Birds of Prey Concept Art Reveals Comic Accurate Costume for Huntress

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) made its way onto the big screen earlier this year, bringing an energetic, feminist take on the DC Comics mythos in the process. One of the iconic characters introduced to audiences in the film was Helena Bertinelli/Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a heroine who has kicked butt in the comics for years. Birds’ iteration of Huntress adapted her costume into a comfortable, modern-day context — but it almost took a completely different shape. Greg Hopwood, who served as a concept artist on the Warner Bros. film, recently took to Twitter to share an alternate design for Huntress’ costume, which borrows some elements from her comics-accurate costume.

Not only does the concept art imagine Huntress with longer hair, but it incorporates more cross iconography – both on the top of the costume and in a necklace. It also makes the lines of her mask much more pointed and exaggerated, much more in line with how it’s portrayed in the comics. While Huntress’ costumes in the film – both her main outfit and her costume in the final scene – are certainly comic accurate, it’s interesting to see what other designs were explored.

“The character behind her is that she’s always about function, and someone who’s on a mission, and does not want to be distracted by outside sources,” costume designer Erin Benach said during a visit to the film’s set. “Whereas you know, Harley might be walking in the streets at, ‘Oh, I want to grab that diamond and put it on myself, or grab that item and put it on myself’, and for, you know, grab it. Huntress is focused and she is sort of all business, and she’s super focused on the job at hand. We wanted to create something really functional for her, and also fashion-forward and cool. So we kind of created this tracksuit that you’ll see that she has many different tracksuits throughout the film.”

“With Huntress, we were thinking ‘What can actually be very tactical and useful?’ but also pay homage to the purple and the black and the hood,” director Cathy Yan previously told ComicBook.com. “But we wanted to modernize a hood, so it’s not just like a cape, but more like a hoodie. Again, it’s like that sort of athletic street style, but still hinting at all of that, so it was extremely fun to play around with all of that.”

What do you think of this comic-accurate concept art for Birds of Prey‘s Huntress? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!