The Grace of Gilda, Part 4: Grace Lamont of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES

[about_faces]

Note: This is the fourth part of my retrospective of Gilda, a complete history of the oft-overlooked woman who loved and lost Harvey Dent. New installments will be posted weekly! Previous installments: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Comments

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I always thought it was kind of inferred that the coin thing was a bit of 'Big Bad Harv' psychosis that kind of carried over into Two-Face. I mean, I know it's not very well-explained, but the first episode is full of coin stuff - the sound effect of it flipping through the air torments Harvey in the nightmare he's having; one of the first signs that he's let out Harv is his reaching into his pocket for it, to obsessively flip it throughout the rest of the therapy session, and so on. (Actually, I say 'and so on', but I honestly can't remember if there's more; it just wouldn't surprise me.) Even in his very first appearance in 'On Leather Wings', this is arguably being lightly hinted at, as the first time we see him, he's flipping the coin - not as Harv, of course, but perhaps as a 'tell' that that side of him is close to the surface at the moment. (After all, he's making a bad - or at least rash - decision. He's agreeing with Bullock's 'bring down the Bat' plan, when a cooler head might have come to a different conclusion, such as 'you know, this all seems a bit out of character for Batman; maybe we should wait and see'.)

Now, to a degree, this is easily explained away without bringing Two-Face's specific obsessions into the mix. After all, Harv is a very gangster-ish persona, and one of the trademark habits of your classic film gangster (or at least, of several notable ones) is the constant, idle tossing of a coin. But remember, by the time Two-Face comes onto the scene, he isn't Harv anymore; Harv was functionally destroyed in the blast that scarred his face. Sure, he speaks with Harv's voice and he does things Harv would do, but Harv is just a thug, whereas Two-Face is... well, more complex.

So, the way I'd explain it is this: the original Harv persona didn't really have a duality obsession, as such - he was just bad. But he did have the coin-flipping habit, and that was something Harvey specifically associated with him. So when Harv is absorbed into Two-Face proper, becoming, in effect, just his bad half, Two-Face uses the coin as a way to either unleash that bad half, or not. Sure, we don't see the actual scarring of it, but we can infer that something like that must have happened - all offscreen, of course, which is a little disappointing, I'll grant you.