Harley Quinn’s Valentine’s Day special served as a mission for the previous showrunners, and they wanted to make it the best ever.
The following contains spoilers for Harley Quinn: A Very Troubled Valentine’s Day Special.
Harley Quinn: A Very Troubled Valentine’s Day Special it doesn’t just serve to quench the thirst of fans still waiting Harley Quinn Season 4 on HBO Max. It’s also the final series project from now-former showrunners Patrick Schumacker and Justin Halpern. They will be handing over those duties for next season, so they wanted to make a real exit. It is certainly easy to say that they probably achieved this.
The Harley Quinn The Valentine’s Day special certainly made an impact, which made many fans of the show feel satisfied. After so much uncertainty in the DC Universe, viewers needed something solid and comforting to cleanse their palates, and what better subject than the grotesque commercialized day of love? But it turns out that wasn’t necessarily the holiday Schumacker and Halpern originally wanted to focus on. They had some ideas.
“We wanted to do one Harley special holiday for a long time,” Schumaker explained in an interview with Variety. “We were like, ‘What hasn’t happened? Should we have a Hanukkah special?’ And I would still like to do that. But HBO Max’s schedule and desire to put something in between seasons required a Valentine-centric episode.” Perhaps the serendipity made things turn out that way, given the almost universally positive reaction to the special. Harley Quinn Season 4 to new host Sarah Peters.
“We wanted to do something super gonzo, crazy — what would a rom-com be like with this crazy cast of characters?” Schumacher continued. “We came up with ideas like something of an anthology type thing in the spirit of it Valentine’s Day the Really lovewhere you focus on different couples and maybe they get together in the end.” Things worked out well in that regard, with regular cuts to the couples explaining how they met, including Hawkman and Hawkgirl, played by Quinta Brunson and Tyler James Williams from the beloved Abbott Elementaryon which Schumacker and Halpern also serve as showrunners.
“The first three seasons, I felt like we had to say a lot of what we wanted to say,” Halpern added, describing how they wanted to wrap things up before they left. Harley Quinn on the new DC plate. “Well, it was like, every dumb joke that we hadn’t found a way to fit into the first three seasons. If you’ve seen the first three seasons, there’s a lot of dumb jokes in there, so maybe I’m thinking, what’s left? Specifically, the scene where Bane working with a dominatrix. We just put in everything we could — if you want to do something special, you have to do it special!”
In addition to exploring the great romance between Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, the Harley Quinn Valentine’s Day special has done a lot to make many people happy. From the outgoing hosts to the viewers, it seems everyone is happy with how things turned out. This includes the characters, though some more than others. Good luck to Schumacker and Halpern and all the best to Peters as its new head Harley Quinn.
Harley Quinn: A Very Troubled Valentine’s Day Special is available to stream on HBO Max, as are its first 3 seasons Harley Quinn.
Source: Variety