The next comprises spoilers from the Sept. 1 episode of HBO Max’s Harley Quinn.
It was a really darkish night time for Harley Quinn this week, because the grownup animated sequence served up “Batman Begins Ceaselessly,” an episode chockablock with nods to earlier incarnations of the Caped Crusader.
In Season 3’s eighth episode of 10, Harley (voiced by Kaley Cuoco), Ivy (Lake Bell) and Clayface (Alan Tudyk), with an help from Physician Psycho (Tony Hale), journeyed inside a cussed Bruce Wayne’s thoughts, to search out out what the billionaire playboy has achieved with MIA Frank the Plant (Run Fucnhes).
There, they shortly realized that Bruce Wayne has repressed all recollections besides that of his mother and father’ tragic homicide — which they noticed play out repeatedly… and repeatedly… and many extra agains. (Poor Clayface, by no means attending to seek the advice of Thomas on his biopic function!)
Ultimately, Harley discovered herself alone inside Bruce’s thoughts, the place she A) realized that he is Batman!, after which B) did her greatest to play therapist to the distraught eight-year-old.
Justin Halpern, who serves as Harley Quinn co-showrunner with Patrick Schumacker, his accomplice at Scrumptious Non-Sequitur Productions, defined to TVLine, “We wanted a turning level for Harley, the place she form of understands why Batman would ever need to be Batman, as a result of she’s sort of on her journey to turning into somebody who’s questioning whether or not or not she’s a villain or a hero. And as we obtained to speaking about it, we have been like, ‘Oh my God, this might be such a very good episode if we went in his mind.’
“And in addition, I believe [the idea for the episode] began as a result of we wished to homicide Batman’s mother and father, like, 1,000,000 occasions,” Halpern mentioned with a coronary heart chortle. “So these two issues sort of got here collectively.”
Alongside the best way, Harley and Younger Bruce peeked inside literal home windows to moments from Batman’s existence, affording the always-cheeky cartoon the possibility to pattern different Batty fare similar to Batman Returns (his cavern conflict with the Penguin and robotic birds), Batman Begins (“As an emblem, I may be incorruptible”), the supercampy Batman ’66 and, sure, copious quantities of Batman: The Animated Sequence — together with precise paintings and the Nineties sequence’ model of Harley Quinn herself.
“The Batman: The Animated Sequence [aka ‘BTAS’] of all of it, that was a later resolution,” co-showrunner Patrick Schumacker shared. “Like, we wished Bruce’s inside thoughts to look a bit of completely different. I can’t bear in mind who pitched it initially, however as soon as we landed on BTAS, it was like, ‘Yeah…. Yeah.’”
Schumacker famous that the Harley Quinn group has through the years considered “nearly recreating well-known episodes of BTAS, however instructed in our universe. Like, the ‘Virtually Received Him’ episode the place all of the villains share tales about how they very almost killed Batman. And who’s to say, if the present retains happening, that we are able to’t try this.”
Within the meantime, “Batman Begins Ceaselessly” provided the proper quantity of spoof.
“Visually, it had precise unique paintings from BTAS,” Schumacker acknowledged, “and sonically, Jefferson Friedman, our composer, took his trendy themes and married them with Danny Elfman’s theme that he did for BTAS, and the [Tim] Burton films…. It was sort of a serendipitous marriage of various types of Batman.”
“Batman Begins Ceaselessly” thus scattered a bevy of Easter eggs for followers to search out — although the EPs suspect the present’s savvy followers have collected every one.
“I believe most [of our references] have been pretty overt,” Schumacker admitted. “But it surely’s humorous, the episode has been out for like 24 hours, and other people have already put it beneath a microscope! Yeah, I don’t assume anyone’s missed something, actually.”
The already-renewed Harley Quinn streams new episodes each Thursday, with the season finale set for Sept. 15.
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