Justice League S01E10-11 Review: Pain and Panic

Justice League, Season 1, Episode 10-11: Paradise Lost

Ah, finally, a Wonder Woman centric episode. The poor lady has been very... bland and boring throughout the past few episodes, showing nothing but a generic heroic personality and some Starfire-style stranger-in-a-new-world confusion, but we never really get a hang of her. This two-parter explores her personality more. In addition to her general heroic qualities, we learn that, hey, she's got some mommy issues, how she ran away from Themyscira to help humanity and be a superhero, which was something we saw all the way from the pilot.

Apparently eight months has passed since the Imperium invasion, and Wonder Woman is really troubled by her running away from her mother. There's definitely a sense of duty-vs-family, of doing what is morally right against what would be socially accepted in her family's ways. We see that Wonder Woman would do anything to save her mother (and the other Amazons, I suppose) even if it means playing to a villain's trap, though she's not stupid enough to actually be used as a full pawn. It's not really the perfect character buildup moment, because around halfway through the focus became less on Wonder Woman's dilemma and more on 'oh god save the world from this insane rapey god of death'... but her eventual exile and her mother being forced to compromise as a ruler and as a mother is a sad moment. Granted I honestly think that Themyscira's rules are stupid -- the whole 'men are not allowed on Themyscira' law is... okay, whatever, it's mythology, but the fact that Diana just saved not just the Amazons, but the whole world... exile felt harsh. I mean, yeah, it's a plot device to keep Diana with the league, but still.

Also, does it annoy me that no one's called Diana "Wonder Woman" yet? I mean, not that Diana isn't an awesome name, but still.

Early on, we also get some really nice moments from good ol' farmboy Superman, really the only superhero among them who's got the best normal childhood, encouraging Diana to go home and make peace with her family. Superman and Batman might not get the focus on a lot of these episodes (well, there's the next one, which is Superman-centric, but still) but it's nice that the writers do throw them a bone or two sometimes.

Diana's voice acting has remarkably improved since her stilted way of speaking from the pilot, and while it's not quite on par with the awesome quality of season two, she's definitely got decent lines here and there. "Gone, mother? I didn't go anywhere. I was in my room. Alone. For eight months." was absolutely hilarious. And, more importantly now that I typed it out just now, humanizes the previously larger-than-life Wonder Woman.

In any case, Diana returns to Themyscira... and I wished the show actually gave us some backstory -- sans the whole raped by Hercules thing, of course -- about the Amazons. I mean, I know, but it still felt very confusing who these Amazons are. Evil sorcerer Felix Faust has apparently shown up and turned everyone into stone, and blackmails Diana and forces her to go off and find a bunch of magical artifacts before 24 hours in exchange for him returning the Amazons back to normal. Diana doesn't really have much of a choice.

For her credit, Diana immediately recruits Batman's help in researching about Felix Faust, and after a bit of a solo mission (in which she fights a giant animated Talos statue in a museum), she is confronted by Superman, and the rest of the Justice League (by which, of course, I mean all but two -- Green Lantern and Hawkgirl are the ones absent in this two-parter) offer to help. We get a bit of a filler sequence as Flash and J'onn fight a giant fire-breathing snake, though they have some funny exchanges prior to the fight. Meanwhile, Diana and Superman do battle inside a mall because the artifact makes them think that the other is a demon. This bit, as cool as it is to see Wonder Woman absolutely owning Superman, and the awesomeness of seeing the property around them be destroyed, also feels too fillery... though, man, Wonder Woman is a badass, isn't she?

Oh, and this reminds me. Justice League does a pretty amazing job showing off just how destructive these superheroes can be when they fight, with the mall being absolutely trashed during their little battle. The previous episodes, most notably with the Manhunters fighting Hawkgirl, J'onn and Flash in the city, was another great moment at showing how powerful and durable these superheroes are.

Meanwhile, Batman finds out Faust's background and tells it to us, including the family-unfriendly implied deaths of the professors that mocked Faust back when he was a mere archaeologist. We get a close-up of their dessicated faces in Faust's room. Yeesh. Diana and Batman figure out that Felix Faust is working for Hades, the god of the underworld, and gives us a brief history of the character that kind of shits all over actual Greek mythology. But Faust plans to release Hades into the world. Despite knowing this, Diana knows that she has to give the artifacts to Faust.

Of course, Faust reneges on his deal immediately and plans to turn Diana to stone, but, y'know, Diana's got a buddy with super-speed and Flash steals the medusa medallion. Faust uses other magic tricks to do battle with the assembled JLA members, uses some plants to stall them (okay now J'onn, there's no excuse for you not to phase through the vines. You're not vulnerable to magic like Superman) before teleporting away with a captive Hippolyta. Who apparently used to be Hades's old lover.

