Kite Man: Hell Yeah! Boss Previews ‘Cheers With Villains’ Harley Quinn Spinoff and the Late Lance Reddick’s ‘Wonderful’ Turn as Lex Luthor

You, like I, may barely remember Kite Man from Harley Quinn , seeing as the lower-tier villain was absent from the most recent season (and barely in the one before that). And yet here he is, not just back but headlining a spinoff of Max’s adult animated DC series.

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In Kite Man: Hell Yeah! (premiering Thursday, July 18 with its first two episodes), the titular Charles “Chuck” Brown (again voiced by Harley Quinn’ s Matt Oberg) and Golden Glider/Lisa Snart ( The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel ‘s Stephanie Hsu) “take their relationship to the next level” by impetuously buying a bar, Noonan’s, that sits in the shadow of Lex Luthor’s Legion of Doom HQ.

“We’d been wanting to do a spinoff, and we were trying to figure out who that would be with…,” Kite Man showrunner/ Harley Quinn EP Dean Lorey tells TVLine. “And we decided to start with what seemed like maybe the most unlikely choice for a spinoff, which was Kite Man.

“If you look at the hero’s journey, Kite Man has the longest way to go,” Lorey notes. “He’s got no powers. His dad thinks he’s worthless. He got dumped at the altar [by Poison Ivy]. He’s starting from almost nothing, so that seemed like a fun story worth telling.”

Lorey goes on to describe Kite Man’s Season 1 journey as no less than “epic.”

“That is probably not the word you expected, but you’ll see, as the season goes along, how his journey takes on a life of its own,” Lorey teases. “What starts as very small, buying a bar, becomes something huge.”

In depositing Kite Man, Golden Glider and a roster of baddies-with-a-lowercase B into a watering hole, “Initially, the idea was ‘ Cheers with villains,'” Lorey recalls. “But it’s very much part of the Harley Quinn universe, with the same tone.”

While the struggles in running a bar that Legion of Doom members won’t deign to visit may seem low-key stakes for a series about DC Comics characters, “That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Lorey promises. “It gets pretty vast as it goes along.”

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Besides Oberg, the Kite Man: Hell Yeah! voice cast features a handful of other Harley Quinn vets — James Adomian is back as Bane, for one — but some brand-new pipes are also on hand. The Sopranos ‘ Michael Imperioli voices Joe and Moe Dubelz, Breaking Bad ‘s Jonathan Banks is Noonan, Judith Light ( Who’s the Boss? ) plays Helen Villigan, and What We Do in the Shadows ‘ Natasia Demetriou is a delight as Malice.

Meanwhile, on the “recast” front (due to actor availability issues), Abbott Elementary ‘s Janelle James succeeds Wanda Sykes as Queen of Fables (currently a decapitated head but “a significant character,” says Lorey), Keith David follows in Michael Ironside’s footsteps as Darkseid (“a big character for us this season”), and prior to his passing in March 2023, Fringe ‘s Lance Reddick voiced Lex Luthor in “about all” of the first season’s episodes.

“Lance Reddick is wonderful as Lex, I mean he’s really wonderful. We loved his take,” says Lorey, a bit wistfully. “He brought gravity to it.”

Golden Glider made a fleeting cameo at Harley Quinn Season 3’s Villy Awards (and was voiced then by Cathy Ang), but when the character was tapped to serve as Kite Man’s co-lead, “We decided to make a change and go with Stephanie Hsu, who had a take on it that we really loved — and we were lucky to get her,” says Lorey. “She was great to work with.”

Despite the new setting, new lead character and flurry of new faces/voices, Kite Man: Hell Yeah! should very much appeal to those who relish Harley Quinn’ s ribald take on the DC universe. Lorey goes so far as to say that the spinoff is even more outrageous with its adult humor. (Hell, Joe Dubelz has a line about the irony of being eaten by a giant cat that made this writer blush .)

“We wanted it to be a show that we’d want to watch and that included, you know, ‘going there’ — and I think we did,” Lorey says. “We would try not to take anything off the table, and the back half of the season features some of the most fun stuff we’ve ever done.”

Want scoop on Kite Man , or for any other TV show ? Email InsideLine@tvline.com , and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!

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