Harleen Quinzel (DC Extended Universe)

Harley Quinn (real name Harleen Quinzel) is a hyperactive, fun-loving, and strong Gotham City mercenary and the ex-girlfriend of the Joker. She also went on a few world-saving missions with the Suicide Squad.

Origins

Harleen Quinzel was born on July 20, 1990 in Gotham City, New Jersey to an alcoholic father who abandoned her in a nunnery at an early age. Starting off rebellious and aggressively sadistic, she later became a level-headed intellectual and was a model student in both academics and gymnastics. She was awarded a scholarship to Gotham University where she majored in Psychiatry and received her doctorate. While struggling with her romantic life, Harleen became a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum.^[1]

Eventually she was assigned to treat the Joker, a criminally insane, clown-themed sociopath and gang leader. Slowly the Joker's charisma and stories about his upbringing made her lower her defenses and even fall in love with him. Eventually she helped him escape and he proceeded to drive her insane, performing electroshock therapy on her and making her prove her loyalty to him by jumping into a vat of acid and bleaching her skin and hair. After all this, Harleen became the Joker's energetic, fun-loving, and sadistic partner in crime known as "Harley Quinn", doing anything she could to please him. This made her an enemy of the Batman, Gotham City's resident vigilante and the Joker's nemesis.

The Joker and Harley caused chaos around Gotham for years, making plenty of enemies. Harley's blind love for the Joker drove her to do anything for him, while he just used her as he saw fit, eventually abandoning her to be captured by the Batman and sent back to Arkham, this time as a patient.^[2]

Assassinating Enchantress

Eventually Harley was transferred to Belle Reve Federal Penitentiary in Louisiana and in 2016, following the death of Superman, was recruited as a member of Task Force X, also called the Suicide Squad, a black-ops unit of incarcerated supervillains blackmailed by callous government agent Amanda Waller to go on world-saving missions in exchange for reduced prison sentences. Harley was placed on a team led by the commanding and cynical Colonel Rick Flag, with teammates such as the sardonic assassin Deadshot, the cruel and conniving boomerang-wielding Captain Boomerang, the quiet and reserved pyrokinetic El Diablo, and the aggressive and powerful Killer Croc.

The team was also meant to include the godlike Enchantress, but when she escaped and regained her full power, she awakened her brother Incubus, she began wreaking havoc across Midway City, and became the Squad's first target. Harley and her teammates tried to escape on several occasions, and even attempted to kill Flag, but eventually discovered that they needed him if they wanted to stay alive. At one point, the Joker tried to rescue Harley as the team made their way towards Enchantress, but he failed and disappeared. Eventually, Harley came to realize that maybe she wasn't as bad as she thought, and despite all the bad she'd done, she deserved a second chance. It gave her and the rest of the team the confidence to kill Enchantress and Incubus, albeit losing El Diablo, but saving the world and gaining new friends along the way.^[2]

Stand against Roman Sionis

When Harley and the Joker broke up, she began to be hunted by Gotham criminals, including the Black Mask, who captured her and was going to kill her until she offered to retrieve the stolen bertineli diamond. She breaks into the GCPD and finds Cassandra Cain, who had eaten the diamond. They then run away and go to Harley's apartment, who is destroyed by the Black Mask gang. Eventually, they team up with Dinah Lance, Helena Bertinelli and Renee Montoya to defeat the Black Mask. They are followed to the Joker's Fun House, where Dinah uses her supersonic scream and throws Harley onto the road, where she defeats some of Black Mask's men and he is killed. Afterwards, Harley and Cassandra flee and form "Harley Quinn & Associate".^[1]

The Jotunheim mission

In 2020, Waller assigned Harley to a mission to Corto Maltese to destroy the laboratory Jotunheim and its primary experiment, Project Starfish, which would soon be used as a weapon by the new anti-American Maltese dictator Silvio Luna against the world. Her team was once again led by Colonel Flag, and consisted of Boomerang, Javelin, Mongal, Blackguard, and more. They were actually a distraction for the Maltese Army so that a second Squad team led by the assassin Bloodsport could properly infiltrate the island, but none of the Squad members knew this, Harley included.

Harley struck up a connection with the flirtatious Javelin on the helicopter ride to the island. When they arrived, the Squad was ambushed by the Maltese forces, whom they had been sold out to by Blackguard. Harley took cover and watched in horror as Mongal, T.D.K., Savant, and even Boomerang, were mercilessly slaughtered. She crawled over to Javelin after seeing him get shot, and with his dying breaths, he handed her his javelin. He started telling her to carry it, but he died before he could tell her why. Flag escaped into the jungle while Harley was captured by the Maltese soldiers, along with her javelin.

