From Mad Love to Joker: Folie à Deux: The Evolution of Harley Quinn

Harley Quinn and the Joker are the craziest love birds in comics, and in recent years Hollywood has come to obsess over their toxic relationship. The 2016 film Suicide Squad offered a glimpse at their problematic dynamic: Harley (played by Margot Robbie) hurts herself for the Joker (Jared Leto), and he murders for her. The 2020 spinoff Birds of Prey directly confronts how codependent Harley and the Joker have become, and Harley playacts the typical breakup tropes: cutting her hair, indulging in junk food, acquiring a pet (in this case, a hyena). And in 2024's Joker: Folie à Deux, Harley (spoiler alert) seduces Arthur Fleck with lies after falling in love with his murderous Joker persona.

But compared to how their love story originated—in comic books, a TV show and video games—the many iterations of their romance on film are rather tame. Theirs is a twisted story of domestic abuse.

It’s no wonder, then, that Harley has become such a controversial character in popular culture. Some have embraced her as an icon of feminism—a villainess as crazed and violent as male villains. But others argue she’s just the Joker’s plaything, especially after her costume change. On television, in the comics, in video games and now on film, she’s embodied both of these roles. Here’s how the character evolved.

Batman: The Animated Series

Harley Quinn (and her thick Brooklyn accent) was first introduced in what was supposed to be a one-episode cameo on Batman: The Animated Series in 1992. Quinn was the only female member of The Joker’s entourage and had a not-so-secret crush on her lunatic boss. Her feelings remained unrequited, however, since the artists did not want to make The Joker sympathetic by giving him a girlfriend.

Still Quinn, who wore a tight-fitting but full-coverage harlequin bodysuit, wasn’t just eye candy: She could always fight with the boys. In the climax of the episode, she tried to distract Batman by saying, “I know, you’re thinking, ‘What a shame! A poor, innocent, little thing like her, led astray by bad companions!'” before grabbing a knife and trying to kill him.

The character clicked with audiences, and she soon became a mainstay in the series, albeit a problematic one. The Joker was abusive toward lovelorn Quinn: hitting her or throwing her out of buildings, all while playing sadistic mind games with her. The series clearly depicted the patterns of domestic violence: He beat her and cast her out before wooing her back. At one point she explained, “Don’t get me wrong, my Puddin’s a little rough, but he loves me, really.”

That’s not to say she didn’t stand up for herself: In one episode, shocked that The Joker would abandon her for a mission to blow up Gotham, Quinn aimed a machine gun at him. He taunted her, “You don’t have the guts,” at which point she pulled the trigger. It turned out the the gun is only loaded with a sign reading, “Rat tat tat,” but her willingness to kill her abuser, apparently was a turn on for The Joker, and the two reunited.

Batman Adventures: Mad Love

In 1994, Batman: The Animated Series creators Paul Dini and Bruce Timm wrote a comic that revealed how Quinn became The Joker’s girlfriend. (The comic won the Eisner Award, the most prestigious award in comic-dom.) In it, a psychiatrist named Dr. Harleen Quinzel joined the staff at Arkham Asylum with the plan to one day write a tell-all book about her experiences. The Joker, charmed by the fact that her name sounds like “harlequin,” sends her flowers and offers to tell her secrets about his childhood. The villain describes being abused by his father, and the doctor eventually falls for her patient’s sob-story, though Batman later reveals to Quinn that The Joker tells many fabricated stories to gain sympathy.

After many sessions with Dr. Quinzel, The Joker escapes the asylum but is caught by Batman. Dr. Quinzel, now head-over-heels for The Joker, transforms herself into a clown-like villain and breaks The Joker out of prison. Harley Quinn was born.

The rest of the comic shows Quinn plotting to kill Batman with the hope that if the Dark Knight is out of the picture, The Joker wwill stop obsessing over the vigilante and pay more attention to her.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Quinn has evolved since the 1990s in both look and demeanor. The biggest change came in 2009 with the hugely popular video game Batman: Arkham Asylum, where she traded in her red and black full-body suit for a much more revealing corset and blonde pigtails. Her original comic book creators told the New York Times that they weren’t a fan of her new, vampy look, but for better or worse the video game introduced Harley to a larger audience.

The story of her relationship with the Joker also got darker. In the game, she clearly has lost her sanity and has no hope of escape from the abuse. In one line, The Joker says to Batman, “You had to spoil everything: beating up Bane, feeding Scarecrow to Croc, slapping around Harley—my hobby, by the way.”

Suicide Squad and Harley Quinn Comics

Quinn’s new video game look inspired the rebooted character in the comic book in 2011 and again in 2013. In 2011’s Suicide Squad comic series, Harley Quinn got a new, expanded origin story in which The Joker tosses the psychiatrist, struggling against him, into a vat of acid, which dyed her skin white and also made her insane. Later, believing her villainous lover dead, she joins the Suicide Squad and starts up a relationship with Deadshot. (So if you sensed romantic tension in the movie, that’s not just Focus residue.)

