Review: Harley Quinn “The Final Joke”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Harley and company mourn and bury Ivy in the ground (ya know, like a plant) and then get ready to get revenge on Joker, which requires enlisting someone they thought they’d never work with: Batman. The plan seems to go well at first, but Clayface’s showmanship undoes the entire operation and gets everyone captured except Harley. If things didn’t seem hopeless at first, they definitely do now, as Joker tortures the gang and takes over Gotham entirely. But now that he has everything he wanted, including knowing Batman’s identity, Joker realizes he still needs Harley in his life…mainly to torment.

Harley gathers even less likely allies in Frank and Kite-man to go rescue everyone, but at the cost of being taken to another vat of chemicals that will erase her identity forever. She’s saved by Ivy, who needed time to revive in the ground, but helps destroy the chemical plant and seemingly kill Joker (but not really). With both the Legion and Justice League gone and the Joker out of commission, it seems Harley and her crew are in control of Gotham!…at least, what’s left of it.

OUR TAKE

While I wasn’t as into the previous episode, this finale does manage to bring back some of the unique elements I’ve been liking about the series overall, even if it is peppered through some more typical “Act 3” tropes. Luckily most of whatever feels formulaic does fit in perfectly well with Harley’s character arc over the course of the season. Naturally her path would have to lead to confronting the Joker again considering that’s how the series started, with Harley being given the opportunity to, essentially, get back her old life of subservience and rejecting it to show how much she has grown, even working with Batman of all people (who also gets some good scenes in, including a bit poking at him and the Joker’s dynamic).

The Joker also gets his own examination of his dysfunctions between both Batman and Harley. With his arch nemesis, he finds the mystery between them regarding Barman’s identity to be part of the fun, so when Scarecrow pulls off the mask in an attempt to get Joker to have some fun, he’s immediately killed for ironically ruining that fun (RIP Rahul Kohli, hope you can come back to the show sometime). Likewise with Harley, it seems despite the premiere focusing on how Joker loves fighting Batman more than loving Harley, it turns out it’s not that simple. What he truly loves is actually having people who he can torment at his leisure and who he can always get the attention of, whether it’s making crimes for Batman to come fight or for Harley to dote on him and then be ignored or abused for it. What it comes down to is that the Joker needs an audience in order to feel special like any attention seeking comedian. And in the end he got that attention at the cost of his life (but not really of course).

Still, this finale wasn’t exactly up there with some of this show’s better episodes. I don’t imagine anyone was really surprised that Ivy survived, especially since they made her means of coming back blindingly obvious within the first few minutes of this episode. There were also attempts to be serious (or at least seeming attempts) that ended up just falling flat for me, even if they were thematically appropriate. Then there’s the ending which seems to say that the Justice League, Legion, and Joker are all gone when it’s pretty clear they’ll all come back in some way, shape, or form at some point. And we won’t need to wait long to find out, since the second season kicks off this April! God help us all.