Harley was taken to Luna's palace to be introduced to him, as he saw her as the ultimate American rebel. The two formed a connection, and began falling in love, but when Luna admitted to murdering children as part of the Jotunheim experiments, Harley shot him in fear of entering another toxic relationship with a psychopath. She was captured and tortured by Luna's right-hand man and successor, Mateo Suárez, but she escaped the palace and murdered all the soldiers in it with her javelin, still unsure of why she was supposed to carry it.

After breaking out of the palace, she met up with Flag, who had joined Bloodsport's team, and came to rescue her after learning she was alive. After a happy reunion, the group made their way to Jotunheim to complete their objective. With the help of the Thinker, Jotunheim's chief scientist whom the Squad had captured before getting Harley, they broke into Jotunheim and began placing explosives around its interior.

Halfway up the tall building, one of her teammates, the Polka Dot Man, accidentally set off the explosives with his incendiary dots, causing the building to begin crumbling. The top half of the building was completely demolished within minutes, and the Squad barely made it out alive. After making it to the ground floor, Harley and the others learned that Project Starfish had been funded by the American government years ago, and that the mission was really meant to cover up their part in it. Flag had tried to take a computer hard drive and reveal the truth to the press, but Waller's patriotic plant Peacemaker killed him, before he was subdued by Bloodsport and he took the drive for himself.

Just then, Project Starfish's main subject, the massive, mind-controlling starfish-like alien known as Starro, burst out of Jotunheim's remains as the remaining Squad members ran to safety. Enraged after being imprisoned and tormented in experiments by the Thinker for decades, the creature enslaved all the Maltese citizens it could and marched into the city of Valle Del Mar with its army to wreak havoc. Harley and the other surviving members eventually confronted Starro, killing the creature in the process and saving Corto Maltese. Bloodsport later used the evidence of the USA government's involvement with Project Starfish to blackmail Waller into letting the squad to walk away free after they rebelled against her, obtaining their freedom.^[3]

Potential future

In a horrific possible future, Darkseid seduced Superman with the Anti-Life Equation and decimated Earth. According to the Batman, Harley fought alongside him in his rebellion against Darkseid. She was killed, but not before she told Batman to kill the Joker slowly if the two ever met again. When he did form the alliance with the Joker, the two made a truce, but Batman vowed that he would honor his promise to Harley.^[4]

Powers and Abilities

Powers

• Cosmic Awareness: Harley has been shown a few times to be aware of being a fictional character, even directly talking to the audience at one point.
• Cheating Death

Abilities

• Acrobatics
• Deception
• Driving
• Escapology
• Gymnastics: Harley is a very spectacular gymnast.
• Hand-to-Hand Combat (Advanced)
• Psychiatry: Harley was trained in the field of psychoanalysis.
  • Psychology
  • Charisma
• Weaponry
  • Firearms
  • Demolitions
  • Throwing
• Seduction
• Storytelling: Harley narrates her tale in Birds of Prey.

Other Characteristics

• Mental Disorder
  

Weapons

• Mallet
• Bat: Harley carried a baseball bat with the superscription "Good Night".
• Bazooka
• Javelin: On the Suicide Squad's mission to Carto Maltese, Harley took a javelin from her teammate Javelin after he was fatally shot. Throughout the mission, she killed several Maltese soldiers with the javelin, and used it to pierce through Starro's eye to allow Ratcatcher's army of rats to enter its body and kill it from within.^[3]

• This version of the character is exclusive to the continuity of the DC Extended Universe and is an adaptation of Harley Quinn. The original character was created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm and first appeared in the episode "Joker's Favor" of the series Batman: The Animated Series.
• Harley Quinn was portrayed by Margot Robbie.
• Harley's Suicide Squad outfit is a combination of musician Debbie Harry and Harley's Prime Earth look.^[5] One scene of Suicide Squad also has her in her classic black-and-red suit, replicating the cover of Batman: Harley Quinn.^[6]
  

• Harley is bisexual.^[1]
• Harley has a tattoo on her back that used to read "Property of Joker".^[2]
  

• Suicide Squad: Suicide Blonde
• Suicide Squad
• Birds of Prey
• The Suicide Squad

• 12 Appearances of Harleen Quinzel (DC Extended Universe)
• 40 Images featuring Harleen Quinzel (DC Extended Universe)
• 1 Quotations by or about Harleen Quinzel (DC Extended Universe)
• Character Gallery: Harleen Quinzel (DC Extended Universe)

External Links

• Harley Quinn at the DC Extended Universe Wiki

Footnotes