Every Screen Version Of Harley Quinn Ranked Worst To Best

Long before the Birds of Prey were best known for being led by the fantabulously emancipated Harley Quinn, they were tearing up the 2002 TV screen ... for a year, at least. Only one season was ever produced of the series, after its impressive premiere numbers gave way to a steep decline in viewership. It's an odd little series, notably averse to comic book canon. Sure, it's got Oracle working out of Gotham's clocktower, but it also has a telepathic Black Canary, a Gotham that's been abandoned by Batman, and a Huntress who, in addition to being Bruce Wayne's estranged daughter, was born to a Catwoman with literal cat powers that she can also manifest through strong emotion.

Nothing, however, tops the show's take on Harley Quinn for sheer strangeness. The show's antagonist, Harley is a conniving psychiatrist out for revenge on the Gotham elite who incarcerated her Mr. J. It's not a terrible idea on its own, but Mia Sara's Harley shares little in common with the maven of mayhem that fans know and love. She smirks in lieu of cackling, coolly lays out her complex plans, and generally lacks the anarchic glee that makes Harley such a beloved character. This makes sense, given Birds of Prey's sleek approach to superheroics, but it sure does make for sub-par Harley content.

It's not that Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay is bad, exactly, nor is its portrayal of Harley Quinn. Generally speaking, both are exactly what you might expect: violent, quirky, uninterested in ethics. Committed DC fans will have fun seeing lesser-known characters like Punch and Jewelee and Scandal Savage brought to animated life, while more casual watchers can enjoy some decently choreographed fight scenes. It's something to put on, which is more than can be said for some of the other entries on this list, even if it's best watched with chatty friends or while doing chores.

But really, that's where the praise has to end, especially when it comes to Harley. Hell to Pay's Harley is what you might get if you asked a computer to generate a portrayal based upon the Harley Quinn merch available at any given geek convention — recognizably Harley, but without any memorable scenes, lines, or moments. Hell to Pay gets that people like Harley because she's a cheery nutcase, so it spits out scenes in which she laments not being able "to give [Jewelee] a makeover ... with a baseball bat!" It's not bad, exactly, but it's also not scintillating stuff. She's the exact average of the Harley that lives in the public imagination, a perfectly adequate portrayal that meets the minimum and goes no further. It could be worse ... but it could also be a whole lot better.

Gotham's Harley isn't Harley, technically. Instead, she's Ecco, right-hand woman to Gotham's Joker-who-isn't-technically-Joker, Jeremiah Valeska. Like her inspiration, she too began as a professional woman who, in her legitimate work with a devious Mr. J, plummeted into gleeful insanity, deranged devotion, and a whole lot of violence. Like everything in Gotham, she's the classic character seen through a new prism, at once identifiable and entirely new. What results is strange but largely satisfying.

For the most part, what makes Ecco work as a version of Harley Quinn is what differentiates her from the character as we know her. Harley has always been a tragic figure, as known for her pitiful dependence upon the Joker as for her cheeky one-liners. But Ecco's story is sharper in its sadness, accelerating Harley's dedication into literal worship. Ecco shoots herself in the head to prove herself to Jeremiah, leads cults centered around him, and helps him fake being brain dead for years. There's a quasi-religious edge to Ecco that Harley lacks. She often seems to be more of a supplicant than a desperate lover. It's an odd take best left outside mainstream DC storytelling, but it's intriguing to indulge in, within the refracted world of Gotham. Ecco isn't Harley, but she's isn't not Harley, resulting in something that's more interesting than not.

It's hard to categorize the Lego movies' take on DC Comics characters according to any typical standard. Sure, Batman, Wonder Woman, and uh, Condiment King, are present, wearing their usual costumes and wielding their usual powers. But this Batman blasts his own dubstep tracks about being super rich and uber-brooding, this Superman boasts about the Phantom Zone having "the sickest baddies," and, well, they're all Lego minifigures. If these portrayals are comparable to anything, it's the 1966 Batman show. They entertain precisely because they're such dramatic departures from the characters as we know them.

How does Harley Quinn fare in this kaleidoscopic landscape of plasticized adventure? Pretty well, really. Voiced by the irrepressible Jenny Slate, the PG-rating allows the character to return to her goofier roots. This Harley poses as an employee of "Phantom's Own Laundry Service," roller skates her way through the Joker's lair, and cycles through every comic accent, from the stuffiest English marm to a vocally-fried millennial. She's genuinely funny, an aspect of the character often buried beneath violence and sex appeal, and actually gets to play the psychologist to a bummed-out Joker. Sure, she's telling him to decouple his self-worth from Batman's opinion of him to further his villainous schemes, but still, it's a more serious incorporation of Harley's professional past than most versions allow. This Harley might be made of plastic, but she's all heart.

