Justice League Unlimited S01E04 Review: War and Peace

Justice League Unlimited, Season 5, Episode 4: Hawk and Dove

This is another great example of how Justice League Unlimited manages to expand on the lore of the old guard of seven original JLA members, while still introducing two new characters. While 'Hawk and Dove' would not be remembered as one of Justice League's best efforts, and just a middling episode (and a slightly preachy one at that), it's a great attempt at making a pretty fun episode. We get Wonder Woman heading an episode on her own, taking Green Lantern's place in JLU's first episode as the veteran member leading a group of new heroes. The big problem, really, is that Hawk and Dove are kind of... well... not as interesting as Green Arrow or Supergirl. And with a cast of 70-strong characters not every new leaguer can be super-interesting, but I've never really gotten into Hawk and Dove.

The thing is, the concept of Hawk and Dove is pretty cool. A pair of brothers (I don't remember of Don and Hank are twins or not) with relatively generic super-strength-slightly-faster-speed powers, but one is very warlike in personality, and the other wants to solve things through diplomacy and peacefulness. The thing is, with only 20 minutes to introduce them, as well as have Diana and Ares do their thing, and the whole plot in the first place, Hawk and Dove just felt really one-dimensional. It's a kind of nice, cerebral plotline that I might be a slight dick of for expecting so much more, but the DCAU has proven time and again that it sets a high standard for itself, and as such Hawk and Dove just felt... kinda unpolished.

The plot -- a civil war in a fictional country, where neither side is willing to talk peace, and war tensions are increased by the war god Ares goading both sides on -- was pretty excellent to show Hawk and Dove's personalities, but they were more parallels to Wonder Woman's own duality, who in my opinion truly stole the episode. Wonder Woman is self-sent into the world of mortals on a mission of peace, and she claims to fight for peace and equality for all men and women. But at the same time, she was raised in a warrior culture by Amazons, and is easily one of the most bloodthirsty member of the Justice League in fights, seconded only by Hawkgirl.

The parallelism might be laid on a bit too thickly with the initial scene. Diana just hanging out at a mall in civilian clothes, at peace and enjoying herself despite still having some problem adjusting to civilian life, and then beating up bank robbers with such anger and violence that J'onn is forced to telepathically intervene and tell her to back off. It's perhaps slightly exaggerated for the sake of this episode's moral, but it's a point that's nicely made across.

And as thus, it's very interesting to see Wonder Woman have to deal with both babysitting the Hawk/Dove pair -- and noting that she does see some validity in both brothers' methods. Of course, the existence of a bigger evil, the villainous Ares and the Annihilator Weapon, means that the slightly-political tinted plotline of this episode ends up just having the two sides of the country be pissed at Ares for gaming them, and everyone refusing to fight which powers the Annihilator down. It throws a bit of a monkey wrench to the episode's more political and mature conflict, where not only the league's methods are being questioned, but also their accountability. Of course, it's a cartoon so all Diana, Hawk and Dove have to do is to defeat the ultra-evil Ares to end the conflict and not deal with the political backlash, but the theme is still there to build up on in future episodes.

The expansion of lore for Wonder Woman is particularly interesting to me, because in JLA all we got were Themyscira itself and Hades. We bring in one of Wonder Woman's most iconic enemies, the god of war Ares, who just wants to feed on war because, well, he's a god of war. He basically manipulates both sides of Kaznia (first appearing in that one episode where Wonder Woman hung out with the country's princess) into fighting against each other, in a gambit where he lends the Annihilator -- an automated magical suit of armour that gets stronger the more hate there is to go around. In his limited appearance, Ares might seem a bit of a standard 'mwa ha ha evil' villain, but his back-and-forth as different advisors to the two halves of Kaznia is pretty well done and portrayed.

I also enjoy the brief sojourn by Diana into the realm of Hephaestus, the greek god of blacksmithing. I truly enjoy the greek myths and seeing their DC counterparts -- especially the subtly perverted Hephaestus who wants to let Diana's armour out for her -- is pretty fun.

Overall, yeah, it's not the best offering in JLU, just being middling and good, but it is an episode who tries to present the points of view of the super-proactive-warfare type of politics and the super-peaceful type of politics and highlighting that both actually do have a point... and you can't be too cerebral with those kind of plotlines or you'll fully alienate the audience.

Justice League Roll Call:

• Speaking Roles: Wonder Woman, Hawk, Dove, Martian Manhunter
• Major Villains: Ares

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The fictional country of Kaznia was introduced in the Justice League episode 'Maid of Honor', and J'onn mentions Princess Audrey, Diana's ally in that country.
• Hawk and Dove, a.k.a. Hank and Don Hall, are brothers who obtained powers from T'Char, a Lord of Chaos and Terataya, a Lord of Order (Nabu, who gave Dr. Fate his powers, is a Lord of Order) when they attempted to save their father from his criminal enemies. Hawk and Dove's main claim to fame is their very differing personalities, which is displayed here -- Hawk is warlike and aggresive while Dove is more passive and advocates parleys. They had a short-running series before becoming supporting characters of the Teen Titans (them being used by JLU meant that neither made appearances in the then-concurrently-running Teen Titans show). Dove was one of the fatalities during the Crisis of Infinite Earths. While the mantle of Dove was replaced by a new hero, Dawn Granger, she also eventually died, and the deaths of both his brother and his partner drove Hank to enough anger and madness that he eventually became the time-travelling supervillain Extant.
• Interestingly enough, the scene of Hawk screaming Dove's name as he confronted the Annihilator seemed to homage the panel when Hawk reacte to Dove's death in Crisis of Infinite Earths.
• Ares, the God of War (also known as Mars), is one of the eareliest and most prolific enemies of Wonder Woman. He's traditionally depicted wearing blue gladiatorial armour that does not feature his face, but being a god, he has donned various appearances over the years, including the handsome-blonde-man featured in this episode. The extent of how villainous Ares is has varied, how much he desires destruction and power as opposed to just constant war in the world, has varied over the years, though he did spend several stories masquerading as arms dealers -- both in civil wars and smaller-scale gang wars.
• The Olympian gods feature majorly in Wonder Woman stories, though not all of them have major roles. Hephaestus is known to be the one who forged Wonder Woman's unbreakable Lasso of Truth, but never had that big of a presence in the comics the way Zeus, Ares or Hercules did.