But even if the new version of Quinn was sexier, she also proved more powerful and independent. In 2013 she got her own comic, a life away from The Joker on Coney Island and her own adventures (though that comic too has been embroiled in its own controversy). Sometimes she joins forces with Poison Ivy, her sometimes lover as confirmed by current writers of the Harley series Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner on the DC Comics Twitter account. “Yes, they are Girlfriends without the jealousy of monogamy,” they tweeted. It’s notable that back in the Batman Animated Series, Poison Ivy always criticized Quinn’s relationship with the “wacko” Joker.

Suicide Squad

The movie version of the Harley-Joker relationship combines aspects of the TV show, the old comics and the new comics. Her look is inspired by the video game, her origin story an amalgamation of the Mad Love and the acid vat version: In the movie, she voluntarily dives into the acid to prove her love. She dreams of having children with The Joker (albeit in an alternate universe where they’re both normal suburbanites) as she did in Mad Love. And thankfully in the movie she’s a more modern woman, independent psychopath than sidekick.

The movie’s Quinn also walks the fine line between dependent and independent. While Quinn is as talented at murdering people as her male counterparts, she also is constantly waiting for The Joker to break her out of captivity. And sometimes, the Joker uses her as a pawn in his games, like when he offers her up to a villain played by Common before killing him for lusting after Quinn.

Still, director David Ayers thankfully refrained from showing The Joker physically abuse Quinn onscreen and allowed the Margot Robbie character to shine brighter (and get more minutes) onscreen than her boyfriend.

Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad

Produced by Margot Robbie, Birds of Prey, which is pointedly subtitled (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), tries to reclaim the Harley character. After Harley indulges in her breakup ritual, she teams up with a group of women to wreak havoc in her own right.

Still, Joker dominates the film. The audience never actually sees the character as played by Jared Leto in Suicide Squad. But Harley talks about "Mr. J" frequently, and he taunts her in a voiceover. He casts a long shadow, one which even a movie that's supposed to be centered on Harley cannot escape.

Then came James Gunn's 2020 movie The Suicide Squad, a pseudo-sequel-slash-remake of the 2016 film of a similar name. Harley played a major role in that film as a member of the team tasked with taking down a kaiju called Starro. Joker was totally absent from the film.

Harley Quinn

The most nuanced and funniest portrayal of Harley Quinn comes courtesy of the R-rated animated series currently available on Max. The show begins with the Joker abandoning Harley to be captured by the Batman and thrown in Arkham Asylum. There, she befriends another Batman baddie, Poison Ivy, here portrayed less as a villain and more as a misunderstood ecoterrorist. Harley is convinced that Joker will break her out of prison, even as Ivy tries to convince Harley that the Joker is emotionally abusive towards her.

Ivy, sick of waiting, stages a jailbreak, and Harley eventually comes to her senses. Together they start a relationship and try to make their way as Gotham's greatest villains in their own right. The show, upturns the typical Harley tropes and harpoons all of the great DC Comics foes from a dim-witted Bane to the ludicrous Kite Man. Harley's charting her own path after a codependent relationship is handled with surprising nuance even as the show cracks jokes about sex, steroids, and Batman's serious abandonment issues.

Joker: Folie à Deux

The Joker-Harley relationship takes center stage again in Todd Phillips' sequel to his 2019 film, The Joker, which won Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar. The 2019 movie is largely about how a man named Arthur Fleck, mocked by his neighbors, his coworkers, and even his own mother, develops a persona he calls the Joker and goes on a murdering spree. Among his other creepy quirks, Arthur imagines fake relationships with women, including his next-door neighbor, a single mom.

Depending on who you asked, the film was either an insightful critique of the rise of a generation of alienated men or a defense of the incel that might inspire violent action. The sequel, out Oct. 4, abandons much of this societal critique. It is, instead, a musical featuring Lady Gaga as Harley.

In this iteration, Harley (who goes by Lee) seeks out Arthur in Arkham Asylum after she watches him murder a late-night personality on live TV and watches the made-for-TV movie about him. She lies about her past to curry his favor and dresses herself up as a clown to sit behind him in court. It's unclear what she hopes to achieve—be it fame or if she genuinely feels love and lust for  a man willing to burn the world just because he’s aggrieved.

While there's no implication of physical abuse in their relationship, this version of Harley does emulate a certain type of manipulative woman that misogynists often rail against. Without a deeper understanding of the character, her background, or her motivations, we're left with little more than a liar. It's certainly a different interpretation of the character—if not a particularly nuanced one.