Harley Quinn Season 5 Episode 2 Recap and Ending Explained

The second episode of Harley Quinn’s Metropolis era hands Poison Ivy the worst back-to-school week imaginable: her new boss at the Green Initiative turns out to be Jason Woodrue (John Slattery), the ex-professor and ex-boyfriend who tried to murder her and steal Frank the Plant before she was Poison Ivy at all. Ivy returns the favor by trapping him in the same toxic lab he left her in, walks out thinking she has killed him, and then does not tell Harley. The closing shot teases he has survived as the Floronic Man. Lena Luthor’s actual motive remains unstated. Harley gets her Vincent Edge Club membership. King Shark’s kids destroy the club.

(The following is a recap of Harley Quinn Season 5 Episode 2, “Back to School,” and there are spoilers.)

Harley Quinn (Kaley Cuoco) and Poison Ivy (Lake Bell) wake up in their new Metropolis penthouse, fully furnished on Lena Luthor’s dime. The place is glassy, corporate, and the visual opposite of every Gotham apartment they have ever loved. Ivy is anxious about her first day at the Green Initiative; Harley is anxious about Ivy’s anxiety. The premiere closed on the couple deciding to make the move permanent, and the show is wisely refusing to let them get comfortable yet.

King Shark (Ron Funches) drops by with his entire litter and asks Harley to babysit. These are the “godsharks” the couple inherited last season, one of whom they already met as an adult fighter during the future-set arc. (Genuinely sweet that the writers keep treating those kids as ongoing characters rather than one-episode bits.) Babysitting plus first-day-of-work was not the launch combo Harley had in mind.

Why Does King Shark Ask Harley to Babysit the Godsharks?

Ivy heads to Metropolis University, walks into the Green Initiative HQ, and meets her new boss. It is Jason Woodrue. Cue immediate dread. The episode flashes back to the Pamela Isley years and quietly does some of the most consequential retconning in the show’s run.

The flashback reframes Poison Ivy’s origin almost entirely. Pamela was Woodrue’s student and, awkwardly, his girlfriend. She was developing a plant-human hybrid prototype, a baby Frank, which yes is THE Frank the Plant (J.B. Smoove). Woodrue tried to steal Frank, then locked Pamela in a lab full of toxins to keep the credit and the body. She used her own untested serum on herself to survive, and walked out as Poison Ivy. My read on this remix: making Frank the actual McGuffin of Ivy’s origin is the sharpest writing call of the season so far, because Frank has been a beloved bit player for four years and now retroactively becomes the most emotionally loaded prop on the show.

Who Is Jason Woodrue and Why Does Poison Ivy Have Such a Complicated History With Him?

Back in the present, Ivy agrees to work with Woodrue anyway, at Lena’s specific request. The reason she does it is the read: Lena has been bankrolling the penthouse, the move, and the new life, and Ivy does not want to torch the relationship in week one. You can see her doing the math behind her eyes. Better to handle Woodrue privately than to explode in front of Lena. That decision is absolutely going to cost her.

Lena invites Harley and the godsharks to the Vincent Edge Club, the kind of glossy Metropolis institution Harley would normally torch on principle. Inside, she runs into Bane (James Adomian), Bane’s adopted daughter Goldilocks, and Betty. Apparently half of Gotham has quietly relocated to Metropolis. Hidden-detail watch on this scene: Goldilocks debuted in the Kite-Man: Hell Yeah! spinoff, where she escaped the Queen of Fables’ storybook. And Vincent Edge is the father of Morgan Edge, the Superman villain and Intergang boss in the comics, which means the casual little gym Harley wants into is sitting on top of some genuinely heavy DC iconography.

Harley decides she wants club membership. The kids decide they want to eat the room. Both pursuits play out at roughly equal velocity, and at one point an actual shark feeding frenzy breaks loose across the floor.

What Does Harley’s Club Membership Chase Say About Her in Metropolis?

The episode’s biggest scene is Ivy leading Woodrue into a sealed lab and turning the toxins on him. The blocking is the point: the framing of Woodrue inside the glass cell matches the earlier flashback of Pamela inside the glass cell almost beat for beat, down to the angle. The show is asking you to feel the symmetry rather than telling you to. Ivy lets him know that everything she has become happened in spite of him, not because of him, and then she leaves. She believes she has killed him.

Lena pulls strings with Vincent Edge regardless of the shark-related property damage, and Harley’s membership clears anyway. Lena does not appear to want anything in return for any of this. (That, of course, is the most suspicious thing she could possibly be doing, and the show is doing a real job of letting that quiet menace hang.)

Back at the penthouse, Ivy has the conversation she should have with Harley, except not really. She does not mention the dead ex-boyfriend, the lab, the attempted murder, or the old romance. The animators hold the moment a beat longer than they need to: she opens her mouth, does not say it, changes the subject. My read on the season arc from here: the Floronic Man returning to public view is the disaster Ivy cannot control. Harley finding out from anyone other than Ivy is the disaster she absolutely could have prevented. The clock on the second one is already running.

What Is Ivy Hiding From Harley by the End of the Episode?

The final shot cuts to a lab table at Metropolis University. A green, clawed hand reaches up over the edge and grips it. Jason Woodrue is alive, transformed, and has just clocked in as the Floronic Man.

Best guess: Harley finds out about all of this not from Ivy but from Frank, who one hundred percent already knows and one hundred percent cannot keep a secret. Drop your read on Lena Luthor’s actual agenda below, because I am convinced it is worse than green initiatives.