Dye Hard

Season 2
Episode 10

## All Season 2 Episodes

"**Dye Hard**" is the tenth episode of the second season of *Harley Quinn*, and the twenty-third episode of the series overall. It was released on June 5, 2020 on DC Universe.

## Synopsis

Fresh off Ivy rebuffing her, Harley reconnects with a now-sane Joker and heads to Wayne Tower, where their dinner is interrupted by an escaped Riddler and ParaDemons.

## Plot

Clayface and King Shark discuss Batman on their way out of the Gotham Mall when they bump into Harley, and they each ask about their respective parties. King Shark supplies that he "got married and saved the Oceanic Trade Federation" while Harley lies that they did normal bachelorette stuff and "slept in separate beds". Harley also offers to go out drinking to forget the few couple hours with them, but King Shark has to be with his wife and Clayface wants to watch the Tony Awards. Harley is left alone and dejected as she looks at a picture of her and Ivy, so Sy Borgman comforts her and gives her heartfelt advice to do what makes her happy, that life is about "feeding your soul" rather than just about significant others. Harley, however, ignores this advice and heads off to have sex with a random person.

Harley heads to Wayne Tower, the only place left in the ruins of Gotham City with a functional upper-class bar scene after the assault from her Parademon army. Without a reservation, Harley is forced to go to the bar where she is hit on by upper-class men that she has no taste for. The bartender charms her, but it turns out to be the Joker, much to Harley's disgust. Meanwhile in the restored GCPD, Commissioner Gordon is busy restoring order to the city when a package arrives for him. It contains a message from Batman ordering him to the roof, where he finds the Batplane waiting for him.

*❝ Oh, shut the fuck up! Can't you see I'm trying to elegantly end this conversation with this mechanical fossil? Good luck getting out again, fuck head! ❞*
— Doctor Psycho to the Riddler

Back in the Gotham Mall, Doctor Psycho arrives to collect his things and give Sy Borgman instructions to keep the Riddler in captivity. Sy takes the opportunity to berate Doctor Psycho for leaving the crew, but he doesn't care and only relays that he reinforced the Riddler's prison to prevent his escape before leaving. In actuality, Doctor Psycho weakened them so that the Riddler could escape and become his new sidekick.

Back at Wayne Tower, the Joker recognizes Harley from Noonan's Bar and tells her of how he rose to become an upper scale bartender at Wayne Tower, only to find her walking away. He stops her, clarifies that it isn't so he can hit on her (he loves his girlfriend Bethany), and informs her that there are literally no other bars left due to the Parademon invasion. Wayne Tower, however, is protected by bulletproof glass and "the safest bar in town" - which then gets taken over by a group of robbers at that very moment, lead by Gus the kindergarten teacher. Harley tries to escape, but Gus spots her and pistol whips her into unconsciousness.

Harley wakes up to find herself handcuffed to the Joker, much to her disgust. Meanwhile, the hostage situation continues with Gus demanding more and more in return for the release of the rich clientele. At first, he demands $50 million, which a single person offers to wire to him on the spot; then he demands W76-2 nuclear warhead on a Trident II D5 missile, which a random military contractor offers to give him on the spot; and finally, he asks for some "game-worn Air Jordan 2 OG's", at which point they finally come up dry.

While this unfolds, the Joker tells Harley that he had a dream about her, a dream where they were both on a yacht with bankers, as a couple. The Joker finds the very concept itself to be crazy, since her bleached skin "gives me the heebie-jeebies", but in the dream he remembers being filled with an irrational rage that he robbed the bankers and set them on fire. Harley catches onto it as a memory but insists that it never happened, ignores him, and focuses on getting them both out of the hostage situation. After telling Harley not to use the Lord's name in vain and that he weighs 170 pounds, Harley uses him as a battering ram to knock a goon aside before bashing his face in with her high heels, allowing them to escape into a vent.

Traumatized, the Joker wonders if she just killed someone, and offers to talk about it with her. Although she's hesitant, he convinces her by saying he's a bartender perfectly suited for such things, so she reveals that she told Ivy she loved her only to be rejected. She also talks about her previous relationship with the Joker, about how awful he was, and the Joker unwittingly supports her. While this happens, Batman remotely pilots the Batplane while Gordon activates nets to capture Parademons throughout Gotham. Gordon notices the firefight at Wayne Tower, so Batman redeploys the Batplane in that direction.

Once again, in Wayne Tower, Harley has just escaped the ventilation system as she finishes her monologue about how alone she now feels without Ivy. Moments later, they run into the Riddler, who escaped Gotham Mall and orchestrated the hostage situation as a distraction so that he could steal a telepathic amplifier for Doctor Psycho. He also shows off his new physique from running on a hamster wheel nonstop but stops when he recognizes the Joker. He finds this amusing and begins to laugh - exactly like the old Joker laughed, his old personality bleeding through the amnesia. Harley quickly silences him and denies that he's the Joker, so the Riddler attacks and sends them fleeing.

In another room, a goon named Kev is talking to another goon named Carl, the latter of whom just moved back to Gotham to finally be reunited with his children. They are interrupted when Harley and the Joker flee into their room, prompting them to attack. Harley uses a laser to destroy the handcuffs linking them together so that she can fire back at them, not realizing that she just shot Carl with a cancer ray. Carl is devastated and immediately leaves to spend the last few days of his life with his children.

In response, Kev throws a stun grenade at Harley, incapacitating her and allowing him to close on the Joker. Helpless, the Joker begs for mercy as Kev begins choking him to death, but a deeper instinct allows him to grab a pencil to stab into Kev's eye, killing him. Looking down at the man he killed, Joker's old madness begins to boil up to the surface, and he begins laughing hysterically until a panicked Harley Quinn slaps him in the face to snap him out of it. He chalks it up to a blood sugar issue and doesn't even remember that he killed Kev, assuming that Harley did it and becoming horrified at the corpse.

