Before Margot Robbie was killing it on the set of Suicide Squad, the Harley Quinn character had a fun cameo in the Season 2 episode of The CW’s Arrow titled “Suicide Squad.” If you weren’t following the episode when Dan liveblogged it, the show featured scenes with a member of Task Force X, a pigtailed blond character in an ARGUS jumpsuit, with her back to the camera, at one point yelling from a cell — in a very familiar voice — that she’s a trained therapist. She was credited as “Deranged Squad Female” and played by Cassidy Alexa but voiced by frequent Harley Quinn voice actor and sometimes Harley Quinn cosplayer Tara Strong.
Producers Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kreisberg confirmed the character was Harley, as did stars Stephen Amell (Green Arrow) and Michael Rowe (Deadshot). Rowe even posted a picture of Cassidy Alexa hashtagged “Harley Quinn” on Instagram:
Harley was supposed to have a second cameo, but it was cut. According to Amell, “there was an additional scene with that character in the finale — again, still in the cell, still with her back to us — but it had to be cut for time.”
Now, we may know why they put so much work into teasing Harley Quinn only to cut her out of the finale and leave her out of subsequent episodes: Suicide Squad. During MCM London, Willa Holland (who plays Thea Queen) had this to say:
“We had big plans for Harley. But, I guess something came down from DC execs that told us to shut it down. I mean we had that tease with the pigtails and the ARGUS outfit but, we’ll never see it. We would love to [have] Harley in Arrow but it will never happen.”
In the past, we’ve heard mixed messages about whether or not DC execs were preventing an awesome TV version of Harley. Producer Marc Guggenheim said she was “always intended to be an Easter egg” whereas producer Andrew Kreisberg made it sound more like they wanted her to be a character and had to settle for a cameo, saying, “There are very few things we’ve asked DC Comics for that we haven’t gotten. […] What you saw is a compromise that Geoff Johns and I came up with.”
Gotta admit, we’re a little disappointed that DC allows so many characters to exist as TV and movie versions, but wouldn’t allow that with Harley. We might have to talk this out with a trained therapist.
(Via Flickering Myth, CBR, ComicBook, ScreenCrush, and Collider)
