Gotham: Could Barbara Become Harley Quinn?
Erin Richards says there has been conversations about Harley Quinn on Gotham
Erin Richards as Barbara Kean is easily the craziest woman in Gotham. She’s easily love-struck, homicidally devoted, but on the bright side willing to do whatever it takes to save someone she cares about (see Tabitha in the last episode for example). But could she eventually turn into an even more famous DC villain?
There has been more than one fan theory that at some point on Gotham, Barbara Kean is going to become Harley Quinn. As far as canon, Gotham has had little issue with changing origins of many characters so that’s certainly a possibility. And even Erin Richards, says that there at least have been conversations about this possibly happening on the show:
"There have been conversations. I think something major would have to happen to Barbara for her to fully become Harley Quinn. Because Harley Quinn is kind of…she doesn’t, to me, have the motivation that Babs has. Harley Quinn seems to like destruction for destruction’s sake, and that’s wonderful, but I feel like Barbara has more of a plan. She’s a little bit more intellectual in her approach toward climbing the ladder and taking over the underworld. And I think if she was to then morph into Harley Quinn, there would have to be something that happened that sort of stripped away that kind of scheming side of her so that she would just become, I guess, unhinged in the world. That, to me, is what Harley Quinn represents. That madness and mayhem that comes along with The Joker, because obviously they’re a team."
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This sounds like Richards is mostly debunking the fan theory, but still saying there’s a slight possibility of that happening. One thing is for sure, you can’t have Harley Quinn without a Joker, that’s how it has to work. She become independent of him later, but he has to at least be there at the start. Right now the closest thing Gotham has to the Joker is Jerome, and if she obsessively fell in love and became devoted to him, that would be really weird. So, don’t look for Barbara Kean to become Harley Quinn anytime soon, but don’t completely rule it out either