film Margot Robbie produces as well as acts in this role. Birds of prey are a DC superhero team of women that faces off against criminal master-mind Roman Sionis a.k.a the black mask.

This movie goes to show how a great actor, likeable character and a good director can’t save a shit story. No one wanted a weak Birds of Prey movie that gives no growth to good characters, They wanted a good Harley quinn film, which this could have been.

Also because the budget for this film was so high, even earning $200 million at the box office wasn’t enough. Gladly everyone loves margot robbie and Harley quinn and most of us would watch her playing a match of roller derby, which this was. The only cool thing is the introduction of Cassandra Cain, Batgirl. This movie will be saved by streaming services.

One can only hope in the 3rd Harley movie is written by someone awesome like Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

Julius Schenk: Affordable Freelance content writer: www.julius-schenk.com

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