Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched the fifth season premiere of Harley Quinn with a Max subscription, so be warned!
The 2025 premiere schedule has unleashed one of TV’s most gleefully extreme returning series in the form of Harley Quinn Season 5, and I can’t imagine anyone expected a subdued and G-rated entrance from Kaley Cuoco’s semi-heroine. In this latest outing, Harls and Poison Ivy leave the dregs of Gotham City in the rear-view for the glitz and glamor of Metropolis for the opening of a new Superman museum.
Anyone hoping for abundant nods to James Gunn’s Superman probably wasn’t fulfilled, but plenty of fun Man of Steel nods were still on display, as well as a particularly stellar “Martha” joke that was all-too-reminiscent of The Penguin’s finale. Let’s take a quick run through my personal favorite highlights.
A Variety Of Super-Suits
Obviously the museum sequence is where Harley Quinn's fifth-season opener delivered the goods on references to Superman's long history across comic books, film and television (both live-action and animated). Alongside displays of different types of Kryptonite were two line-ups of various super-suits that ranged from the black Recovery Suit introduced in Action Comics #689 to that other black suit from Supes' alternate evil self in Superman: The Animated Series' Season 2 episode "Brave New Metropolis" to the Electric Blue and Red Superman costume designs.
This is probably where I'd most expected to get a nod to David Corenswet's new suit for the upcoming DC movie, but the closest we get is the Kingdom Come design. No disappointment there, though, since it's still a beaut even in Harley Quinn's world.
Alan Moore's Black Mercy
Harley Quinn already stars some malicious flora in the form of Frank the Plant, but the Superman museum showcased another rather iconic organism from comic lore. As seen below, one display housed a presumably replicated version of Black Mercy, the hallucination-causing alien entity created by Watchmen legends Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons for the 1985 one-off story "For the Man Who Has Everything."
Beyond being an award-nominated work in its own right, "For the Man Who Has Everything" inspired several Black Mercy-related storylines on Supergirl, Krypton, Justice League Unlimited and My Adventures with Superman. I would absolutely LOVE to see how it would affect Harley and Ivy, preferably in a Halloween special.
That A+ Martha Joke
Maybe it's just because I'm innately a bigger fan of Batman than Superman, but the episode joke that made me laugh the most (and continues to) comes when Harley and Ivy cross paths with Bruce Wayne and his romantic foil Lena Luthor, voiced by new Harley Quinn addition Aisha Tyler. (Am I going to accidentally and/or purposefully use Tyler's Archer character Lana? Probably.)
In any case, Lena's first words to Harley and Ivy are a perfectly fitting jab at Bruce's everlasting mommy issues.
- LENA: Giving Brucie proper comeuppance? Careful, don’t boss him around too much, or else he’ll fall for you. He likes to call me Martha.
- BRUCE: She’s joking. Ah, definitely joking.
Martha Wayne and her pearls are such an integral part of the Batman mythos that she helped forge a meme-worthy bond between the Dark Knight and Superman in Zack Snyder's take on the characters. But in Harley Quinn's world, Bruce's memory of his mother seems to be a bit more sordid. Yet perhaps not as disturbing as Oz dancing with a woman dressed up like his mother on The Penguin. I mean it's no doubt a thin line between.
The Nod To Richard Donner's Superman (1978)
Moving past its oedipus bat-complex, the episode lands another big Superman reference before ending on the introduction of Stephen Fry's Brainiac. When Harley asks the Kryptonian about his most recent vacation, Superman brings up possibly his most celebrated live-action moment yet, as seen in Richard Donner's first film with Christopher Reeve. As the character put it:
A few months ago, I went to space and altered the Earth’s rotation and turned back time to undo Lois’ death.
It's not a move that Superman goes to often, and the Speed Force later makes time travel slightly less risky than flying at such speeds through busy airspaces. But maybe he's talking about a completely different time, since this Superman doesn't look old enough to have handled such a task back then.
I can't wait to see this show bringing in more easter egg extravaganzas like this as Harley continues to try and force Superman to thank her for saving him. Tune in every Thursday when new episodes hit Max.
