Harley Quinn season 3 episode 9 recap & review: Climax at Jazzapajizza

Episode 9 of Harley Quinn revolves around the aftermath of Bruce’s attempts to bring his parents back as Harley and Ivy try to do the right thing and save Gotham. The episode is streaming on HBO Max.

Recap

Nightwing and Batgirl keep watch over a restrained Harley, Ivy, Doctor Psycho and Clayface as the villains insist that Bruce is the one that has lost his mind and is doing up to something terrible.

Nightwing and Batgirl refuse to believe that until Bruce walks in and introduces everyone to his parents, who are currently plant-zombie hybrids. He says that something went wrong in his experiment and he’ll fix it soon.

Ivy figures that Bruce hadn’t changed Frank enough which is why the plant aspect still exists and they need to check the extent of the experiment. Batgirl looks out the window and sees hordes of zombies so she lets the captives out.

Everyone tries to fight back the zombies as Frank comes in and tells them that it has spread everywhere and they should avoid the zombie vomit. Doctor Psycho gets some puke on him and immediately turns into a plant-human hybrid.

Ivy is certain that she can go into the Green and find a way to control all the zombies so she begins delegating responsibilities. Clayface leaves for some errands when he realizes that every dead person in Gotham is brought back to life.

She asks Ivy to get the situation under control with the Bat sidekicks’ help as the zombies are headed to the Jazzapajizza festival taking place in the park. Ivy just really loves jazz and doesn’t want anything to happen to the musicians.

Ivy tells Nightwing and Batgirl to take her to the Batcave since she knows that Bruce is Batman. They reluctantly show her where it is and Ivy heads out in the Batwing as Nightwing and Batgirl go out on bikes.

They begin knocking out as many zombies as they can and Harley calls King Shark for a favour. She asks him to go to Wayne Manor and protect Ivy who is in the Green and momentarily defenceless.

Ivy searches the Green and finally finds a big source of power. Swamp Thing appears and asks her to use that power for good but Ivy doesn’t really give him that much thought.

She comes out of the Green with much more power and is able to control the zombies. Frank is glad that they can help now but Ivy has a different plan in mind. She wants to go ahead with her plan to turn Gotham into Eden even if it looks a bit different than she imagined.

She heads straight to the festival and makes all the zombies follow her as Harley wonders what’s going on.

King Shark arrives at Wayne Manor and runs into Bruce who has been showing his zombie parents around the house. King Shark shows Bruce the zombie apocalypse that he started and then has an honest conversation about dealing with his loss.

Nightwing and Batgirl want to take Ivy out but Harley asks for some time so she can try and change her mind first. Harley goes up to Ivy and asks her why she’s doing this.

Ivy says that Harley is the one that gave her the confidence to make a plan and follow through on it. Harley says that this plan involves innocent people dying and that’s not what they originally agreed upon. She jumps in front of a zombie about to puke and howls in pain.

Ivy tells Harley that she can’t fix her without fixing everything else back to the way it was and Harley is glad that things work that way. Bruce finally sees reason and gets ready to kill his zombie parents as the first step to moving on but King Shark offers to do it for him and save him that pain.

Ivy has no choice but to revert everything back to normal to save Harley and then does the most dramatic curse to the heavens as she falls to her knees and raises her fists in the sky.

Review

• The odd pairing of King Shark and Bruce Wayne bonding over the loss of their parents and King Shark helping Bruce get over his grief is a fun subplot common to the series. Having characters interact with each other in a way unimaginable is what ‘Harley Quinn’ does well.
• Focusing an entire episode on the Joker becoming the mayor and barely incorporating it in the follow-up episodes feels like a missed opportunity.
• With just one episode to go, this season’s arc has already climaxed as evidenced in the meta title and the final episode will be more about establishing the base for the next season.
• The subplots have been hit and miss this season with King Shark having a small arc that is alright and Clayface impersonating Billy Bob Thornton which is barely shown and constantly brought up by Clayface. Instead, two episodes solely focused on a single character, Joker and Bruce Wayne/Batman.

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Also Read: Harley Quinn season 3 episode 8 recap & review: Batman Begins Forever