Birds of Prey Confirms Harley Quinn Is Bisexual

As of this weekend, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is officially delighting audiences in theaters around the world. The latest entry into the DC Extended Universe unites Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) with a rogues gallery of DC’s female superheroes, and it’s safe to say that it leaves a lot on the table. In between the epic fight scenes and the major character moments, Birds of Prey confirms one long-speculated aspect of Harley Quinn’s world — that she is bisexual. Major spoilers for Birds of Prey below! Only look if you want to know!

The film opens with Harley explaining to the audience what led to her and The Joker (Jared Leto) breaking up, which requires a bit of a look back at her origin story. After being thrown in a nunnery by her deadbeat dad, Harley graduated medical school and began to make her mark on the world — which included getting her heart broken several times before meeting The Joker. The sequence, which is done in a cartoony animation, conveys this with a visual of a slot machine, showing how each potential love interest wasn’t compatible with Harley. After showing two boring-looking dudes, the graphic then shows a cartoon of a woman — who ended up breaking Harley’s heart either way.

While the moment is fairly brief in the grand scheme of things, it serves as the first official confirmation that the DCEU’s version of Harley is bisexual. The confirmation arguably adds a new angle to a lot of later scenes in Birds of Prey, especially if you interpret her first meeting with Dinah Lance/Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) to be a little flirtatious. It also isn’t the only LGBTQ+ positive moment in the film, as Renee Montoya’s (Rosie Perez) relationship with her ex-girlfriend Ellen Yee (Ali Wong) ends up complicating things later on.

It will be interesting to see if and how Harley’s queerness factors into her future onscreen appearances, especially with Robbie frequently advocating to share the screen with Poison Ivy.

“If you read the comics you know that Poison Ivy and Harley have an intimate relationship,” Robbie said in a 2018 interview. “In some comics they convey it as a friendship; in other comics you can see that they’re actually sexually involved as a couple. I’ve been trying to – I would love to have Poison Ivy thrown into the universe, because the Harley and Poison Ivy relationship is one of my favorite aspects of the comics, so I’m looking to explore that on screen.”

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is in theaters now. Other upcoming DC movies include Wonder Woman 1984 on June 5th, The Batman on June 25, 2021, The Suicide Squad on August 6, 2021, Black Adam on December 22, 2021, Shazam! 2 on April 1, 2022, The Flash on July 1, 2022, and Aquaman 2 on December 16, 2022.