When Harley decides to break the Queen of Fables out of prison to join the crew and pull off an apparently impossible heist, she learns about boundaries, her own included.

Another week, another lesson for Harley to learn. This time about how far she is willing to go in an episode that asks us to stretch the concepts of ‘morality’ as they apply to the weird version of Gotham portrayed here and believe in our central protagonist as ‘a bad guy, not a bad person’.

The Queen of Fables is returned to physical form but still in prison, so Harley elects to break her out so that she can use her magical powers to pull off a magnificent, hitherto impossible heist so that she can – you guessed it – attract the attention of the Legion of Doom and ascend to their ranks.

Laying that aside, the episode’s ask is a big one – that we perceive the crew, who number among their ranks a misogynist horror, a giant man-shark who literally bites the heads off people and Harley herself, as relatively ‘good’ next to the somewhat excessive violence and deeds of the Queen of Fables. Quite why the Queen’s rampage through a family picnic is any different from any of the people the crew has killed is never really clear. More opaque still is the reason for Ivy’s reluctance to endorse Harley’s bringing the Queen on board given she was the one that introduced Harley to her in the first place a few episodes back.

This being the case, it’s difficult to root for the people we are supposed to root for here. Yes, the Queen is evil, but then so are the crew. That’s sort of their whole schtick after all. It rather takes us back to the ridiculousness of a few weeks back when the Legion issued a public statement disavowing Doctor Psycho because he had called Wonder Woman the most vulgar swear word imaginable. There’s an oddly twisted set of morality here, supposedly which says that the security guard whose head was literally bitten off by King Shark somehow matters less than the members of a family murdered by the Queen of Fables.

It tries to have some fun with a weird take on a superhero origin story, but then spoils that as well with the way it decides to end it. Honestly the most interesting part is the side plot involving Ivy finding herself oddly attracted to the last person you’d expect, but even that carries a slightly odd aftertaste, given the comic background and the clear early inferences the show made toward Harley and Ivy’s relationship.

Verdict: The repetition of theme is starting to wear a little thin and the line the show wants to draw in the sand for Harley seems odd given what it’s already had her do. Starting to feel a little muddled. 6/10

Greg D. Smith