‘Harley Quinn’ Season 4 Review: The Killer Comedy Has Never Been This Deadly

All around the Bat Cave in Harley Quinn, you’ll find details designed to remind you of the Bat Family’s one rule. The pillowcase, the WiFi password, and even the singing fish on the wall all want observers to remember that in this crew, “We Don’t Kill.”

As reasonable an edict as that might be for a group of vigilantes, and as reformed as the Joker’s former sidekick has become, that demand proves difficult for our newly minted “hero.”

When she first embraced her main-character energy at the start of Harley Quinn, Kaley Cuoco’s pigtailed harlequin wanted nothing more than to become the empress of darkness—or, at least, a card-carrying Legion of Doom member. By the end of Season 3, however, she’d switched sides to fight with the good guys, even as her girlfriend, Poison Ivy (Lake Bell) took over the villainous group as CEO. Now, as Season 4 kicks off with four episodes on Max starting July 27, the couple’s professional goals could not be further apart.

Harley is desperate to prove (to the world and also, perhaps more importantly, herself) that she can be one of the “good guys.” At the same time, her viney misanthrope of a partner is trying to figure out how to convince a team of villains to follow her lead into “socially conscious evil.” For both of them, this causes some tensions at the office. Ivy, at least, finds solace in the girlboss organization Evil Women in Business, where she learns from other women about collapsing governments and smiting her enemies. For Harley, the isolation proves a little rougher.

“Irreverent” doesn’t feel like a sufficient word for a show that once saw a giant supervillain rampaging through the streets and thrusting his erect, skyscraper-sized penis into a billboard featuring Ted Lasso actor Brett Goldstein. But whatever the appropriate term might be, this season swings its bat with just a little more oomph. Get ready for a lot of very cleanly severed limbs, a supervillain powered by cocaine, and also a few mangled corpses. (Nightwing’s famous ass also got juicier this season, in preparation for a delightfully sleazy showcase for the teen Bat-character’s reliably impeccable actor, Harvey Guillén.)

Perhaps this new, unpredictable energy comes courtesy of newly installed executive producer and showrunner Sarah Peters, who previously wrote episodes including the Season 3 premiere and Season 2’s “Bachelorette.” Episode after episode, this season careens through twists and turns like a candy-colored—and, for a while, black-and-white—runaway train. While some characters in this series have always seemed untouchable, this season shatters that illusion with a shocking tragedy, casting just a little more darkness on Gotham City than before.

Raunchy humor aside, much of Harley Quinn has centered around Harley’s search for a sense of self, and for personal growth through her relationships. Within the Bat Family this season, however, the Harley’s identity seems to crumble. Her colleagues have little faith in her—especially after she wastes the villain Professor Pyg in supremely violent fashion before their eyes, in spite of their whole no-killing rule. And Alfred—Harley’s one source of real support, who teaches her helpful stress-management techniques like “B.I.T.C.H.” (“Breathe; Identify the Problem; Tea Break; Consider Your Options; Handle It”)—suddenly evaporates from her life after an unexpected heist goes awry.

Harley and Ivy’s “no work talk” rule is also about as effective as one might expect—which is to say, their communication somehow becomes even worse than their Max neighbors, Miranda Hobbes and Che Diaz on And Just Like That. Ivy is too preoccupied with her work (and with Talia al Ghul, who joined the cast during the show’s Valentine’s Day special this year) to see that her partner is really struggling. By the time Harley realizes how much control she’s lost, it’s already, in some ways, too late.

A lot of Harley Quinn’s best drama comes from moments when it seems that Harley and Ivy might be growing apart. The show often goes in the opposite direction, choosing connection and communication over blow-out fights and cataclysmic break-ups. This time around, however, things get pretty intense before they get better. You know things have gotten bleak when your favorite cartoon is channeling Succession, and as strange as these two shows might sound in the same sentence, Harley Quinn loves a good pop culture reference.

As epic as Harley and Ivy’s journey might be, this Bane aficionado does feel it’s necessary to note that he feels less present this season than in others. That said, Harley Quinn thankfully learned long ago just how to deploy this character to maximum effect. When Bane finally does get his moment, it’s a globe-trotting quest for the ages.

And as for Harley and Ivy? Let’s just say that to fix the problems between them, they might need to break at least a couple laws of the universe. Thankfully, for them, that’s just an average Tuesday afternoon.