Batman has, canonically speaking, had sex. He has a son, and he was at least once engaged to Catwoman. But there are limitations, and the creators of the Harley Quinn animated series on HBO Max ran into that barrier according to a new interview with executive producer Justin Halpern with Variety.
“It’s incredibly gratifying and free to be using characters that are considered villains because you just have so much more leeway,” Halpern said. “A perfect example of this is in the third season of Harley [when] we had a moment where Batman was going down on Catwoman. And DC was like, ‘You can’t do that. You absolutely cannot do that.’ They’re like, ‘Heroes don’t do that.'”
So Halpern and his team shot back, asking if “heroes are just selfish lovers.”
“No, it’s that we sell consumer toys for heroes. It’s hard to sell a toy if Batman is also going down on someone,” DC execs told Halpern. The interview does note, though, that Halpern said that DC has been supportive throughout production and allowed them to push the envelope repeatedly.
The truth is that Batman is one of the most profitable–if not the most–superheroes on the planet. It’s one thing to let a comics writer suggest the character has had lovers, and another to put him in a raunchy situation. It’s hardly a surprise that they want to protect their most valuable player and keep him in the spaces fans expect.
HBO Max has not yet announced a release date for Harley Quinn Season 3, but Halpern and his team have already offered some suggestions–aside from a lack of naughty Batman scenes–of what we can expect following Season 2. If you haven’t yet watched the Harley Quinn series, make sure to check out our glowing review of Season 1 and a clip from one of the show’s cuttingly satirical scenes.
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