HBO Max can be a threat to the irreverent harley Quinn, Given the recent cancellation of Bat girl.

But as far as Harley is concerned, all that matters is her relationship with her best friend turned girlfriend, Poison Ivy.

at the end of harley quinn In Season 2, which launched on the now-defunct DC Universe app just weeks into the Covid-19 pandemic, Harley Quinn (Kaley Cuoco) is finally reunited with her crush, the red-haired fatality Poison Ivy (Lake Bell).

As the two drove off into the sunset, there was no telling what would become of Harley’s breakout series, which was the best, wildest, and smartest adaptation of a DC character in a long time. But after a two-year hiatus and a switch to HBO Max, harley quinn is back for its third season.

harley quinn he’s still wild, smart and cool. The series continues with Harley and Ivy learning to love each other, while those on the fringes, like embattled bad boy Bane (James Adomian) and temperamental Jim Gordon (Christopher Meloni), begin to recognize each other.

Showrunners Patrick Schumacker and Justin Halpern have assured fans that Harley and Ivy will stay together. “As long as we’re in charge of the show, Harley and Ivy will never part,” says Patrick Schumacker. Reverse.

that does not mean harley quinn They will be nothing more than romantic walks in the park. “The challenge is, how do we create an organic drama between the two of them that is never so serious that it ruins their relationship?” Schumacher says.

Schumacker and Halpern spoke with Reverse on how Harley and Ivy will navigate their new relationship, which characters have new prominence in this cartoonish corner of Gotham City, and why Bane references sex and the city.

This interview has been edited for clarity..

Reverse: No relationship is happy forever. What friction will Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy have in season 3?

Justin Halpern: The biggest thing we always talked about was, how do you operate in a good relationship when you’ve only been in bad relationships? What habits do you bring to new relationships? Harley has only been what Joker wanted. His wishes were whatever Joker wanted. He is now back in a relationship and he begins to ask himself: “Do I put everything into what my partner wants? Do I put what I want?

“We’re going to find that she’s having trouble figuring out how to be in this relationship. ‘How do I make it work?’”

Patrick Schumacher: We ended the premiere with Poison Ivy’s name in neon below Harley in the title. The program does not change its title, it remains harley quinn, but this is about both. They stray on the moral spectrum. Ivy will embrace the supervillain in her, and Harley will have trouble being labeled a supervillain. How does that affect their relationship when these two are madly in love?

Season 3 introduces Nightwing. How did you find your version of Nightwing, compared to other versions of Dick Grayson?

P.S: We really liked the idea of ​​Nightwing, mainly because Batgirl has become such a fixture in the bat family and we liked the idea of ​​”What happens when the ecosystem in the Batcave has completely changed?” He feels that he is being pushed out by this charlatan in the form of Barbara Gordon. Those two will have an antagonistic relationship, at least from the beginning. Nightwing will also have an antagonistic relationship with Harley.

There have been depictions of the Bat-Family before, but harley quinn It is one of the most complete versions. How do you feel about beating everyone else?

JH: We would only do it if everyone had a completely different point of view that would make for good scenes. I don’t think the goal for us was to get the bat family together. But I was like: You have Damien, who is a bit of a shit, and our Gen Z-er, Babs, who is so optimistic, and what Patrick described for Dick. Those three with Bruce Wayne, who’s going through some shit, how they play off each other and how the conflict comes out because they’re three unique personalities together. We like crew shows. Harley has a crew. The bat family is a crew. It’s fun to play in those worlds.

“Batgirl is going to play a really crucial role in Harley’s arc this season, in discovering where her true moral compass points.”

You pit these two “teams” against each other in Episode 2. What did you learn about these characters when they were paired up like this?

P.S: I would focus my answer on Batgirl and Harley. Batgirl is voiced by Briana Cuoco, Kaley’s sister. We see these two as mirror images, a kind of force of optimism in their respective crews. They have a sisterly vibe this season, though it makes Harley want to throw up that she’s friends with a hero like Babs. But they are. And Batgirl is going to play a really crucial role in Harley’s arc this season, discovering where her true moral compass points.

What’s up with Jim Gordon this season? He is woefully unsuited for the Gotham police, let alone the mayor. Will he rise like the phoenix in season 3?

JH: I don’t know if “phoenix” and “Gordon” go together on our show. Gordon is a broken man. We try to think of the Gordon that everyone is familiar with. That’s what Gordon was 20 years ago, on our show. So we never see that Gordon. We see the broken Gordon that he’s gone so far, so far away from what made him want to be a police officer in Gotham City. He is just looking for someone to affirm him. This season he says, “Well, maybe the voters will do that for me.” We like him as this pathetic character who just needs to go to therapy but he would never do that, and trying to do the shortcut for Mayor and make people love him.

“People began to understand that we were mushing sex and the city in Bane.

Another supporting character that is coming into focus this season is Bane. What animates its prominence?

pH: We get youthful joy from writing Bane. Bane would be in every scene if the writers had his preferences, and I think it’s fair to say that in our spin-off noon, which has chosen HBO Max, Bane will have a great presence. Literally and figuratively. He is going to be a series regular. but a harley season without Bane is not a harley season. I had my reservations when we decided to characterize him as the target of the DCU, because in the comics he is the smartest guy in Gotham. I was like, “Should we walk back? Like he’s a ruse, is he playing naive? And the writers threw tomatoes at me. It’s a joy to write.

At San Diego Comic-Con, a joke in Episode 2 involving Bane and sex and the city he laughed a lot. What is the origin of that moment?

JH: It came about because we were playing with that scene, when the bank teller reviews your charges. Someone in the writers room said, “I wonder if this means Bane is depressed?” Someone broke into sex and the city narrations like, “It made me wonder…” I remember thinking, “This joke is so fucking stupid, in a big way.” At the Comic-Con premiere, I had forgotten that joke was coming. I’m like, “No one is going to understand this, it’s not going to work out.” And then the waves of laughter when people started to understand that we were mushing sex and the city in Bane. People got it. I was like, “Oh my God, this is the best.”

Last year they made waves when they revealed that Batman was not allowed to perform oral sex. Did fan reaction factor into the scene in Episode 3 where Batman’s apparent advance on Catwoman is shot down?

JH: They were dark times.

P.S: You’ll know when you’re watching the moment he became. I honestly think you could still play him, the way he was animated and everything. If someone went into that episode with a clean slate, not knowing anything about Twitter virality, I think they might actually jump in and do that. But I will leave it for the theater of the mind.

Three seasons in, what’s it like to know harley quinn is a colorful counter-program to other DC media, such as the batman?

JH: That’s one of the great things about DC. You can have those worlds and DC will support them. Pat and I would also love to do some live stuff. Please indicate in your article that we want to make Booster Gold. A live action Booster Gold.

P.S: Hashtag, #HarleyQuinnTeamDoesBoosterGold.

JH: You can have Matt Reeves, you can have James Gunn, you can do things in the world and play with him in a way that in a lot of places might not be right. To be honest, we have found people who love the batman and I love our show. I don’t think it’s one or the other.

harley quinn Season 3 is streaming now on HBO Max.