NOTE: Full spoilers for this episode of, “Harley Quinn” are present in this review
It’s a big day for Harley Quinn and her crew, after their latest successful heist finally promises them a seat at the table with the biggest and baddest super-villains of the DC Universe! “L.O.D.R.S.V.P.” fully kicks off Harley’s audition to join the Legion of Doom, which is everything that Harley Quinn has been building up to at this point, whereupon she competes with KGBeast for a spot in the villain syndicate, dragging a begrudging Ivy along yet again, only to learn a startling revelation. The only crew member forbidden from participating in the Legion of Doom courting effort is, naturally, Doctor Psycho, who remains banned from the Legion’s premises, and thus, has to make do by getting involved with a rather freaky secret that Sy Borgman has been hiding in the basement.
This episode starts off strong, thanks to another well-executed heist from Harley and her fellow villains. This time, Harley’s crew robs Atlantis, stealing some of Aquaman’s, “Family jewels” (har har), which results in a brief, but heated confrontation with the King of Atlantis. Once Ivy intervenes and disables Aquaman long enough to get away with Harley however, Ivy’s latest positive recognition in the news motivates the Legion of Doom to finally send Harley and her crewmates an invitation to tour their headquarters. Harley is naturally overjoyed, though Ivy insists on distancing herself from Harley’s group, despite eventually being talked into attending the tour with Harley, since Harley still can’t be trusted around the Joker, one of the highest-ranking Legion of Doom members.
The humour is generally pretty strong in this core plot at the Legion’s headquarters, featuring Scarecrow giving an amusing exploration of how the Legion lives and operates in the Harley Quinn universe, Lex Luthor making his first appearance on the show to start tempting Harley with her potential Legion placement, and finally, a fancy party for the Legion’s various super-villains, where Harley and Ivy run into unexpected friction in their friendship. Surprisingly, we don’t see Joker at all in this episode, beyond a tease in the very final seconds, but this ended up working pretty well. It allowed a good focus on Harley and her crewmates being fish-out-of-water in the Legion headquarters, while also allowing for a reprisal by Aquaman, once he finally corners Harley at the Legion’s party.
Most importantly however is the rift that ends up forming between Harley and Ivy in this episode, which is a very important and shocking development. It turns out, in a pretty great twist, that the Legion doesn’t actually care about Harley joining them, and is instead merely inviting Harley to once again try and coax Ivy into joining the Legion instead, something that Ivy vehemently refuses to do. This ends up culminating in a tragic turn for Harley and Ivy as well, when Lex threatens to deny Harley membership in the Legion if Ivy doesn’t join them, with Ivy still refusing, and subsequently telling Harley prematurely that the Legion never wanted her. Even then though, Harley is accepted into the Legion, eventually resulting in Ivy walking away from Harley and her crew, while Harley says she doesn’t need Ivy anymore, since she’s now part of the Legion of Doom.
This is a great turn to end off a core storyline that worked very well in terms of both the narrative and the humour. There was also a subplot balancing the episode out, but it mostly existed just to fill space, primarily because Psycho and Sy needed something to do while everyone else was at the Legion headquarters. This subplot involves Psycho getting routinely annoyed at noise and violent shaking in the lair, only to eventually learn that the clatter is a result of Sy’s mutated sister, Mirielle, whom Sy accidentally had turned into a horrific octopus monster several decades ago. Psycho’s abilities eventually allow Sy to mend fences with his enraged and neglected mutant sister, and this mostly results in a quick throwaway gag, wherein Mirielle is unleashed on Gotham City, and predictably begins wreaking destruction. This storyline is also supposed to instill some instant regret in Harley for letting Ivy walk away, but so far, there’s no payoff to that, so it doesn’t really serve that purpose all that well, other than predictably establishing that Harley and Ivy quickly miss each other.
The Legion of Doom almost entirely ran the show in, “L.O.D.R.S.V.P.”, but that’s fitting, considering that this episode finally leads to Harley’s ambitions being realized, even if it appears to come at the expense of her friendship with Ivy. I imagine that the two women will only stay estranged for so long, but at this point, Harley Quinn is heading in an interesting direction, with Harley finally supposedly making it to the big leagues of super-villainy, which will inevitably not pan out the way she envisioned it. The show doesn’t really explain exactly how Doctor Psycho got back into the Legion after Harley’s acceptance into the group either, especially since Harley really shouldn’t have that degree of clout at this point, but while that’s distracting, it makes sense for the narrative pacing, since the show can’t keep benching Psycho in every episode. The real question right now then is whether Harley can keep her composure around the Joker, now that her ex-boyfriend has noticed her acceptance into the Legion’s ranks, thus indicating whether all of Harley’s efforts to be a strong, independent villain ever truly amounted to anything in the end.