Justice League Unlimited, Season 2, Episode 5: The Balance
Girls' night out! The original seven members of the Justice League might skew more towards those with testosterone because, well, after all, superheroes are more eschewed towards the boys. But where a lesser show (or anime) would be content to leave the token females to either play a supportive role, throw them a fight or two, or simply be a love interest with maaaaybe a non-action subplot going on, the writers behind Justice League Unlimited make the best use of their women, creating what is easily the definitive Wonder Woman in my mind, as well as turning Hawkgirl from a one-note 'Hawkgirl smash' space viking into a far more intricate character than I thought Hawkgirl would ever become when I first watched the earliest episodes of Justice League.
And while the show has introduced a slew of very interesting new ladies over the past few episodes -- Black Canary, Vixen, Amanda Waller -- this episode focuses back on the League's two original ladies, Hawkgirl and Wonder Woman. We saw a little from previous episodes that the two of them aren't on good terms with each other. Diana barely tolerates Hawkgirl being around, as shown on the penultimate episode of JLU, as well as in Starcrossed itself. Diana's values are more... naive, for lack of a better term, compared to the rest of the team. Honesty is one of these important values, embodied very unsubtly by Diana's weapon of choice -- the Lasso of Truth. Thus Hawkgirl's betrayal hit Diana pretty hard, and she's finding it very difficult to forgive her former sister-in-arms.
Oh, sure, there's a lot of demon fighting in this episode, and a fair amount of backstory for Wonder Woman (something that Diana is severely lacking considering that unlike Batman or Superman, she didn't have her own show to fall back on) as well as a returning villain... but make no mistake, the first scene in this episode quickly set the priorities straight. It's Flash, trying his best to make his two big sisters have some reconciliation in a very obvious 'let's make arrangements with the two fighting people and hope they work their issues out' lunch date... which, by the way, never works, in real life or in fiction.
But where Hawkgirl recognizes her faults and tries her best to apologize, in her own way... Diana is acting, well, like a younger sister of sorts. She might be the more physically imposing of the two, and easily the more iconic big-name superhero both in-universe and out, but she is still a relatively... mentally young woman, I guess? She's not exactly a woman-child like Poison Ivy from Gotham, but she does have some immature traits to her, and while they are slightly exaggerated for this episode to highlight the differences between the hotheaded but more mature Hawkgirl, it's still true to how Diana generally acts.
The crisis is set up relatively quickly, too. Tala, the mysterious sorceress lady we saw with Cadmus last episode, is this foxy, sexy lady with lots of innuendo, working with the ghost of Felix Faust to unlock the secrets of the Annihilator armour stolen by Task Force X last episode in a nice bit of continuity, only for Felix Faust to quickly backstab her, take the Annihilator armour and run rampant over Tartarus. To solve this crisis in in Themyscira, Diana needs to borrow something that can fight magic, and despite her own talk about honesty and betrayal, she sneaks around into Hawkgirl's room to "borrow" her Nth Metal Mace. It's more of a fun little scene than outright hypocrisy, and eventually Diana begrudgingly allows Hawkgirl to tag along with her while she restores balance to Tartarus.
There's a nice bit of crossover goodness over the various superheroes, when we see other magic-users like Dr. Fate and Zatanna forcibly strapped onto tables because their powers are out of control thanks to Felix Faust fucking over magic by taking over, well, hell. The Greek mythology part of DC doesn't get too much focus thanks to them alternating between lore taken from other properties (we get a Green Lantern enemy this week, then a Superman enemy next week, then a Wonder Woman enemy next week...) but man, it's definitely overdue. From Hermes showing up in Diana's room and acting like a freaking bored mailman, to the journey through Tartarus, it's a fun bit of lore exploring and worldbuilding.
Queen Hippolyta unlocks the full strength of Diana's armour (she couldn't have done this, like, two seasons ago?) including her magic lasso's true identity as the Lasso of Truth. We honestly don't get to see Diana a whole lot more after this, but for one of her last spotlight episodes it's definitely appreciated to see the show embrace a lot more of her lore instead of just teasing us here and there.
