Harley Quinn closed out its fifth season this week, a frankly incredible achievement for a show (of which there were not few) that premiered on the hyper-niche DC Universe streaming service for DC Comics fans. (Hi, it’s me; I was the target audience.)
As pretty much the only show in the DC Universe stable to reach a broad audience, Harley Quinn deserves to take a big bow — and it was hard not to think along those lines while watching this Thursday’s episode, “The Mess Is the Point.” The wrap-up episode felt suspiciously like a series finale, not a season finale.
[Ed. note: This post contains some spoilers for Harley Quinn season 5.]
Image: Max
The back half of Harley Quinn’s fifth season has felt like it was setting up a new status quo and looking back nostalgically in multiple ways. Mainstay Frank the Plant got a murder/funeral mini arc, leading Harley and Ivy to a new stage of adult life: parenting Frank’s offspring/their daughter Frankette. Harley reconciled with her mother, who otherwise had not appeared on the show since season 1, and by the last scene in the finale the so long and thanks for all the fish energy leapt up a level.
It wasn’t just the reflective piano music and the pan over the series’ characters having a nice dinner party and dropping lines that illustrate how far they’ve come, or name dropping Sy Borgman, a mainstay of seasons 1 and 2 who hasn’t appeared since season 3. Then Harley and Ivy start reflecting meaningfully on how they have everything they need, followed by hints at Harley’s future of working with her inner psychiatrist self to help Brainiac’s other bottle cities adjust to becoming regular size again, and finally both of them leaping out a window to open-ended adventures of “fucking shit up.”
If this was the last time we saw these characters in this configuration? It would be a nice way to send them out.
Is there gonna be a Harley Quinn season 6?
Harley Quinn has not been renewed since late 2023, and as of this writing there is no official word on whether season 6 will materialize. Spinoff series Kite Man: Hell Yeah! has also yet to be renewed despite premiering in July of 2024. Showrunner and general DC animated comedy guy Dean Lorey seemed optimistic about the future of the Harleyverse in September, indicating there are multiple other spinoffs in development at Warner Bros., and that DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran are behind the subfranchise.
Speaking to TVLine more recently, Lorey said both that he and the crew on Harley Quinn are ready for more seasons (“we certainly plan to have more seasons”), but also indicated that the show’s future is currently up in the air (“in a future season — if there is one, God willing”), or at least not ready to be announced.
Image: Max
In the best-case scenario, every TV series should get enough notice to be able to wrap itself up in a tidy bow. Not enough do, these days, even with a major franchise to back them up. Paramount Plus’ Star Trek: Lower Decks used that foreknowledge to throw together a fabulous finale season, but its live-action sibling Star Trek: Discovery had to go into reshoots to cram an extra 40 minutes of series wrap-up into its season finale, making for a very uneven ending.
“In my mind,” Lorey told TVLine about “The Mess Is the Point,” “it’s not a series finale. I don’t think any of us making it want it to be a series finale. But it is the end of Season 5, so if that were to be it, I think it is a nice series finale.”
In an era when “canceled after two seasons” is practically a meme, and animation in particular seems to be disappearing from services right and left, whether or not the episode is a series finale or a season finale is almost beside the point. It’s just nice to see an animated production have the space, or foreknowledge, to make a satisfying ending either way.
