Harley Quinn Showrunners Explain Why THAT Batman Villain Had to Die in Season 2 Premiere

Just weeks after the first critically-acclaimed season of Harley Quinn wrapped up on DC Universe, the streaming service has already brought back Kaley Cuoco, Lake Bell, Alan Tudyk, Tony Hale, and the rest of the gang back for more action. And after the cataclysmic events in the Season One finale that saw the near-destruction of Gotham City, you’d probably assume that Harley Quinn would do her best to right the wrongs and get things back to normal in Batman‘s territory. Well, you’d be wrong, because she only made things worse — but Harley did manage to get some revenge on a Batman villain in the process.

In fact, Harely Quinn saw the second major death of a Batman villain in just as many episodes, though this one came at the hands of Harley herself.

Warning: Spoilers for the Season 2 premiere of Harley Quinn below.

In the episode “New Gotham,” Harley finds that the surviving villains have carved up Gotham City after Batman has gone missing. Riddler, Bane, Two Face, The Penguin, and Mister Freeze all carve take their own territory and are going to give Harley a small piece, but she refuses to participate. So she is then encased in ice and put on display in Penguin’s Iceberg Lounge.

When her friends rescue her, Harley goes on a spree of violence to enact her revenge on Penguin, including biting his nose off and stabbing him in the head with the broken shard of her baseball bat. So long, Oswald Cobblepot, and thanks for inviting us to the Bar Mitzvah.

Harley Quinn showrunners Patrick Schumacker and Justin Halpern spoke with ComicBook.com about the reasoning behind killing off Penguin and other major DC Comics characters, revealing why they feel empowered to make such bold choices in the animated series.

“I think we try to think of things in terms of, has the comedic engine died for that character? Or have we gotten everything out of that character that we want?,” Halpern explained. “It’s a comic book show so we also have the ability to resurrect people should they become necessary or relevant again to a story we’re telling. But we’ve tried, aside from Ivy, we’re trying to keep the ones that are dead, dead. And we’ve killed off a lot. But the nice thing about our show is that we also use a ton of C and D list villains and they end up being big parts of the show, like Kite Man.”

Halpern added, “If you were doing a normal Batman show and you killed off The Penguin, that’d be… you’re really killing the stories you can do. But with us, it feels we have such a deep well of characters to go into because we can go into those really, really, really deep cut villains and characters that we’re not hurting ourselves.”

With Kite-Man playing a major role and the promise of Doctor Trap showing up in future episodes, not to mention a certain New God of the hellish world of Apokolips, there’s no telling what the future holds for the hilarious animated series.

New episodes of Harley Quinn are debuting every Friday on DC Universe.