Justice League Unlimited, Season 1, Episode 10: Dark Heart
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| All of these dudes fight. Except Flash. Where the hell is Flash? |
The last big ensemble cast episode was "The Return", but this episode brings in like almost the entirety of the huge extended cast we saw in the season premiere for some absolutely amazing action sequences. No, there's no real big villain to fight, no Amazo, no Injustice League, no Project Cadmus. The enemy in this episode is just a bunch of mindless alien war-robot bugs that are indestructible and self-replicate endlessly... and it's this simple faceless army that the whole power of the Justice League's extended membership (except for Flash) is shown to light. It's your basic sci-fi plot.
And this episode just unashamedly show every single one of these superheroes fight and unleash their powers. We've seen some of them before in this show, of course. We know Red Tornado is a robot dude that makes tornadoes. We know Doctor Fate has magical powers. We know Captain Atom does some weird atomic kaboomy stuff. But then we've got some of the more exotic superheroes, like, at one point, Vigilante (not the psychotic dude from Arrow, a different Vigilante), who is a freaking cowboy, ride through a swarm of spider-bots on a motorbike, get knocked down, before riding a pegasus alongside Shining Knight, who is a freaking bona fide Arthurian knight. And the two of them charge through alien robots while shooting bullets from a revolver and swish-swishing with a magic sword. Seriously, even if you're not geeking out over OMG SHINING KNIGHT! AZTEK! DOCTOR MID-NITE! ZOMG! like I am, the sheer amount of colourful and variable characters that keep showing up is just amazingly fun to build action scenes around. It's like we jump from the insane Vigilante/Shining Knight combo to Vibe (man, how different is old traditional Vibe from the geeky Cisco Ramon from CW's Flash?) using earthquake powers to Atom Smasher turning into a giant and stepping on robots to Stargirl using her cosmic rod to blast spiderbots to Red Tornado creating a huge wind tunnel to Steel whacking spiders to scrap with a giant hammer to scrap to the two-man team of Green Arrow and Crimson Avenger shooting arrows and bullets?
Oh, and Batman has the most hilarious line. As his Batwing gets absolutely wrecked by the aliens, he launches himself out of the cockpit, and speaks into the radio, completely deadpan. "I could use a little air support. Seeing as I can't fly. ... at all. Now would be a good time." as the ground comes rushing up at him. Good lord, no one believes Batman's going to die from a freaking plane crash, but the absolutely hilarious deadpan delivery just sells it.
The episode's plotline is mostly throwaway. Atom again takes central stage (even more significantly than in "the Return") as the hero who uses his brains to take down this unstoppable menace, and he does get a fair bit of fun scenes as he shrinks down and attempts to disable the Dark Heart, but the plot is, again, filler. Until you realize that Dark Heart is easily one of the most impactful episodes to the climax of season two.
We meet a military representative in General Wade Eiling, who isn't necessarily happy that the superheroes are basically taking point and taking charge. Disagreements between the military and superheroes isn't an uncommon trope, until Eiling actually proves himself to be justified when the League unleashes a gigantic space cannon to slow down the Dark Heart. So yeah, we, the audience, knows that the Justice League is a force of good, led by good people, but it's also an army of superhumans and godlike beings that operates without anyone really keeping them in check, but in addition to having things like, y'know, Superman and Captain Atom among their ranks, they also have a gigantic space cannon. And you can't really fault the military for being afraid of the League -- of the potential that they would turn evil, if nothing else.
The military makes away with the Dark Heart technology, and the Atom is absolutely genre savvy. He's the one most intimately well-versed with the Dark Heart at this point, recognizing its past as a war machine, and he asks the other superheroes. "What's to stop history from repeating itself on Earth?" In one of the best answers to that kind of question, Superman's answer is a very simple "We are." as the camera pulls out to show that awesome assembly of superheroes I mirrored up above.
It's a pretty simple episode that honestly just boils down to "superheroes smash robots" and if I went I could probably gush about every single scene where superheroes fight, but I have so many more episodes to review, so I won't. Really love this episode, though, and it's the first cartoon episode that I actually had to track down in HD.
Justice League Roll Call:
- Speaking Roles: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, The Atom
- Non-Speaking Cameos: Ice, Crimson Avenger, Green Arrow, Nemesis, Elongated Man, Vixen, Shining Knight, Supergirl, Green Lantern, Steel, Dr. Fate, Dr. Light, The Ray, Booster Gold, Red Tornado, STRIPE, Stargirl, Atom Smasher, Starman, Vigilante, Captain Atom, Huntress, Rocket Red, Aztek, Wildcat, Blue Devil, Sand, Fire, Commander Steel, Vibe, Dr. Mid-Nite, Hawk, Black Canary, Obsidian, Hourman, Aquaman
- "Villains": General Wade Eiling
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Wade Eiling is a very militaristic general that is primarily a Captain Atom antagonist, being the asshole that blackmails Captain Atom into taking part in the unstable experiment, before being upgraded into a Justice League antagonist. We'll talk more about his role when he becomes more relevant, but he also has a role relatively recently as a villain in the first season of CW's The Flash... played by Clancy Brown, Lex Luthor's excellent voice actor in the DCAU.
- The Dark Heart is original to the show, although I bet if you look really hard you'll find a lot of similar alien weapons throughout DC's huge comic book history.
- Nope, not really much else to talk about -- sure as hell am not going to talk about every single other superhero that shows up in this episode, or I'll be here all month.
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