It feels like yesterday that it was announced we’d be getting a Harley Quinn animated series. Twelve episodes into the first season, the penultimate episode, we have just the first season finale remaining. I must admit, when I first saw the title for the season’s penultimate episode, my first thought was of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: “Devil’s Snare…is deadly fun but will sulk in the sun.”

The previous episode closed with Harley Quinn (Kaley Cuoco), Dr Pamela Isley / Poison Ivy (Lake Bell), Clayface (Alan Tudyk), King Shark (Ron Funches), Dr Edgar Cizko / Doctor Psycho (Tony Hale), and Sy Borgman (Jason Alexander) coming face to face with an group of mutant carnivorous trees that had sprung and started eating people. The cause of the calamity was the pheromone Dr Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow (Rahul Kohli) had extracted from Poison Ivy. Whilst Quinn and the crew are in the park facing off against the killer trees, Scarecrow uses his latest fear serum to coral Gothamites toward the stampeding ravenous monsters.

The commissioner doesn’t seem to care that there are innocent people in the park. All he wants to do is bomb the place and use his new shiny tanks to take out any straggling trees. Bruce Wayne / Batman (Diedrich Bader) isn’t on board with the police using tanks where there could be unacceptable casualties. Bader seems to be playing it as if he’s a parent denying his spoiled brat of a son one of his many dangerous playthings.

Not only does this episode focus significantly on Ivy, we get to see Commissioner James ‘Jim’ Gordon (Christopher Meloni) make his return. The last time we saw the commissioner was in You’re a Damn Good Cop, Jim Gordon. Whilst Batman heads off to handle the Scarecrow, Justice League members Clark Kent / Superman (James Wolk), Princess Diana / Wonder Woman (Vanessa Marshall), John Stewart / Green Lantern, Barry Allen / The Flash take care of the trees.

Image Credit: IMDb.com

The Justice League, even though none of Harley’s crew possesses a stellar reputation for being law-abiding citizens, jumps to the wrong conclusion and attempts to banish all of them to The Phantom Zone. Fortunately for everyone involved, preventing a miscarriage of justice, Ivy manages to get hold of Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth and uses it on herself. It works.

Part of the truth is revealed. Harley and her crew weren’t responsible for the killer trees. Before Superman can get Harley to tell him which wrongdoer caused the calamity, everyone’s not so favourite Tsaritsa / Queen of Fables (Wanda Sykes) shows up and banishes the Justice League to a fairy tale book.

Queen of Fables must think, since the Justice League did the same thing to her, turnaround is fair play. Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and The Flash vanish into the book.

Not too happy with how Harley’s crew previously treated her, the Queen of Fables causes a giant beanstalk to sprout out of the ground. With Harley and her crew seemingly stuck at the top of the beanstalk with a cyclops, the Queen of Fables is happy with what she accomplished. Momentarily, even though he’s not great with ideas, it looks like Clayface might have a plan. His plan is to get someone else to solve their predicament. This is when the story gets derailed by that nasty romantic relationship none of us wanted: Ivy and Kite Man (Matt Oberg).

Does anyone know what possessed series writers to include this romantic storyline? Did the not realise we weren’t interested in seeing Ivy and Kite Man hooking up? Most of us, primarily DC Comics aficionados, wanted to see more of Harley and Ivy’s relationship. I didn’t buy into the Ivy / Kite Man thing because it was more of a distraction. Kite Man is possibly the least interesting character in the series. Let’s just leave it at Kite Man rescues Harley and the crew from the top of the beanstalk.