Kite Man is getting his own series, and that calls for the character’s catchphrase: “hell yeah!” Created by Bill Finger and Dick Sprang and making his first appearance in Batman #133 in August 1960, Kite Man has always been one of the most obscure villains in The Dark Knight’s rogues’ gallery. He has often been treated as a joke, although recent writers like Tom King have given the character some added depth in recent years.

The character broke out with his appearance on the hit animated series Harley Quinn, originating as a fun supporting player before getting into a relationship with Poison Ivy. Season 2 ended with Kite Man calling his engagement with Ivy off after realizing she wanted to be with Harley more, and the fan-favorite Harley Quinn character flew off. It was recently announced the character would be getting his own spin-off series, titled Noonan’s, as the character purchases the popular villain bar.

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No release date has been set for the series, and it is currently unknown if Kite Man will appear in Harley Quinn season 3, but it appears that the series is in active development as Matt Oberg is confirmed to reprise his role and the series is in active development at HBO Max. With Warner Brothers’ recent attempts to grow the DC brand on HBO Max and revitalize the franchise, Kite Man is an interesting choice but also a fitting one. While it would seem like this character could not support his own spin-off series, there are plenty of comedic possibilities for the series that could flesh out the character, the wider supporting roster of villains, and embrace the bar set to help grow its own unique interpretation of the DC universe.

Expanding the Harley Quinn Characters

     Warner Bros. Television Distribution

One of the best elements of Harley Quinn was the series’ ability to grow both its title character and the various supporting characters out of their original parameters and provide newly added depth. In Harley Quinn, Kite Man is a dim-witted but well-intentioned criminal who is often treated as a joke. Even as the series progressed with more depth being added to Kite Man, he was often still defined by his relationship with Poison Ivy.

Now that his relationship with Ivy is over, the series can follow Kite Man’s endeavors afterward (in a way ironically similar to how Harley Quinn follows the title character after her relationship with Joker). How does he handle being a boss and a small business owner? What is his working relationship with various other supervillains? It also can dig deeper into his family which was only hinted at in one episode of Harley Quinn. His real name is Charles Brown, named of course after Charlie Brown (one of the most famous down-on-his-luck animated characters), which could help inform how the world treats Kite Man. Like his namesake, he may always be fighting an uphill battle against life.

Bars Make For Great TV Settings

     CBS Television Distribution

The setup for the Kite Man series will see the character buy Noonan’s Bar, the central bar seen throughout Harley Quinn where different characters are known to hang out. Focusing the series on a bar follows a long line of television series. Both How I Met Your Mother and its spin-off How I Met Your Father both feature the characters hanging out at a bar, something which allows the Kite Man series to feature a rotating roster of supporting patrons visiting the bar.

The most famous television series about a bar though is, of course, Cheers, which ran for 11 seasons. The Kite Man series Noonan’s is described as Cheers with supervillains, and that provides a lot of great comedic potential. Examining supervillains who are also trying to manage the day-to-day workings of a small business, and maybe even featuring low-level supervillains as the staff, or characters who will eventually become villains working at the bar. A great amount of potential lies in a bar setting and is unlike anything seen in the superhero genre.

Different Types of DC Villains

     DC Comics

While Harley Quinn has featured a variety of various villains from the DC Universe with The Legion of Doom, a good portion of the series is digging into the various villains from the Batman mythos, with characters like Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Bane, and Two-Face taking center stage in season 2.

The Kite Man series could allow the creators to expand the canvas with various villains, with the series already confirmed to feature Golden Glider, a villain of The Flash’s rogues’ gallery. Golden Glider is also the sister of Captain Cold, meaning he and many other members of The Rogues, a name associated with Flash villains, could appear and be reimagined in the darkly comedic tone of the Harley Quinn series.

With the vast array of villains in the DC Universe, from Wonder Woman’s mythical antagonist to Green Lantern’s cosmic villains, the franchise has barely scratched the surface of all the unique villains the DC Universe has to offer.

Growing The Harley Quinn Franchise

     Warner Bros.

While the DCEU has had a rocky road launching an interconnected universe on film, Warner Bros. has successfully launched two separate universes of DC stories. In 1992, Batman: The Animated Series was a huge hit that eventually spawned a franchise that included series like Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Static Shock, and both Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Then in 2012, The CW premiered Arrow, and what was originally intended as a singular superhero series became the launching pad for an entire interconnected universe with spin-off series The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman, Black Lightning, and Superman & Lois that is dubbed the Arrowverse, a whole superhero business that has been running for a decade so far.

A series based on Kite Man was certainly not one anybody at Warner Bros. likely planned, but Noonan’s organically grew out of how popular Harley Quinn has become as well as the series’ development of the character. Now it can serve as a companion piece for Harley Quinn and could be just the beginning of a comedic interconnected reimagining of the DC Universe that exists on HBO Max. Noonan’s could be just the beginning of something much larger.