Justice League Unlimited S02E06 Review: Best. Episode. Ever.

Justice League Unlimited, Season 2, Episode 6: Double Date

Oh, man, I'm kind of feeling under the weather, so this episode's review isn't probably going to be as in-depth as my other JLU reviews. Suffice to say, though, that this is one of my favourite episodes ever. I know I say that a lot about Justice League Unlimited, but it's not my fault that so many episodes are so well-written. I got into Batman comics relatively early on, though, so Huntress was a character that was familiar to me because of her relatively major role in the 90's and 00's stories. And I loved her! She had a very cool-looking purple costume (the one in the JLU is based on the more fanservicey Batman: Hush redesign, though), she has a crossbow, and she's borderline psychotic, continually butting heads with Batman thanks to their difference in methodology. Huntress falls somewhere around the middle of the spectrum of 'never kill' Batman and 'kill all the criminals' Punisher, and she's quite a dear character to my heart thanks to that.

And if you couldn't tell by my previous reviews, I am a huge, huge fan of DCAU's version of the Question, and both Green Arrow and Black Canary are just so well-done as well. This episode delves deep into exploring Huntress as a character -- both her origin story and the general gist of most Huntress stories are peeled back here -- as well as featuring Question a whole ton, always welcome due to how well the writing and voice acting around him is. Arrow and Canary have relatively less to do here, beyond being, well, the sane guys to the Question/Huntress' insane. Steven Mandragora is a suitably disgusting bastard, yet his soft spot for his son makes us not want Huntress to put a crossbow bolt in his head (not in front of his kid, anyway). And to top it off, this episode introduces Agent Faraday, a character I liked from the comics that I totally forgot was in this series.

It's a fun episode, and a pretty self-contained episode that we kinda need after the emotionally-charged Diana/Shayera episode prior, and the pretty intense Suicide Squad episode before that. Yes, we've got a fair amount of angst from Huntress, but the episode really tries its best to ramp up the comedy. The focus is still on Huntress, though, and we get to see some of the standards involved in keeping the Justice League filled with people who are, well, superheroes. J'onn is the perfect mix of cold detachment and indignant anger as he tells Huntress that she is not fit to be a member of the League after one too many times breaking rules and going for the kill in her one-woman vendetta after the man who killed her family, Steven Mandragora.

Huntress's backstory is actually even more tragic this time around, with her actually getting an age change as to how old she was when her parents, part of a criminal family, were killed by Mandragora. She's like, four years old when her father hid her in that cupboard, with very convenient slits to traumatize little Helena, and the way that flashback was framed it looked like big bad Mandragora actually beat Helena's parents to death with his fists... arguably making it far, far more brutal compared to her comic book counterpart, where she's a young teenager when it happened, and it was a shootout -- still brutal, but I'd imagine a lot less visceral compared to seeing a huge giant of a man beat the shit out of your parents.

Huntress recruits the Question's assistance in tracking down Mandragora, with promises of Cadmus-related information... but we all know what's in Question's mind. I mean, shit, look at Huntress's costume and the pose she's standing in when she hangs out outside of Question's room. The Question doesn't quite show any real libido, of course, being the Question, but the attraction from him to her is evident, and the sheer lengths that Question goes to manages to cause reciprocation from Huntress's parts. It's pretty much implied and confirmed throughout the episode that the Question, being a huge paranoid conspiracy artist who knows about everything, knows that Huntress doesn't have anything on Cadmus, and is just using that excuse to let Huntress allow him to tag along. The two of them make a pretty dysfunctional pair, but not unhealthy.

Green Arrow and Black Canary, meanwhile, have been recruited to protect Mandragora as he's placed under federal custody awaiting trial. Whatever the heinous crimes that Mandragora might've done -- and if I was in Huntress shoes, to be fair I'd be out for blood too -- he's a very, very unpleasant man, very greasily hitting on Canary and mocking Green Arrow's manliness (I find it hilarious that it's actually Canary that gets violent for Mandragora dissing her partner instead of the other way around). They might not like Mandragora very much, but the whole 'save every life' credo that superheroes have, as well as the fact that Huntress is basically breaking the justice system by trying to take the law into her own hands.

The action scenes in this episode are all great as the two pairs of heroes try to outsmart and out-power each other. Black Canary has the inherent advantage by being the only one out of the four of them to have superpowers, but it's not a really huge advantage and the action scenes between them is very well-done, with a very great focus on acrobatics and martial arts that these street-level superheroes employ. A particular favourite is the chase scene that leads into a train tunnel, in which Green Arrow and Black Canary are forced to teleport out, falling into the pier as a result. Canary and Huntress have some really great back-and-forth throughout the episode, too, in a way that doesn't make them sound too catty or prissy, whereas Green Arrow and Question seem to just be more passive and along for the ride. Very great way of embracing the fact that these two characters are women without going too far in the 'macho tomboy lady' or the 'princess precious' directions.