Batman and Harley Quinn is a purposeful throwback to Batman: The Animated Series on a whole lot of levels. Its visuals are a wholehearted return to 1992, embracing Bruce Timm's legendary designs over the blockier look of its DC Animated Original contemporaries. Moreover, Timm co-wrote the story, and BTAS veterans Kevin Conroy and Loren Lester returned to voice Batman and Nightwing, respectively. Harley is no exception to this trend, clad in her original costume and lacking the bloodlust so many 2000s adaptations instilled in her.

The movie itself is middling and prone to the same excess as all the other movies under the DC Animated Original umbrella. Case in point: In an attempt to create a sexy shot, animators accidentally portrayed Harley with two pairs of buttocks and were rightly and roundly mocked by fans of all stripes. Yet beneath this slopped-on sludge of sexuality, there lies a Harley that is, in fact, quite a lot of fun. It's a real delight to spend time with a Harley who knows how to tell a joke, sings karaoke, and sometimes wants to do the right thing, even if it's through the wrong means. The movie would unquestionably have been better if it hadn't allowed its team to indulge every impulse, but if you can deal with that sort of foolishness, you'll find a refreshing take on Harley to enjoy.

In an era when Harley Quinn is at her most culturally visible and her least kid-friendly, it's a feat of serious magnitude to pull off a totally G-rated take. That's exactly what DC Super Hero Girls does and with serious aplomb at that. Launched alongside a whole host of tie-in comics, dolls, pajamas, and school supplies, DC Super Hero Girls re-imagines the leading ladies of the DC Universe as high school students, looking to make the world a better place while maintaining their GPAs.

Harley is at her energetic best here, underscored by an unexpected willingness on the part of the cartoon to get downright macabre. Yes, she's a schoolgirl who bonds with childhood bestie Barbara Gordon over getting to go to Gotham-Con, an occasion they celebrate with a lavish dance sequence. But cockroaches tumble around their feet as they do it, and the chalk body outlines of a crime scene join in with a festive jig. This is a Harley you can watch with your kids, as delightful as she is cognizant of the fact that even kids like a bit of black humor now and then. So on the one hand, she calls Barbara everything from "Babsie-Wabsie" to "Babbbly-boo," while on the other hand, she occasionally tries to bash Robin's brains in with a klieg light. Teen Harley is a new take for sure, but one so natural it's a wonder she took so long to arrive.

Gotham Girls was unprecedented in a lot of ways. For one thing, it was a cartoon created exclusively for the web, which in 2000 was nearly unheard of. For another, it was focused entirely on the women of Gotham, especially Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, and Batgirl. Though its Flash-powered animation looks jerky and flat to modern eyes, it was a revelation at the time, and in today's superheroic landscape of Wonder Woman movies and girl-centric cartoons like DC Super Hero Girls, it was a true trailblazer.

Harley here is the Harley of Batman: The Animated Series, from her voice acting to her design. She's a wonderful take on the character, but as Gotham Girls unfolds, the character winds up going in a very different, unique direction. Inhabiting a female-dominated world changes Harley subtly, freeing her (and the other characters) to be weirder, wilder, and generally more interesting. None of them have to be the girlfriend, the sidekick, the femme fatale, or anything else so simple. They can, simply, be — Harley most of all. She's not the Joker's pet in Gotham Girls but a villainess in her own right, and if she's anything to anyone, she's the clownish counterpoint to Poison Ivy's composed cool. Watching her get to be a goofball ne'er-do-well sans baggage is a little like a vacation from other Harley portrayals. You'll go happily back to them eventually, but a break every now and then is a wonderful refreshment.

Decades have passed since the debut of Batman: The Animated Series, but the years have hardly dimmed the legendary series' luminous reputation. If anything, love for BTAS has only deepened. Adults revisit their favorite episodes and realize, with mature eyes, how much it got right. Lesser Batman adaptations debut and throw BTAS' triumphs into sharper contrast. And with every passing year, the series' unique contributions to the Dark Knight's mythos only embed themselves more deeply within the medium-spanning DC Universe — most prominently with Harley Quinn.

Initially intended to be a brief walk-on role for Arleen Sorkin, an old friend of series creator Paul Dini's, Harley Quinn took on a life of her own from the first frame of her appearance in "Joker's Favor." Many have played the role by this point, but no one has ever captured Harley's particularly lopsided charm as well as Sorkin, whose Harley plays jump rope with the line between comedy and tragedy. She's a joyous failure, a cackling cast-off, a psychologist who ran away and joined the circus. Lesser takes on the character demand that Harley forsake this muddled middle ground for something simpler, but BTAS got it right the first time. Harley is, frankly put, a mess, and that's why she's one of the most potent characters in the DC universe.