Duela Dent is a fictional character in the DC Universe. She is a former member of the Suicide Squad, the Teen Titans and its counterpart, Titans East. Introduced under the alias of the Joker's Daughter, she has also used aliases: Catgirl the Catwoman's Daughter, Scarecrone the Scarecrow's Daughter, the Riddler's Daughter, the Penguin's Daughter, the Card Queen, and the Harlequin. She first appeared in Batman Family #6 (Jul/Aug 1976).
Alessandra Torresani portrayed Duela Dent in the Arrowverse series Batwoman. Olivia Rose Keegan portrays Duela in Gotham Knights.
Fictional character biography
Pre-Crisis
Duela Dent first appeared as the Joker's Daughter in the Batman Family series of comic books. She gained the attention of Robin (Dick Grayson), as she later claimed to be the daughter of the Catwoman, the Scarecrow, the Riddler and the Penguin. She deduced Robin's identity and he revealed that she was Duela Dent, Two-Face's daughter.
Duela claimed that she wanted to join the Teen Titans to atone for her father's crimes; however, not all of the members of the Titans were in favor of this idea. In Teen Titans #48, she changed her name to the Harlequin. As the Harlequin, Duela utilized gimmicks such as smoke-inducing powder puffs and bullet-firing lipstick.
After the Teen Titans comic books were canceled, she popped up in the Batman titles, calling herself the Card Queen while infiltrating a criminal organization called MAZE.
Duela's last Pre-Crisis appearance is in Tales of The Teen Titans #50, as a guest at Donna Troy's wedding where she appears to be a middle-aged matron. Dick Grayson notes that he had finally realized that she was too old to be Two-Face's daughter; she agrees, then disappears before he can take the matter further.
Post-Crisis
Delusional and schizophrenic, the mysterious Harlequin has been in and out of mental institutions for several years. An acrobat who possesses numerous "clown-motif" gadgets, she calls herself Duela Dent (while her true identity remains unknown) and acts as an ally to the Titans.
Her first significant Post-Crisis appearance was in the Team Titans comic book, as an aged patient in a mental hospital. The writers of the title originally planned to reveal that Harlequin was a time-traveling member of the Team Titans driven insane by her time-warping experience. However, due to the cancellation of the series, plans for her to return were aborted. The final issue of Team Titans solicited a non-existent story for Team Titans #25 and provided a commentary on the title's cancellation. In the solicitation, Duela steals a reality-altering device and shifts New York City into the late 1970s. Duela's appearance in Team Titans is now regarded as a time glitch caused by Zero Hour: Crisis in Time.
Reappearing at her proper age, the Harlequin aided the Titans during the JLA/Titans: Technis Imperative series, in which Cyborg's automated system seeks out all Titans allies, past and present. Although she is in a mental institution, Duela is rescued by Cyborg and helps battle the Justice League for Cyborg's soul. In the series, she is described as a former Titans ally. Duela then makes a brief appearance in Titans Secret Files and Origins #1, insisting to anyone who would listen that the Titans would soon contact her about membership. In the story, she also claims that she is the daughter of Doomsday.
Duela's next appearance is in Titans Secret Files and Origins #2, in a backup story in which Gar's obnoxious cousin Matt holds a membership drive for the revived West Coast branch of the Titans, Titans L.A. Harlequin crashes the meeting-turned-party with a small group of villains, including Beast Boy's enemies Fear and Loathing, simply because she has not been invited. Flamebird and Terra defeat her and return her to the Helping House Mental Institution in Industry, California. How she met up with the dangerous villains with whom she crashed the party is unexplained. In the same comic, a feature states that her claims regarding her paternity have been disproved, save one; no further information is provided.
In a short story contained in Teen Titans/Outsiders Secret Files and Origins #2, Duela socializes with several villains at their secret satellite headquarters and makes a series of wild claims regarding her parentage, all of which are dismissed by the nonplussed villains (she claims that she has been resuscitated by a Lazarus Pit and that her mother may actually be the villainous parent).