There are too many hilarious moments in the first three-fourths of the episode that it would seem like it's a comedic episode (Question undoubtedly wins the funniest hero ever award -- "Okay bored now goodbye." Also, apparently crop circles are caused by girl scouts.), but all of that serves to show the climactic confrontation between Huntress and Mandragora. The vengeful lady has all the reason in the world to shoot Mandragora dead, because in addition to killing her family, Mandragora also appears to be breaking out of the federal custody that Faraday, Arrow and Canary have him under to import some sinister thing in the harbour... which turns out to be his kid. Huntress has the chance to shoot Mandragora -- deciding whether she will or will not stoop as low as to knowingly murder a parent in front of their child. (Protip: if you're a criminal, never do that. You'll unleash the wrath of a Batman or a Huntress upon yourself) Huntress ends up dropping a bunch of metal girders on Mandragora, which isn't fatal in the DC universe. It does give her some satisfaction and closure (and probably hurt the jackass a fair bit) without crossing the line and being a killer. As someone more familiar with the comics, it's definitely a far more optimistic end compared to her comic-book counterpart, where she lost the respect and love of Question because she picked differently when dealing with a villain.

The episode ends with Huntress dragging Question (who says 'I like you' with the awkwardness of a fourth grader) to make out in who knows where, a relationship that Black Canary find disturbing, and while it seems like a throwaway, it's actually something that'll end up being built up upon for the remainder for the season. Not in a Supergirl-style "every episode must have a romantic comedy component" way, but in a way that gives both Huntress and Question something to fight for.

Justice League Roll Call:

• Speaking Roles: Huntress, Question, Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow, Black Canary, King Faraday (not technically a leaguer) 
• Non-Speaking Roles: Red Tornado, Sand (?), Mr. Terrific (?), Starman, Stargirl 
• Major Villains: Steven Mandragora

DC Easter Egg Corner:

• Huntress, a.k.a. Helena Rosa Bertinelli, is the post-Crisis reinvention of the Golden Age Huntress, a minor superheroine that's the son of Earth-2's Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. Helena Bertinelli is retooled as the daughter of the Bertinelli crime family, witnessing her family killed by a rival gang boss. She grew to become the Huntress, a crossbow-wielding vigilante out for blood, and often clashed with Batman due to her more violent methods. While Batman has tried to discipline her numerous times (most notably in No Man's Land, as well as during her role as a Justice League member) she remains a loose cannon. She briefly became the second person to bear the mantle of Batgirl, before her methods clashed with the rest of the Bat-family. She's also associated as one of the main characters of the Birds of Prey team.
• Huntress's relationship with Question draws inspiration from the Cry for Blood Huntress mini-series, although the comic-book version of the relationship ended as soon as it began because Question was disgusted by the brutality and callousness of Huntress, where she used her old mob connections to arrange a villain's murder.
• Huntress being discharged from the Justice League due to her loose cannon tendencies mirrors what happens to her in Grant Morrison's JLA, in which she gets discharged (by Batman himself, no less) due to trying to actively kill Prometheus.
• King Faraday is a pretty cool non-superhero secret agent in various stories, most memorable to me personally is his role in the The New Frontier miniseries where he's J'onn's buddy, and I'm pretty sure he became a member of Checkmate in the newer stories. 
• Steven Mandragora's role in the episode is based on the similarly-named Stefano Mandragora, who's one of the rival mob bosses that was responsible for the Bertinelli family's death, but he is visually inspired by the Batman villain Tobias Whale. His son, Edgar Mandragora, meanwhile, has appeared in Batman Beyond episodes as a villain.
• Mandragora off-handedly mentions a 'Tommy Monaghan', who is a reference to the alter-ego of Hitman, who works as a, well, hitman in the DC universe who specializes in killing metahumans or supernatural entities (not to be confused with the Hitman video game series).
• Question mentions how he's tasked to investigate Cadmus, something that Batman sent him off to do in 'the Doomsday Sanction'.
• The original drafts for this episode featured Barbara Gordon/Batgirl getting injured, and recruiting Black Canary and Huntress to finish her case in a loose adaptation of the original Birds of Prey books, but thanks to the Bat-Embargo (fuck you, Bat-Embargo!) this ended up getting altered to what this episode ending up being.