Why so ironclad? Halpern & Shumacker have a few different reasons. For one, they feel that both Harley and Ivy have already been through too much. As the series explores, both had unhappy childhoods. And of course, Harley just got out of an abusive relationship with the Joker. Harley and Ivy are the first positive influences in each others’ lives (relatively speaking), and Halpern and Schumacker want it to stay that way. Halpern said:
“We just decided it’s more interesting to us to see a relationship that is healthy, but goes through the same struggles that everybody else goes through. That feels like more fertile ground that hasn’t been tapped into with Harley than the, ‘will they, won’t they, they break up, they come back together.’ We’ve seen that s***.”
Indeed, break-ups are a rather routine way to drive relationship drama, and that routine has cheapened it as a dramatic device. The writers of “Harley Quinn” clearly think it’s more interesting to see a burgeoning anti-hero and full-on supervillain try to keep it together than call it quits.
Schumacker added another, more socially-conscious reason for this “no break-up” rule: “It’s really important to everyone who works on the show to portray a queer relationship as a happy one. That’s so important for us.” The reason it took so long for the relationship to be official is that queerness was long considered taboo. Now that this is rightfully changing, we shouldn’t be so eager to see Harley and Ivy be torn apart again.