Harley Quinn Might Be Cameoing In ARROW’s Suicide Squad Episode

After Wednesday’s airing of the Arrow episode “The Promise,” the CW aired a promo for the show’s upcoming Suicide Squad episode. To fans who aren’t familiar with the comics, it was just another 20 second preview featuring a lot of action and the return of some previous characters like Deadshot and Bronze Tiger. For the comic book lovers out there, however, there was a brief snippet that caught everyone’s attention. While passing by some ARGUS prison cells, we got a glimpse of one of the prisoners.

Now it’s only a backside view, but that distinctive blonde hair had fans everywhere speculating that that was notable Batman villain Harley Quinn. Obviously hairstyle is not much to go on, but with Harley being a member of the Suicide Squad in The New 52, it gives the idea a lot more credibility. After the preview aired, Comicbook.com reached out to Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim ask whether this was in fact Harley. As is typical of a movie or TV producer, his answer was cryptic and vague.

This tickles me no end. I’ll tell you two things:

1) this is NOT the special announcement — that’s episode 219 and this is 216

2) to paraphrase Aaron Sorkin: “There’s gonna be an episode of Arrow. I’d watch.”

That second point refers The West Wing episode “Two Cathedrals,” which is considered one of the best episodes of TV of all time. Obviously the Arrow team is hyping the hell out the Suicide Squad episode, but it’s interesting that Guggenheim would bring this up when asked about Harley.

Some fans also started doing their own digging and found a post on the Webster’s Talent Agency Facebook page that they should tune into that Arrow episode to catch actress Cassidy Alexa in a “quirky role.” When Comic Book Therapy asked Webster’s Talent for clarification regarding Alexa’s role, they said this:

Cassidy Alexa is getting a lot of heat surrounding her upcoming ‘cameo’ on Arrow. I’m in the dark as to what the producers have planned for her so we’ll have to find out. She’s a very exciting young actress to keep an eye on. I’m blessed that CW does like to hire my clients. They’ve established a solid presence on the Hollywood North landscape and look to strengthen those ties with new shows, Flash, iZombie and Tribes, which could be a worthy successor to Supernatural.

It’s worth noting that not only have Alexa’s Twitter followers dramatically increased over the past several days, but many of her recent tweets are retweets of fans commenting her possible role as Harley. Obviously nothing is official until the producers announce something or we hear her character’s name in the episode, but having Harley appear in the Arrow-verse is certainly intriguing. It’s doubtful she’ll have a major role in this episode, but knowing the Arrow team, they’ll probably set her up for something bigger in the future. Alexa certainly looks the part.

The biggest implication of Harley’s inclusion is that this means Batman is a part of Arrow‘s continuity. But wait, you might ask: haven’t super villains been introduced on the show before without their corresponding superhero being involved? Yes, that is true for many of them, but it can’t be for Harley. Her becoming a criminal was due to The Joker’s manipulations, and the Joker’s origin is directly tied with Batman knocking him into those chemicals.

Unless they go a drastically different route with Harley, resulting in her not being the same character we know in love, her appearance means that The Caped Crusader is an entity within Arrow. Will we see an appearance by Batman in the show? Probably not, but hey, this might give those Nightwing rumors more legitimacy.

SOURCE: Comicbook.com and Comic Book Therapy