The general procedural through Tartarus is pretty much your standard superhero fare. There are some cool moments like the creepiness of how Hades is given a PG-rated version of the mythological punishment for Prometheus, and some of the visuals of Tartarus, some nice Easter Eggs with the Demons Three having a brief cameo, and Hawkgirl's wings causing the demons to freak out as they think she's an angel... there are even some cool action scenes here and there, what with Hades and Faust basically at each other's throats as Hades finds himself as the lesser evil and having to work together with Diana and Hawkgirl. But the real meat of the episode is still the bonding between Hawkgirl and Diana. It's more of Diana's story than Hawkgirl's, as Diana learns to, well, grow up in a sense.
One of the biggest points for Diana's journey through literal hell is discovering that Hades claims to be Diana's father, having sculpted her together with Hippolyta. But Diana chooses not to use the Lasso to see if Hades really is telling the truth and instead chooses to walk away. (This bit actually precludes Diana being a demi-god nearly a decade before the New 52 reboot revised Diana's origins to make her a daughter of Zeus) This shows that Diana has seen what happens when people are obsessed with their ancestry and their heritage instead of carving out their lot in life themselves. From princess Audrey a couple of seasons ago, to Hawkgirl herself having to struggle with following what she thinks is right and following her Thanagarian people, to even Hades himself, trapped in an eternal cycle of hatred due to his interactions with the other gods.
But more than anything, perhaps the most significant thing to come out of these two is the dynamic between Hawkgirl and Diana, who continually tease each other with great one-liners throughout their journey through hell. Whatever her original family might be, and whether it includes Hades, Diana knew that her family right now is the Justice League... including Hawkgirl. Diana eventually chooses to be a member of the Justice League instead of staying on Themyscira, despite her exile being officially ended, knowing that she's far more at home with her new family.
It's not the most spectacular episode, to be honest, but it does feel me with a bit of warmth at the nice bit of character writing. There's definitely a sense of the Cadmus project working in the background, though, with Tala doing stuff before Faust hijacks the plot. The balance is eventually restored with Hades getting his revenge on Faust (who's going to spend eternity getting fucked over and over by Hades until he gets bored) and reclaiming his rightful place as ruler of hell.
Justice League Roll Call:
- Speaking Roles: Wonder Woman, Flash, Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter, Etrigan, Zatanna
- Non-Speaking Roles: Dr. Light, Atom, Ice Fire, Vigilante, Shining Knight, Aztek, Dr. Fate, Gypsy, Booster Gold
- Major Villains: Tala, Felix Faust, Hades, The Demons Three (Abnegazar, Rath, Ghast)
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Lots of references to earlier episodes, of course. Hawkgirl's betrayal from 'Starcrossed' and her eventually rejoining the League in 'Wake the Dead', the Annihilator being stolen by Cadmus in 'Task Force X', as well as the whole Paradise Island/Hades/Felix Faust battle that happened in 'Paradise Lost'.
- Tala, the Queen of Evil, in the comics was a relatively different character than her incarnation in Justice League Unlimited. In the comics Tala is just a crazy demonic ruler of a part of hell, and menaced the Phantom Stranger, whereas here Tala appears to be a simple human sorceress in the employ of Cadmus.
- The Demons Three, Abnegazar, Rath and Ghast, are recurring characters in DC. They're the three red-skinned skinny demons that Hawkgirl and Diana interrogated, and are far more powerful than the low-ranking demons that they appear to be in this episode. Despite not exactly being huge princes of hell or whatever, the three of them wield tremendous power as the three demons that ruled over Earth before being banished to hell.
- Zatanna's creepy mumbling is "all is lost -- Faust sits on the throne of hell" backwards. She says all her spells backwards, but this is a bit of a sneaky way of getting the word 'hell' through the censors, something that is practically impossible back when this show aired.
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