Justice League Unlimited S03E10 Review: Whirlwind Romance (with Time Travel!)

Justice League Unlimited, Season 3, Episode 10: Far From Home

I have to admit that despite being a huge, huge DC fan... I never cared that much of the Legion of Superheroes. Oh, sure I know who they are. I've read some stories in them, even. I know Saturn Girl, Chameleon Boy, Brainiac 5, Bouncing Boy, Lightning Lad, Proto the weird Ditto creature, and I even cheered when the Fatal Five showed up here (having remembered seeing fascimiles/clones of them when I read the 90's Superman comics). I even recognized who Valor is to get relatively excited when Mon-El revealed his identity in Supergirl's second season. But I've never really cared for them all that much. I'm not sure why I didn't care for them. Maybe it's the insanely large amount of rebots that the Legion has had over the years. Maybe it's because their status as being detached from the 'mainstream' time period makes it hard to think of them as part of the overarching DC universe, despite them being one of DC's more iconic (if less mainstream) parts. I dunno.

Maybe I'll watch that Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon that debuted in 2006, to orient myself to the characters. We'll see.

But it is indeed true that Justice League Unlimited's mission statement would eventually bring them to the Legion in the 31st century, as it explores all of the DC universe. But it honestly gives the Legion itself second billing, because the main character here is Supergirl, co-starring her two makeshift uncles, Green Arrow and Green Lantern. Supergirl is one of those characters,a little  like Huntress last episode, whose character has been built up across all of JLU, yet this is a chapter in her story which I felt was underwhelming, especially since this is Supergirl's last appearance in the series.

Granted, the action sequences is nothing short of amazing. There's the first fight between Supergirl, Green Lantern and Green Arrow against the Fatal Five, a very colourful group of baddies (I always loved Validus's weird looking design), but most epic would be Supergirl single-handedly taking on two dozen Leaguers all at once.

But the episode itself, I feel, fell short. The big thing that the episode tries to do is to give Supergirl an exit on the show as a metaphor for growing up and forming your own identity away from your parents (or larger-than-life cousin, in this case), but it didn't really feel that well-done. Brainiac 5 and Bouncing Boy are just kind of there, with Bouncing Boy just being a hilarious side-character, while Brainiac 5 is just kinda nice. There's the brewing mystery of something that the Legionnaires are not telling the Leaguers, and that mystery is the fact that Supergirl never returns back to the 21st century in the history books. Of course, despite the fake-out and the Crisis homage as Green Lantern cradles Supergirl's seemingly-lifeless body, it's apparently because Supergirl falls in love with Brainiac 5 and decides to stay in the future with him.

It's... a bit weird, really, and while the show does give some mutual flirting between the two ("maybe I was just trying to cop a feel") it never really feels that organic and unlike the show's previous attempts to inject a love-interest-for-the-episode in Hawkman, Brainiac 5 showing up as Prince Charming and charming Supergirl away from her family is just weirdly done. B5 is nice enough, of course, and while there's the underlying current that it's supposed to be a metaphor for falling in love with a nice person that your family doesn't approve of thanks to his backstory, other than a few brief lampshades by Green Lantern and Superman's "does this boy have a name" bit at the end, there's not much really made out of that.

It's not that the episode is completely devoid of any strong moments, mind you. Supergirl seeing how much she can unleash herself in the 30th Century is well-done, as is how Green Lantern notes there's nothing he can teach her anymore, but beyond the lack of Superman I don't feel like the show does enough to really justify having Supergirl  just literally abandon every single friend and family member to stick around with a bunch of kids, of whom she's only met two of for the duration of a day or two. All the talk about not really fitting in doesn't work because Supergirl just exchanges one army of superheroes for another, and her 'growing up' has already been explored with her many solo adventures -- be it teaming up with Green Arrow or Stargirl, or her one-woman fight against Galatea -- it's a bit odd, really.

I dunno. I guess in this setting if Kara wanted to go back and forth between the 21st and 31st century it's just barely any more inconvenient than someone taking an intercontinential flight, but at the same time I can't feel that this felt a little weak. Maybe it's because the Fatal Five, despite their colourful designs, doesn't have much in lieu of a personality beyond being evil. Maybe it's my personal apathy for the Legion. Maybe it's because I felt like the huge plot of the episode didn't entirely make sense and neither did the ending. The Supergirl/GL/GA chemistry works amazingly well, though, with Lantern and Arrow acting like Kara's two surrogate uncles or elder brothers, both supportive and protective at the same time. Yet maybe if I've seen Superman actually being an overbearing parental figure towards Kara, the episode would pack more punch, but as it is, it feels like a huge plot development that didn't feel like it needed to happen.

But hey, after Justice League Unlimited's near-perfect streak of great episodes, it's about time that one or two didn't entirely hit the mark, right?

Justice League Roll Call:

• Speaking Superheroes: Brainiac 5, Bouncing Boy, Supergirl, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Superman
• Non-Speaking Superheroes: Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, Phantom Girl, Colossal Boy, Chameleon Boy, Blok, Shadow Lass, Ultra Boy, Timberwolf, Wildfire, Steel
• Speaking Supervillains: Emerald Empress, Mano, Persuader, Tharok, Validus
• Non-Speaking Supervillains: Robotic holograms of Queen Bee, Dr. Cyber, Atomic Skull, Blockbuster

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Legion of Super-Heroes are a team of young super-heroes operating in the 31st (sometimes 30th) century, and were most famously featured in Golden/Silver-Age stories when a young Superman (then Superboy) accidentally traveled into the future and became a member of the team. Each member have a Legion Flight Ring, which explains how every single person appears to be able to fly. Over the years, real-life reboots both hard and soft has given many, many variations of the 31st century setting, and I admittedly have never really been interested in the Legion's history enough to research them. The Legion previously appeared in DCAU canon in the Superman: the Animated Series episode "New Kids in Town".
• Brainiac 5, a.k.a. Querl Dox, is the descendant of the original Brainiac. Which is a bit weird because in DCAU's canon Brainiac is a supercomputer that went wild, but in the original comics Brainiac started life as a Coluan, a different alien species. In the comics, too, Brainiac 5 has had romances with Supergirl, who herself has also became a member of the Legion in some stories.
• Bouncing Boy,  a.k.a. Chuck Taine, is a superhero with the powers to turn into a giant ball and bounce around, and honestly there's not much else beyond that.
• The Fatal Five is a group of supervillains that menaced the Legion of Super-Heroes, though I'm sure I've seen them transported into the present day once or twice in the comics. Their ranks consist of the Emerald Empress, Mano, Persuader, Tharok and Validus, and various different versions of each character have appeared in the many, many reboots and revamps that the Legion of Super-Heroes has had, in addition to more traditional successors of a mantle.
• The shot of Green Lantern cradling a thought-to-be-dead Supergirl is a homage to the iconic cover of Crisis on Infinite Earths #7, where Supergirl was killed by the Anti-Monitor and was picked up by Superman in a similar fashion.
• The team of Green Lantern, Green Arrow and Supergirl harkens back to their team-up in the first episode of Justice League Unlimited... sans Captain Atom, but he's a bit of a dick.
• While Green Lantern cuts off Bouncing Boy's talk about how he's the father of someone, it's totally a reference to Warhawk, who Green Lantern met during his last time-travel escapades during JLU's first season finale, which he briefly references.