HBO Max Officially Orders Spinoff of Hit Show

HBO Max has officially ordered a spinoff of its hit animated series Harley Quinn, and more details on the project have come to light. Harley Quinn series co-creator Patrick Schumacker announced the news at SXSW in March along with other news about Harley Quinn Season 3. Now Warner Bros. has given more details on the show, which will possibly be called Noonan's.

Fair warning: there are spoilers for Harley Quinn Season 3 ahead! The spinoff will center around Kite Man (Matt Oberg), who is fresh off a breakup with Poison Ivy (Lake Bell) at the end of Season 2. The heartbroken villain will reportedly purchase the bar where many of his kind hang out, Noonan's, and try to fix it up and run it on his own. The show will serve as a kind of sitcom accompaniment to the main series, fleshing out many of the characters and this version of Gotham City a bit more.

"He tries to run the bar by himself but it doesn't turn out so easy," Schumacker said at SXSW, according to a report by Polygon. "We have Harley and Ivy appear in the first episode, but after that we have different goons and villains appearing every episode, like Lex Luthor and Bane. It will be kind of like Cheers for supervillains."

So far, Kite Man has been a comic relief figure in Harley Quinn. He never quite joined Harley's gang of villains but he did run into them often at pivotal moments. It seems like this spinoff will help expand the characters that can be used in this growing animated world.

Harley Quinn premiered in November of 2019 on HBO Max, with Kaley Cuoco voicing the titular character. The show is not directly connected to any other DC animated series, although some big crossovers are coming. It started with Harley fresh off a breakup with the Joker, leaning on her best friend Poison Ivy for support.

Harley and Ivy gathered their own crew that consisted of Clayface (Alan Tudyk), Doctor Psycho (Tony Hale), King Shark (Ron Funches) and Sy Borgman (Jason Alexander). In Season 2, Harley comes to realize that she has feelings for Ivy that are more than platonic, an in the end they decide to be together romantically just in time to stop Ivy's wedding to Kite Man.

Harley Quinn Season 3 is expected to premiere sometime in 2022, but no release date has been set yet. Schumacker's co-creator Justin Halpern told Entertainment Weekly that Season 3 will delve deeper into Ivy's backstory while she and Harley confront whether or not their relationship is healthy or sustainable. On the action side, the season will introduce beloved characters for the first time in this animated universe, including Nightwing.

As for the Kite Man spinoff, there's no word on when that will premiere either. The first two seasons of Harley Quinn are streaming now on HBO Max.