Birds of Prey was a real sneaky hit of 2020, and that's no exaggeration. Not a lot of people talked about it, but pretty much everyone who saw it loved it. That's got to be the stealthiest success story this side of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. But luckily, the relative lack of fanfare hasn't held it back from earning some accolades, and even more exciting is an upcoming spinoff based on Jurnee Smollett's character Dinah Lance (now known as Black Canary). But what about the others?
Aside from Margot Robbie's movie-hopping Harley Quinn and the aforementioned Black Canary, the Warner Bros. film featured an endearing cast of lovable anti-heroes. Mary Elizabeth Winstead's socially awkward revenge-seeker Helena Bertinelli (a.k.a. Huntress) particularly charmed a number of moviegoers with her extremely relatable failed attempts to look cool while searching for righteous vengeance. So it should be no surprise that Winstead herself shares that fondness for the character and would be totally on board to play her again.
When speaking with Collider Ladies Night about her upcoming Netflix film Kate, Winstead's interview inevitably shifted to Birds of Prey and Smollett's upcoming spinoff. During this talk, the subject delved even deeper into whether or not Huntress might make her own return someday. "I don’t know if Huntress is going to continue on in some way," Winstead said. "You know, there are so many different iterations of Huntress whether it’s in the comics or in TV and film, and so I don’t know if my version of her is going to continue on. But, I do love her and if there was an opportunity to do that then I would be down for it, so we’ll see!" She also talked about how much she loves Smollett and how excited she is about the upcoming HBO Max Black Canary film, which is a given since she's a human with a heart and a soul.
Huntress had a surprisingly dark and sad backstory in Birds of Prey, especially given her rather comedic performance at times. Her family was slaughtered by mobsters when she was just a child, and as the only survivor, she'd spent the years since training as an assassin and started taking out those responsible for the massacre. Throughout the film, she eventually joins up with Smollett's Black Canary and Rosie Perez's police detective Renee Montoya to form the actual titular vigilante team known as the Birds of Prey.
So a story like that certainly leaves a lot of space for more stories to be told. Aside from Black Canary, both Montoya and Huntress could easily fill their own spinoff movies, and that's not even considering the countless tales lived by each of these characters in the original DC comics. So the idea of more Huntress definitely seems like something the people would want, especially if she's still as lovably awkward as ever.
It's clear that audiences have a genuine and passionate love for the cast of Birds of Prey. That campaign to give Black Canary her own series is proof enough of that (as well as proof that these efforts work sometimes). So how about a little noise in favor of some more Huntress?
Birds of Prey is now available on HBO Max.
Source: Collider