Harley Quinn Season 2 Episode 7 Review: There’s No Place to Go But Down

This Harley Quinn review contains spoilers.

Harley Quinn Season 2 Episode 7

And it was all going so well… after Harley and Ivy successfully took out most of the Injustice League, things were looking up for the pair. Ivy is engaged to Kite Man. Harley is finally free from the Joker, or at least we thought she was. After accidentally awakening the Clown Prince of Crime from his acid-induced normalcy, the terrible twosome were caught by Two-Face. And as this new episode starts, we join them in a very questionable courtroom. With Bane presiding, the duo are condemned to life in a very familiar looking prison filled with iconic Batman rogues. 

No, we’re not visiting Arkham this time around but instead The Pit, a place made famous by Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. That’s all this episode takes from Nolan, though, as no women die and it’s actually a light-hearted romp with a happy end. But we’ll get to that later as before the big moment Harley and Ivy plan to escape The Pit via a comedy show, which is – as you can imagine – a ridiculous setup. It’s actually funny that after so much buildup to Harley and Ivy’s eventual relationship this is the closest that the second season has had to a filler episode. 

That’s not to say there isn’t fun to be had in “There’s No Place to Go But Down.” It’s filled to the brim with hilarious villains like Victor Zsasz, Killer Croc, and Bane. Silly jokes and the standard Harley crudeness abound. But it all feels a little bit like the team is just trying to get to the final moments, which of course they are. Ever since the animated series began fans have been wondering if the show will commit to the Harley/Ivy romance that has meant so much to so many. The first season didn’t deliver, instead hooking the latter up with Kite Man and setting up what would seem to be a slow burn journey of self discovery for both of the troubled yet powerful women. 

In some ways that has all been building to the final moments of this week’s Harley Quinn. After sacrificing herself to save Ivy, Harley is saved by her erstwhile best friend. After the pair escape the fiery remains of Bane’s pit they share a kiss and that’s where this episode ends. With less than half of the season still to go it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out. Ivy is very happy with Kite Man, in fact she does a monologue about just how happy she is just before inciting the riot that enables them to escape. Taking that into account, it’s unlikely that she’ll just up and leave Kite Man. Seeing as the show already fake-out killed their gays last season, we’d hope that option is off the table too. The moment felt strangely hollow after this middling outing but honestly isn’t that always how fantasies feel when they become real?

Harley Quinn has excelled at exploring the unexpected mundanity of the superhero world. That makes them potentially turning Harley and Ivy’s (maybe) love affair into a more realistic exploration of how it feels to fall in love with a friend or to have an awkward hookup with a workmate seem very fitting. We rarely get queer representation on screen and when we do it’s often delivered with a side order of trauma, or as a side order to a main course of the aforementioned horror. That makes many viewers hope for something fairytale-esque, a happy ending that many of us don’t get in real life. The end of the episode doesn’t make any promises either way, leaving the kiss open to interpretation. At this point we’re just as likely to see Ivy marry Kite Man as we are to see her and Harley ride off into the sunset. 

All in all this is the first episode this season that seems to exist solely to push the narrative forward. We even get a big reveal for Gordon here as Batgirl unveils her true identity to her father. It’s all starting to feel like it’s leading up to something bigger. We know Batman is alive, the Joker is potentially regaining his memories, and there’s an abundance of heroes ready to fight the villains of New New Gotham. Maybe the end of this season will see some semblance of normal, maybe even a happy ending for the long suffering town. At this point it feels like anything could happen, a chaotic freedom that many of us are lacking as we live in this ever-changing world. At least in Harley Quinn there’s still space to be shocked, and we’re sure that after the events of this episode the internet will be ablaze with thoughts and opinions!