Ivy tries her hand at being a team leader with mixed results, and Nightwing's return to Gotham throws the Bat-Family off their rhythm.
Tropes:
- An Aesop:
- You don't always have to win and get everything perfect at the first attempt. Failures are a necessary part of life, and you need them to get better and learn how to win in the future.
- Teamwork is important.
- Bathos: Done twice at the start of the episode at Nightwing's expense. The first time, Harley interrupts his brooding narration to ask if anyone wants to switch seats with her. The second time, she and Ivy ruin his He's Back! moment by laughing at it.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: Batman expresses disdain at yet another Thomas Wayne biopic on behalf of the "poor rich Wayne family."
- Casual Danger Dialogue: Harley and Barbara gush over what a good idea bringing their respective teams to the escape room was all while trying to figure out how to stop the virtual countdown to their deaths.
- Coincidental Broadcast: Taken to absurdist levels where right after Harley wishes for a way to teach Ivy teamwork, an ad for an escape room promising exactly what she wants.
- Continuity Nod:
- Alfred has now joined the Bat-Family in his superhero persona from the previous season.
- Bane is obsessed with blowing things up again.
- Ivy curses, "Piss cakes of a dick," again.
- King Shark suggests eating Robin, scaring Robin again.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Clayface questions if Ivy's planned for an absurdly complicated scenario where a security guard takes a late shift so he can propose to his high school sweetheart, but Ivy says that will never happen. It does.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Bane wants to blow up Harley's mall lair because they won't return the pasta maker he gifted Ivy for her and Kite Man's failed wedding.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Just as Ivy and Nightwing are about to be crushed by spikes in the Riddler's trap room, Ivy realizes even though the Riddler said they need a checkmate to get out of the room, he never mentioned they were supposed to deliver the checkmate themselves. In other words, they have to lose the game to get out.
- Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: It seems the person doing this episode's closed captioning for HBOMax is a very devoted fan and reader of the comics, but wasn't paying 100% attention to the episode's dialogue. When Nightwing goes into his Heroic BSoD monologue, he brings up Blockbuster getting killed by Vigilante. The captioner, meanwhile, wrote Tarantula, who did the deed in the comics back in 2004 (as pointed out below). Some time after premiering, the caption was corrected.
- Heroic BSoD: Nightwing suffers a massive one when he accidentally triggers a set of spikes to appear on the collapsing ceiling in the room he and Ivy are in.
- It's Been Done: Bane returns with a load of explosives to blow up Harley and Ivy's mall lair, in revenge for their refusing to return the wedding gift he gave Ivy, only for the place to get blown up accidentally just when Bane arrives. Getting again denied the chance to do what he planned sends Bane into another funk.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Nightwing acts this way at the start of the episode, completely disrupting Batman's plan to save the Gotham Corn Factory from Firefly.
- The Magazine Rule: Clayface is reading a magazine called Baller Houses at one point.
- Misère Game: Poison Ivy and Nightwing are trapped in a deadly escape room created by the Riddler with a spiked ceiling lowering on to them unless they can solve a chess riddle. When winning the chess game against the robot does nothing, Ivy deduces that they are actually supposed to let the robot beat them, which does stop the spikes.
- Mythology Gag:
- Riddler uses the pseudonym "Puzzler", which was a villain in the Adam West Batman series.
- Macaroni's helicopter at the end of the episode resembles the Batcopter from the same series.
- Nightwing mentions someone killing Blockbuster, which happened in his solo comic in 2004, though it's Vigilante here instead of Tarantula. Amusingly, the subtitler actually knew that and wrote it in instead of Vigilante, which was corrected later on.
- The orphanage Firefly keeps trying to burn down is Wayne Manor from The Batman.
- Riddler uses the pseudonym "Puzzler", which was a villain in the Adam West Batman series.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Robin's reaction when Batman goes into a diatribe about yet another movie about Thomas Wayne, by rolling his eyes and pulling out a video game to play, strongly implies that he's had to go through this several times before.
- Reboot Snark: Batman is aghast to hear about the Thomas Wayne biopic, complaining there are too many movies about that "poor rich" family (and implicitly his own origin). The episode was released a few months after DC put out another movie about the Waynesnote .Batman: Every few years, there's another film depicting the Waynes' murder. We get it. Crime alley. The pearls, those pearls, their beautiful child watches them fall, as life is extinguished from his mother's eyes, so too is his innocence. It's one thing for Bruce Wayne to talk about his trauma, but for others to do it over and over again...
- Rivals Team Up: Harley's team and the Bat-Family are all in Riddler's trap and work together on getting out alive. Inverted in that everyone behaves like either good friends (particularly Harley and Batgirl) or friendly acquaintances or mutual club members.
- Sarcastic Clapping: Subverted. Bane's entrance clapping at Ivy's plan would be a typical use except he's actually trying to be sincere, he just injured his wrist so it doesn't sound right.
- Sexual Euphemism: When Ivy spends time in her giant flower brooding, Harley complains that she can't open it (which is a first).
- Shout-Out:
- Clayface mentions journalist/author Hoda Kotb while reading his magazine.
- For her Edin plan, Ivy needs prehistoric DNA found in mosquitoes in amber, to which Jurassic Park is lampshaded.
- Bane's narration starts resembling that of Sex and the City at certain points of the episode. And it's mentioned that Bane purchased the wedding dress Sarah Jessica Parker wore on the show.
- Batman also airs his grievances at the multitude of times the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne's murders have been portrayed on the big screen every few years.
- When Nightwing's checkmate only sets off the spikes, Ivy calls him "Searching for Bobby Fuckstick".
- Nightwing (and Batman) quoting basketball coach John Wooden, who wrote about his philosophies to basketball and life, inspires An Aesop for Ivy on how to beat the trap and then carry on with her plans.
- The buzzing sound the credit card machine makes when rejecting Bane's credit card is the "Cancel" sound effect from Final Fantasy VII.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Harley and Batgirl both fall for Riddler's trap Escape Room ad spiel about building teamwork. They're both impressed by the handiwork of the deathtrap they're in.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Nightwing and Batgirl collide while swinging on their lines. Steering would be an issue when swinging through the air.
- Being a misanthropic loner for most of her life and also being accustomed to working by herself, Ivy finds being in charge and working with others to be out of her comfort zone and very awkward.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Bane shows up wanting to take back the pasta maker he gave Ivy as the wedding present, the team claim they have no idea what happened to it... all while slurping on some pasta.
- Take Back Your Gift: Bane wants the pasta maker wedding gift back since its gauche to keep it if Ivy and Kite-Man didn't get married. Ivy points out its doubly gauche to try getting it back.
- Take That!: Nightwing's Failure Hero status in this episode is this, taking jabs at shows like Titans or movies like the DC Animated Movie Universe, notable for Nightwing being made to be a little too fallible than he should be compared to the comics.
