Every Harley Quinn DCEU Movie Ranked

For all of the DCEU’s changes and accusations of instability, Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn has been a dependable presence even as the timeline’s canon shifted. She’s now appeared in three DCEU movies, with the potential for more appearances – given how popular she seems to be with the studio – in the franchise’s future slate. But which of her movies is the best so far?

In the alternate strand of the DC movie multiverse where David Ayer’s Suicide Squad was a roaring critical success as well as a commercial one, Harley Quinn’s DC timeline would have looked very different. On top of Birds of Prey, which would presumably have been very different, there would have been Harley Quinn vs The Joker as a follow-up and of course Gotham City Sirens. But even as the foundations of those plans crumbled and were rebuilt in a different image, Harley remained a brand that Warner Bros had – and have – huge confidence in.

Robbie’s performance is charismatic, knows where it came from in terms of Quinn’s origin, and it’s obvious she has a lot of fun in the role. Ahead of any potential Harley Quinn solo project after The Suicide Squad rebranded her again, which of Robbie’s appearances in the DCEU was the best?

3. Suicide Squad (2016)

For all of the calls for David Ayer’s cut of Suicide Squad to be restored, the image of Harley Quinn as the “beaten woman” archetype is not something that ought to be celebrated again. Her story was apparently changed from Ayer’s cut – which included a romantic sub-plot with Will Smith’s Deadshot as a true sign of her emancipation – but the Warner Bros’ cut was far from kind to its blue-chip star character. Even though Margot Robbie’s performance as Harley Quinn is a stand-out in an otherwise muddled field, the final Joker twist is reductive, and there’s a little too much glamour in the way she’s mistreated. Still, at least the studio recognized the stat potential in the performance, despite quietly throwing a lot of Suicide Squad‘s continuity out. It’s just a shame there wasn’t more of her interacting with Ben Affleck’s gruff Batman thrown in for a nostalgic call-back to Batman: The Animated Series.

2. The Suicide Squad (2021)

Strictly speaking, Harley Quinn’s return in The Suicide Squad feels like a continuation of her role in Suicide Squad. She may have new tattoos and a new Joker-defying jacket, but her allusions to knowing Rick Flag and Jai Courtney’s Boomerang suggest that James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is a “soft sequel” more than a reboot. And bringing Harley back at all fits with Warner Bros. agenda to double down on what worked the first time out (as well as giving the audience the familiarity that breeds money). At times, she feels a little shoe-horned in, but at least her sub-plot with the Corto Maltesian dictator leads to the further cathartic exorcism of Jared Leto’s Joker. The performance remains funny and endearing and there’s certainly potential for a project that embraces Harley as the lead in the wake of The Suicide Squad.

1. Birds of Prey

While The Suicide Squad vastly improved the story Harley was given as part of Task Force X, it’s still no competition for the under-appreciated gem that is Birds of Prey. Though her name is in the title, that was – and still is – a cheap marketing shot that alluded to a small part of the overall plot and undermined the majority of it by setting expectations too high. Harley’s emancipation was certainly important, and her interactions with Ewan McGregor’s Black Mask clearly offered an opportunity to bite back at Jared Leto’s Joker, but Harley is on even better form as part of the rag-tag group of antiheroes and heroes that become the Birds of Prey. She’s got more agency, more personality, and is eminently more watchable in these surroundings and as with The Suicide Squad‘s best Harley moments, it’s great seeing her in full force as her own person. This is the Harley Quinn the DCEU should focus on, rather than trying to get her into a potential Suicide Squad 3.

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Simon Gallagher
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Simon is a veteran editor who has been writing online since 2010 – long before anyone wanted to read his work. He loves Clueless. Like, a lot.

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