As an elderly Harley Quinn looks back on her life, she and Poison Ivy recall a mysterious new Robin who could have very close ties to Batman.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers from “Harley Quinn & Poison Ivy in… The Beginning” in DC: Love is a Battlefield by Tim Seeley, Rebekah Isaacs, Kurt Micahel Russell, and Travis Lanham, on sale now.
As part of the DC: Love is a Battlefield anthology special, an elderly Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy reminisced about their life together in Harley’s final moments. While recounting their adventures together as a couple, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy recall a time they brokered a forced truce with Batman at some point in the future.
By the time this takes place, Batman, his allies, Harley and Ivy had shown visible signs of aging. While Batman, Harley and even Nightwing all have more than a few streaks of gray and white in their hair, this scene also featured the unspoken introduction of a new female Robin, who sat and watched the proceedings not too far away from Batman. While no information is given about this character, the context of the scene suggests that she could be Helena Wayne, the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle who’s destined to become Batwoman.
As Harley and Ivy recalled, one of their last capers involved Ivy tried to reconstitute the Amazon rainforest with Lazarus infused plant seeds. While this was ostensibly a good thing, there was also a very decent chance that it would go horribly wrong. Naturally, Batman and his family arrived to stop her and Harley. The fighting only stopped when Ivy revealed that she had somehow discovered Batman’s true identity. After decades of knowing him though, Ivy decided not to blackmail him, but instead to form an alliance to help the planet.
Several members of the Bat-Family were in attendance for the truce, all of whom were showing the signs of middle age. Nightwing, Red Hood, Batgirl, and Huntress were all visibly a few decades older than they are today. However, this new Robin still appeared to be somewhere in her teens or 20s.
Given the rough timeframe of her appearance as well as her age, this Robin could very well be Helena Wayne, especially since her costume is almost identical to the one Earth-2’s Helena Wayne wore in 2012’s Huntress/Power Girl: Worlds’ Finest #0, by Paul Levitz, Kevin Maguire and Wes Craig.
As Batman/Catwoman has confirmed, Bruce Wayne seems to marry Selina Kyle, and they will most likely have a daughter named Helena. With some variation, this scenario has played out in several potential timelines, and Helena usually joins the family business and becomes the Huntress or even the newest Batwoman. However, Helena’s New 52 era Earth 2 stories established that she worked as Robin in her youth. And by the time the alliance between Batman and Poison Ivy was made enough time would have passed for Helena to be born and trained as Robin in the regular DC Universe, too.
Whether or not this Robin is Helena Wayne, she’s only the latest in a line of young women to take on that iconic mantle. Carrie Kelley from The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley, popularized the idea of a female Robin in another possible future tale. Stephanie Brown also took up the mantle for a time, before being forced to fake her own death and reverting to her Spoiler identity.
Since the overarching story about Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy is effectively another potential alternate future in itself, there’s no guarantee that this Robin is a certainty in some part of DC’s future. But even if this is just one of the many worlds in the DC Multiverse, there’s another Robin waiting in one Batman future, and this one could hit very close to home.
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