After condemning "gratuitous violence", the Joker and Harley reach the roof of Wayne Tower just as the Batplane lands and deposits Commissioner Gordon. The Joker is delighted that Batman might be present, but Gordon immediately recognizes him, hits him in a running tackle, cuffs him, and throws him into the Batplane. Gordon is ecstatic that he singlehandedly defeated Batman's greatest enemy, while the Joker himself actually recognizes him, calling him "Gordo", before reverting to his sane self.

Clayface, King Shark, and Sy Borgman then arrive after having received a text from Harley - a text she never sent. At that moment the Riddler makes his way onto the roof and gives the helmet he stole to Doctor Psycho, who then reveals all that he had done, including sending a text to everyone to get them all gathered together. He lashes out at them all for belittling him, calling back to the times where he was smashed through a window while assisting a heist, used to access small spaces after first joining the crew, and thrown through mental demons like a bowling ball; along with a myriad of other abuses. Harley claims to remember none of it, and only asserts that he just didn't like working for a woman, which he admits was part of the reason.

> ***Doctor Psycho**The point is, I'm gonna do what you never could, because you are a pussy!**Harley Quinn**Pussies are powerful. They birthed all of humanity!**Commissioner Gordon**I was a C-Section.—*

His grievances thusly enumerated, Harley then mocks him as a "tiny man in a silly tinfoil hat", so he responds by using that tinfoil hat to assume command of all the nearby Parademons and turn them against her. He reveals his goal to copy Harley's original plan of taking over Gotham and teaming up with Darkseid, derides her weakness, and sends the Parademons to attack. An all out brawl ensues, with Harley's crew initially holding the upper hand; but Doctor Psycho is just warming up. He follows up the first assault by singlehandedly creating an impenetrable telekinetic barrier around Wayne Tower, then takes command of Harley's own crew (with the exception of Sy Borgman, whose metal plate protects him) and sends them all to attack Harley.

Resplendent in the height of his power, Doctor Psycho mocks and toys with Harley Quinn, lashing out at everyone who thought of him as a joke. He easily defeats Harley and Sy, but Gordon manages to blast his Parademon steed out of the sky, giving them a brief amount of time to plan their escape. Sy Borgman offers to sacrifice himself to blast a hole in the telekinetic dome so that everyone can escape in the Batplane, and although Harley is moved to tears, Sy stands up from his wheelchair and says that "this is me feeding my soul".

Crying, Harley tells Sy that he's the best landlord she ever had, and departs with his mechanical eye, the last thing he gives her before flying into the air and sacrificing himself to destroy the dome. As the destroyed dome powers down, Gordon flies the Batplane away from Wayne Tower, skidding along buildings occasionally due to his lack of flight skills. In the cockpit, Harley laments that they'd need the entire Justice League to take down Doctor Psycho, at which point the Joker chimes in about a dream he had where the Justice League was trapped in a book.

Unfortunately however, the Joker cannot remember exactly where the book is, so Harley has Gordon drop them off at Ace Chemicals; the same warehouse full of vats of acid where she and the Joker were both created. The Joker himself doesn't like the place, and offers to bring Harley to a safe place with Bethany's family, calling her "my new pal Harley Quinn". However, Harley decides that she cannot keep running from her mistakes anymore, that she has to finally start cleaning up the messes she makes, starting with freeing the Justice League from Queen of Fables' storybook.

> ***The Joker**The storybook is real? Where is it?**Harley Quinn**I don't know, but I think you do. Are you sure you can't just remember?**The Joker**It's like I see the book, but… everything else is cloudy.**Harley Quinn**That's disappointing because I really, really, really don't wanna have to do this.**The Joker**Do what?**Harley Quinn**I'll be seein' ya soon, Mistah J.— Harley throws the Joker into a vat of acid*

Harley gives the Joker one final chance to remember, but when he cannot, she has no choice but to throw him into a vat of acid - restoring him.

## Cast and Characters

### Main Cast

* Kaley Cuoco as Harley Quinn
* Jason Alexander as Sy Borgman
* Ron Funches as King Shark
* Tony Hale as Dr. Psycho
* Christopher Meloni as Commissioner Gordon
* Alan Tudyk as Clayface, Joker

### Guest Cast

* Diedrich Bader as Batman
* Tom Hollander as Alfred
* Jim Rash as The Riddler, Leslie
* Rory Scovel as Gus, Maitre'd

## Trivia

* The title of this episode reference to the movie *Die Hard*.
	+ Additionally, the plot is largely inspired by the movie. Like in *Die Hard*, most of the plot takes place in a tower seized by criminals, and the people inside it are taken hostage while the main character manages to slip away.
* When Harley runs into Sane Joker, brief clips of him from "All the Best Inmates Have Daddy Issues", "Being Harley Quinn", "Til Death Do Us Part", "A Seat at the Table", "Devil's Snare" and "The Final Joke" are shown.
* Sane Joker stabbing a pencil into the goon Kev's eye is a reference to the iconic scene from *The Dark Knight*, where Joker did the same thing to one of the thugs during their meeting with Lao.
* This is the first episode with Doctor Psycho as an antagonist as he turns of Harley's crew after quitting the team in "Inner (Para) Demons".

## Gallery

*See also: All images from "Dye Hard"*

Harley returns from ThemysciraDoctor Psycho betrays the crew and teams up with RiddlerSy's good byeSy's sacrifice