Gotham season 4: No Harley Quinn now, or seemingly ever

Sure, there have been some Gotham season 4 – Harley Quinn rumors for a really long time, and at one point, it seemed to be happening. Star David Mazouz basically said the character would have a presence in the season 3 finale, and in the past, the show’s executive producers teased that a “proto” version of the character would be featured in some way.

Well, we’ve got some clarification on the subject now, and it’s not great news for all of the Harley fans that are out there. It doesn’t seem as though the familiar DC Comics foe will ever be turning up on the show. Per Screen Rant, here is what executive producer John Stephens had to say on that subject while at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend:

“It was my fault [the rumor started]. I had thought I had said and I might have not said it: We’ll see a Harley Quinn-esque character. Because in our mind Barbara was taking on a lot of the ethos and spirit of Harley Quinn, you know, her love of anarchy and violence. All those things that make Harley, Harley in many ways, we were trying to put into Barbara. So I thought that she was becoming a Harley Quinn-esque character. But we’re never going to see Harley Quinn. Sorry about that.”

So, basically, Barbara is the Harley Quinn of this story. She doesn’t have every element of the original Batman villain, but she has some of them. She’s psychotic, free-spirited at times, and she can inflict all sorts of violence.

So … what actually happened here?

There seems to have been a lot of mixed messages, and we do wonder if there is someone over at DC Comics who is just nixing the idea of the character on TV these days. Arrow and the talent on that show have basically admitted that the higher-ups killed the idea of bringing a version of the character onto the show. (There’s a tiny cameo that remains in there, and then also a deleted scene of the character, voiced by Tara Strong, calling Diggle “chocolate puddin’.” That’s it.)

Ultimately, Mazouz’s comments led to many wondering if a girl who appeared briefly in the finale (read more about it here) could have been Harley, and regardless of whatever Stephens says, we do think that any of that is still possible. We don’t actually have a problem with Harleen Quinzel not turning up because she would feasibly be still a young child on the show. Our feeling in the animated series was that she was several years younger than Batman, and given that Gotham has already taken liberties when it comes to character ages elsewhere, it’s nice for him to have some younger foes down the road who aren’t born into anything yet.

In the end, there are clearly plenty of other things to be excited about moving into season 4, especially since you’ve got Butch officially becoming Solomon Grundy — plus whatever is going to happen with Barbara in the aftermath of what she went through (provided that she’s still around).

Are you okay with no Harley Quinn on Gotham? Let us know your thoughts on that in the attached comments! (Photo: Fox.)