James Gunn talks Margot Robbie's DCU Harley Quinn status

Gunn addressed the lingering Margot Robbie question in his new podcast special, The Suicide Squad: Is It Canon?, which we learned about via Deadline. In this new podcast, Gunn goes over which parts of his 2021 film remain canon for his current DCU. And he acknowledges that the hardest one to explain away is the existence of Harley Quinn. Simply because his DCU hasn’t established its Joker yet. Or even its Batman for that matter.

Gunn acknowledged that Harley’s role in the story “is one of the more difficult things to justify as being canon in the DCU” without a Joker in that universe. He said, “I don’t know if she wants to play Harley again. She may be over that. Harley is a character I’m almost certainly going to use in the DCU. And if Margot wants to play her, then I’ll bend over backwards to explain that in the world. But if she doesn’t, then I might go with somebody else, where I don’t have to be attached to what happens to Harley in this movie.”

Nerdist’s Take: If Margot Robbie Wants to Come Back as Harley, It Would Be a Mistake For James Gunn to Not Find a Way to Canonize It

After playing Harley three times, first in the original Suicide Squad, then Birds of Prey, and then The Suicide Squad, Robbie probably wants to move on. But if she doesn’t, Gunn would be wise to lock her down for the new DCU. Just because we haven’t met the DCU’s Joker yet doesn’t mean he’s not out there. So she could easily be this new Joker’s Harley. Along with the original animated version, Robbie’s Harley Quinn left its stamp on pop culture. Ten years later, we still see a dozen “Daddy’s Little Monster” t-shirt Harley Quinns on Halloween. Also, Harley would be the perfect character to make a meta-commentary about surviving from one universe into the next, like Deadpool. We have our fingers crossed.