Justice League S01E16-17 Review: Girl Power

Justice League, Season 1, Episode 16-17: Fury

It took them until episode 16 to actually call Wonder Woman, well, 'Wonder Woman'. She has almost exclusively been called Diana throughout the series' first season, and if my memory of the later seasons isn't inaccurate, most of the time the cast still calls her Diana while "Wonder Woman" was more of a name used when it's the media or villains talking about her.

Also, it's another story where the entire Justice League shows up! For a while, at least. At the core, this two-parter still focuses on Wonder Woman, but it starts off with a new incarnation of the Injustice Gang. Led by the mysterious Amazon Aresia, the new Injustice Gang features half the members of the old one, plus an additional new member, Tsukuri. They're going around doing evil things, and the Batman shows up and actually very nearly takes down the entire Gang by himself, something that's equal parts awesome and also kind of ridiculous at the same time. One-on-one or even one-on-two against anyone from that group, yeah, I'll buy that Batman can one-shot them. All of them at the same time and you're honestly stretching the element of suspense. But anyway, Aresia beats up Batman and escapes.

The first third of the episode basically features Batman trying to investigate the Amazonian origins of Aresia, something that Wonder Woman denies knowledge off -- I did like that they didn't actually go all 'you don't trust me then we're not friends anymore' with this. Batman recruits Hawkgirl to go to Themyscira and investigate, and we learn all about Aresia's origins from Queen Hippolyta. She's an oppressed girl that washed up on Themyscira after a shipwreck, then was given powers by magic. There's a bit of a cat-and-mouse chase with the new Injustice Gang, but soon one by one the members of the Justice League fall sick to a plague... that only affects men. Batman and J'onn are the last to succumb, leaving only Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl (and Hippolyta, but she's kind of useless) against Aresia, Tsukuri and Star Sapphire.

There was a bit where Star Sapphire apparently tries to pretend that she's defected and all, but honestly we know so little about Star Sapphire that it's hard buying into it. Then Hippolyta reveals that, hey, Aresia was actually saved by a man before making it to Themyscira, so men actually had a positive impact in her life... which was honestly ham-fisted and unnecessary, but Aresia ends up going crazier and crazier until she crashlands her own plane, while the rest of the cast bugger off.

Giving Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl a 'girls' night out' episode is pretty decent, and the Amazons' backstory actually kinda-sorta gives a bit of a justification for this sexist plotline... and Hippolyta's inherent reluctance to actually acknowledge men's goodness and hiding it from Aresia probably helped foster her insanity. I did like the exploration of Wonder Woman's character even if Aresia ended up being a bit of a disappointment as a villain. Aresia's got a great backstory, but in practice she's very boring and mwa-ha-ha. Wonder Woman's staunch devotion to her homeland, yet being intelligent enough to not take everything at face value, is well-presented. Her more traditional heroism is contrasted pretty well with Hawkgirl's more brutal approach... man, Hawkgirl really needs some screentime, doesn't she?

We get a couple of hilarious nice touches, with Hawkgirl's "man, can you imagine growing up without parents? That'll screw a kid up" line to Batman not only hilarious because of the innocently insensitive comment, but also shows that Batman hasn't even opened up about his identity to the other members of the League bar Superman. And Hawkgirl was actually absent during the first Themyscira episode, which explains why the Amazons attacked her on sight... hey, a JLA member's absence being actually a plot point? That's amazing.

It definitely could've been better, though. And only the strong voice acting performances from Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl really manage to pull this episode out from being outright bad. It's at around this point that Diana's voice actor ceased to be annoying and actually starts feeling at home with voicing Wonder Woman. And I think she does wonders in carrying the episode mostly on her own, whether it's being confused at why women would want to cover up their natural beauty to just beating up an entire army of supervillains.

Hawkgirl does get the best line while talking about the importance of men to the world, though: "don't knock it until you try it, princess." That was utterly hilarious and I wasn't aware what this line meant when I was innocent and wee. And honestly, after thinking about it Hawkgirl's role in the episode is actually well-written, showing the ideal middle ground between fanatical feminism (WOMEN ARE AWSUM MEN ARE DUMB) and female empowerment (she kicks a lot of ass and is definitely her own woman) by calling out Hippolyta and even Diana's pre-ingrained hatred of men.

Huh, this episode went from being a fun 'yeah, Injustice Gang's back to cause some trouble!' to a very well-written allegory about feminism so fast.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• While there has been several (mostly male) DC comics villains under the name 'Fury', and some of them even being Wonder Woman's enemy, Aresia is created entirely for this show since none of the other Furies in the past has had the backstory of being washed up on Paradise Island and fostered a hate for men. The name Aresia obviously is a reference to Ares, the God of War, a frequent antagonist in Wonder Woman stories.
• Tsukuri is also original to the series, but has more than a passing resemblance to DC's  superheroine Katana, being a Japanese woman whose primary method of fighting is with a katana, and bearing more than a superficial resemblance to Katana's modern outfit. Notably Katana herself never appears in the entirety of the TAS universe.