Harley Quinn at NYCC 2019: The Animated Pilot Reviewed

Harley Quinn 2019 at NYCC: what the pilot screening showed

At Madison Square Garden, DC held a panel to give fans a first look at several of its upcoming shows. One screening stood out from the rest: the pilot of the new Harley Quinn animated series, starring Kaley Cuoco as the title character. For a character who has spent most of her history as a sidekick, the evening was a notable change of billing. Harley Quinn in 2019 was finally stepping into her own spotlight.

The setting helps explain the reaction. Harley was created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm and first appeared in the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Joker's Favor”, which aired on September 11, 1992. Arleen Sorkin gave her the original voice. For decades she was defined by the Joker, and she has been rebuilt many times since, most visibly by Margot Robbie in the live-action Suicide Squad film of 2016. By late 2019 DC Universe, the company's streaming service, was putting adult animation at the center of its pitch, and this series was the loudest example. A screening in front of a New York crowd was a way to test the tone before launch.

Behind the screen, the series was developed by Justin Halpern, Patrick Schumacker and Dean Lorey, and Cuoco is one of its executive producers alongside them. The first season ran for 13 episodes. That detail matters for a Harley Quinn 2019 recap because the pilot has to carry the rest of the run: it sets the relationship at the center, introduces the supporting cast and tells the audience what kind of show it is watching.

That tone was the surprise. The pilot is not a toned-down cartoon with an edge. It is built to be crude, graphic and character-driven, and the audience at the screening responded to all three. A good measure of a pilot is whether it tells a viewer what the series will be in the first few minutes, and this one does it with a swear word in the opening lines.

The plot of the pilot

Harley is upset at the lack of trust her partner, the Joker, shows her. He will not let her take charge of anything. After a run-in with the Dark Knight, the Joker uses her as a distraction so that he can make his own escape, and she is left behind. The result is another stay at Arkham Asylum, where she has to take a hard look at her life and at her relationship with the Clown Prince of Crime.

That premise gives the series its engine. A character defined by her devotion to a man who treats her as disposable starts to ask what she wants instead. The pilot is where she starts asking, and it is the thread that the rest of the season pulls.

Arkham is not new ground for Harley, and the pilot says so with a shrug: she is sent there, again. The repetition is part of the joke and part of the argument. A woman who keeps ending up in the same cell after the same man leaves her behind is a woman with a pattern, and the writers use that pattern as the spine of the character study the screening audience praised afterward.

The cast and the voice work

The cast brings Gotham to life with obvious enthusiasm. Cuoco sounds like she is having fun, and her performance balances delusion with a childlike wonder, which makes the audience invest in a villain. She is flanked by two veteran voices: Lake Bell as Poison Ivy and Alan Tudyk as the Joker. Both bring their own uniqueness and flair to their characters.

Diedrich Bader holds his own as Batman and works as the anchor for the chaos around him. The two biggest surprises were Christopher Meloni as Commissioner Jim Gordon and J.B. Smooth as Frank, one of Poison Ivy's plants. Between them they earned the biggest laughs of the screening, and both were a joy to watch from the first scene.

The wider cast of the show goes beyond the pilot's lineup. Ron Funches voices King Shark and Tony Hale voices Doctor Psycho, and Tudyk also voices Clayface, so the series leans on comedy performers as much as on traditional voice actors. That mix explains why the dialogue plays like a sitcom with a body count.

The vision: tone, violence and animation

The writers made a strong choice in tone and style, and the screening rewarded it. The show is very, very adult. Curses litter the episode, starting when Harley shouts the F-word within the first few lines of dialogue. A beheading leads straight into a ventriloquist joke. The amount of blood and gore is, in a word, obscene.

The animation shows everything and implies little. Any kind of fighting or killing is displayed in full, and viewers sit with every drop of blood or exploding organ. Character designs mix homage and reinvention, and each costume speaks to its wearer's personality while reinforcing the tone. The faces carry emotion that matches the strength of the voice cast.

The writing team also takes the characters seriously. They examine the mental illnesses some of the characters live with and use that as the base for character studies and for dissections of relationships. Those scenes are where the pilot earns its keep, because the gore alone would not carry an episode.

The Harley Quinn 2019 cast at a glance

Harley Quinn 2019 review: the verdict on the pilot

Harley Quinn is a phenomenal ride for the loyal, adult DC audience. It combines a fun, fast product with real storytelling and some character growth, and it leaves a viewer eager to root for Harley's rise to the top of Gotham's criminal underworld. As a first impression, that is hard to beat. For anyone sizing up Harley Quinn 2019 as a year of DC television, this is the entry that justified the hype.

Anyone comparing notes on Harley Quinn 2019 against the other DC projects of that year will notice how little the series cares about being part of a larger continuity. It borrows the costumes, the city and the rogues gallery, then writes its own jokes. That freedom is a large part of why the pilot feels so confident.

The strongest sign is where the humor sits. The best laughs come from character, from Frank the plant and from Commissioner Gordon, and not from references that require homework. A viewer who has never read a Batman comic can enjoy the episode as a workplace comedy set in a very violent city, and a longtime fan gets the homage on top.

The pilot also feels like an answer to a specific complaint. A lot of viewers came out of Suicide Squad wishing it were better, and this show gives them a sharper, funnier and more committed version of the same corner of the DC universe. If the film left a viewer cold, the series is the better test.

It is not for everyone. Anyone sensitive to graphic violence or constant profanity should skip it, and parents should treat it as the adult-only series it plainly is. But for viewers who like adult animation, the first episode makes a clear case that the show knows what it is and has the voice cast to deliver it.

The release was set for November 29 on DC Universe, which made the show one more reason to subscribe to the service at the time. For a viewer deciding where to start, the pilot is the natural entry point, and it needs no knowledge of the comics.

The series has outlived that launch window by years. It later moved to HBO Max for season 3, which premiered on July 28, 2022, and season 5 followed on January 16, 2025. Looking back from there, the NYCC screening reads as an accurate preview: the tone, the cast and the focus on Harley's own arc all carried through.

What the screening could not show is whether a whole season would sustain that energy. What it did prove is that the writers had a clear idea of who the characters are and that the voice cast could deliver it. For an opening episode, that is the right kind of evidence.

Sources

• Harley Quinn (TV series), Wikipedia — voice cast, premiere date and episode list