The Suicide Squad Reveals What’s Happened to Harley Quinn Since Birds of Prey

The Suicide Squad finally made its way into theaters and on HBO Max this weekend, and its impact on the DC Films universe is continuing to be felt. While the film is entirely accessible for new viewers, there are nuggets of storylines that continue from previous films. That’s especially the case for Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), whose big-screen arc has already been chronicled across 2016’s Suicide Squad and 2020’s Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). While it’s still not clear exactly how far apart the events of Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad happen from one another, the film does provide some context as to what happened with Harley’s story in the interim. Obviously, spoilers for The Suicide Squad below! Only look if you want to know!

The film opens with a group of Task Force X team members being sent to storm a beach on Corto Maltese — and to the surprise of some of the team, Harley is among them. When asked how she got arrested and thrown back into prison again, considering the fact that she’s been escaped ever since the end of Suicide Squad, she remarked that she crashed a car… into a bank.

Granted, we don’t know how long after the events of Birds of Prey this fender bender happened. Knowing Harley, it could be equally likely that the ordeal happened months or even a year after that film, or it could have been mere minutes after she took Black Canary’s (Jurnee Smollett) car and fled with Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) at the tail end of that film. Either way, it’s a way of explaining Harley’s return to the team in a way that feels quintessentially her.

“You get to see another side of Harley [in The Suicide Squad],” Robbie explained to ComicBook.com in 2020. “It’s interesting. You keep getting to meet her at different points in her life, as if a couple of years have gone by. Of course, the films aren’t directly connected, but as an actor, I can map it out in a chronological sense. So, it’s fun to see ‘Okay, what was she like a couple of years ago when she was with Mister J?’ ‘What is she like now, after they’ve broken up? And what is she going to be like in another couple of years’ time?’ I love seeing her at these different stages of her life.”

The Suicide Squad is now available in theaters, and to stream on HBO Max.

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