Hades is summoned to the mortal world as the Doomsday Gate is opened, and grants Felix Faust knowledge... 'pain and suffering are all man will ever know', apparently, and ages Faust into an old man. Hades is also very... rapey towards Hippolyta, talking about the sweet warmth of flesh, caressing her face, and, well, at one point actually got on top of her, holds her down and starts pressing his face next to her. And that was in his monster form. Yeah, Hades, you're one sick, creepy bastard.

The Justice League show up to fight Hades, which is... actually pretty cool, with Hades launching hellfire everywhere, summoning an army of skeleton warriors (which look quite creepy in their gathering montage). So we've got Batman, the Flash and Superman going around fighting the undead. I've never realized how much I needed to watch something like this in my life. And, hey, J'onn just gives no shits, he just turns intangible and the skeletons just whack each other to re-death. That was hilarious. Old Faust's attempts to attack Hades fails quite miserably, and while the League is unable to match Hades, Wonder Woman blows up the key which... somehow causes the door to suck in everything. Why didn't they destroy the key in the first place when they sealed Hades in Tartarus?

In any case, Wonder Woman saves his mother, Hades falls back to Tartarus, and Felix Faust gets quite graphically reduced into a skeleton, then into dust that just gets sucked back into the hell gate. Jeez. Also, this makes Hades the first villain in this cartoon series that did not die, merely sealed -- the Imperium were genocided with sunshine, the Manhunters were all destroyed, Orm fell down a ravine never to be seen again, and Felix Faust was forcibly turned into an old man, reduced to dust and sucked to Greek hell. Man, the body count on this show is a lot higher than I remembered.

Oh, and apparently Faust's magic just dissipates so the Amazons are restored. That was anticlimactic. And then after honouring the League as heroes, Hippolyta banishes Wonder Woman because of the rule, though with a heavy heart. Honestly I'd rather the episodes have more focus on Wonder Woman's growth as a character than the random plot jumps of restoring the Amazons and sucking Hades back to Tartarus. I think this is the weakest of the three two-parters we have, with the pilot being the weakest episode, but fear not, for next up we have War World.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Hurricane Gardner, which was named by Snapper Carr at the beginning of the episode, either references DC comic-book writer Gardner Fox, or the third Green Lantern, Guy Gardner. 
• Bernie's News, which took a fair amount of screentime as Hurricane Gardner destroyed it, is a newsstand featured from DC's highly-popular Watchmen comic book series.
• Hippolyta, Wonder Woman's mother, has been a supporting character of Wonder Woman since her inception, and her protectiveness of her daughter as well as being forced to uphold the rules of Themyscira has caused them to come into conflict multiple times. For a brief time, Hippolyta also bore the mantle of Wonder Woman and thanks to some time travel hijinks Hippolyta was technically the first Wonder Woman to have contact with the human world during the WWII era. 
• Antiope and Phillipus, who Diana briefly called out when she arrived at Themyscira, are both supporting characters in Wonder Woman lore. Antiope is Hippolyta's siter and second-in-command, though most of her comic book screentime took place before Diana's birth. Phillipus was one of the more influential Themysciran residents, though often staunchly objecting at any men who arrive in the island of women. She was close to Diana and one of those that trained her in combat, and generally portrayed as the Amazonian army's main commanders.
• Hades, is, of course, based on the Greek god of death. In the comics, while Hades was never an outright ally and was sometimes an antagonist of Wonder Woman, he was never this... satanic or rapey. The comic book version of Hades was closer to his mythological counterpart, being more unhelpful and distant more than outright villainous, and nor did he have any problems with his Olympian brothers. The gateway to the pits of Hades's realm on Themyscira, Doom's Doorway, was lifted from the comics, however. In the comics, the role of an antagonistic Olympian god was almost always filled by the god of war, Ares.
• Felix Faust, based on the real-life legend of Faustus, was initially Dekan Drache, who was obsessed with finding knowledge and attempted to emulate Faust, thus renaming himself Felix Faust. Felix Faust first appeared in the original run of the Justice League of America comic and has been a recurring villain ever since, most notably appearing in the relatively recent-yet-aborted Constantine TV show. 
• As a big fan of Greek mythology... well, beyond featuring a war between the gods and the titans, and Hades's role as a god of the underworld, let's just say absolutely nothing in that story matches anything with the real Grecian mythology. For one, in real mythology it was the gods that overthrew their Titan ancestors, not the other way round. Hades was not involved with the Amazons in any way, and was not evil -- he merely drew a bad lot, and while he was unpopular among the gods, he was not villainous. He just rules over the underworld.
• The little blonde girl that Wonder Woman saved and says 'I'm not your little sister!' might be a reference to the second and then-current Wonder Girl, Cassandra "Cassie" Sandsmark, who, unlike Wonder Woman and the first Wonder Girl, had a civilian life and was not tied to Amazon.