


Harley Quinn isn’t the only returning member of the Squad. Refreshingly, Harley has left the Joker in the rearview mirror this time around. This Suicide Squad isn’t really a sequel to that Suicide Squad or Birds of Prey, though Robbie has said you can track Harley’s evolution throughout the three movies all the same.

The continuity of recent DC movies is fluid, to say the least. Margot Robbie reprises the role for the third time, having starred in last year’s Birds of Prey movie as well. Harley is one of just a handful of characters from the 2016 Suicide Squad who reappear in the new movie. She’s less defined by her relationship with the Joker and is more of an independent antihero in her own right. As she grew more popular, her character evolved. A psychologist-turned-criminal clown, Harley was a breakout character and made the jump to the main comics continuity where she became a mainstay. She first appeared in Batman: The Animated Series in the early 1990s as a hench-woman to the Joker, later becoming the arch-supervillain’s main squeeze, though the Joker hardly reciprocated Harley’s feelings. Harleen Quinzel is one of only a small number of DC characters who made their first appearance on the screen rather than in the pages of a comic book. So think of this as a preemptive eulogy to all the side characters: we hardly knew ye. So, it makes sense that The Suicide Squad, James Gunn’s new reboot/soft sequel of the ever-maligned Suicide Squad, has a wide cast of obscure characters who are destined to perish almost immediately.īut before some of these characters meet their grizzly respective ends - time of death is scheduled for sometime on Friday, August 6, when The Suicide Squad premieres in theaters and on HBO Max - isn’t it worth taking a moment to get know them? Many are among the DC Universe’s most obscure (though the first on this list will be familiar to even the most casual of superhero movie fans, and a handful appeared in the 2016 movie), and chances are they won’t all have that much screen time here or anytime hereafter. Superman can’t be permanently extinguished, at least not narratively, but a C-list supervillain can bite it at any moment. The whole point of the Suicide Squad - a covert team of super-powered criminals who are given the chance to complete a dangerous mission (or die trying) in exchange for clemency - is that they’re disposable. A lot of them are destined for an early grave, but you should get to know them anyway!
