Young Justice S01E03 Review: Trial By Fire

Young Justice, Season 1, Episode 3: Welcome to Happy Harbor

So, the first post-pilot episode of Young Justice deals with mainly the introduction of Miss Martian, who is an ultra-cheery alien girl relatively similar to Starfire from Teen Titans, with the addition of her fast-annoying catchphrase of "Hell-oooo Megan!". But it also deals with Red Tornado, the team's robotic mentor, as well as general feelings of inadequacy that the Team has -- and it's a very interesting topic to tackle. It's hard to make the characters not angsty, but rebelling and trying to do your own thing in the face of helicopter parents is something that many people can probably relate to, and it's something that a team comprised of sidekicks -- one of them literally a clone of one of the big-name heroes -- is going to have to deal with.


The opening scene shows that Young Justice takes on Justice League Unlimited's stance on exploring a bigger world, however. It's not just going to be the Team, but other peripheral characters like Speedy and the Justice League themselves, while not going to be the main focus, will also be involved from time to time. We get to see the increasingly hot-headed and angry Speedy take on the metahuman mob boss Brick, highlighting his estrangement with his mentor/adoptive father Green Arrow. And while Robin and the others show up to help him out and try to recruit Speedy into their team (in the middle of fighting Brick, of course), Speedy refuses to join on principle since the Team is still being supervised by the adults and just something to shut them up. There's definitely some degree of truth to what Speedy is saying, of course, especially where Batman is involved. The scene is amazing not only because it does the dual duty of world-building and keeping us up to date on what Speedy is doing, but also because it plants the seeds of doubt that the characters would logically have at this point in time and sets up the plot of the episode.

And, well, since there aren't exactly any assignments at the moment, the Red Tornado basically orders the team to socialize, much to the original trio's anger and irritation (well, mostly Robin and Aqualad -- Kid Flash is too busy trying to flirt with M'gann). Speedy's talk about the Team's base being a glorified clubhouse ends up surfacing. We get the revelation that Superboy and Miss Martian have been living in the Sanctuary, and we learn a bit about the base's origin story. We get some nice bonding goofiness with cookie cooking attempts and whatnot, and some of the Team members try to bond. It's a nice bit -- a little slow, but absolutely necessary because some of the characters, Miss Martian and Aqualad in particular, are ciphers to the audience as well. Miss Martian's telepathic powers (and later an introdump on her limited shapeshifting) are also on full display here as she accidentally causes a faux pas when the irritable Superboy (understandably so, considering he spent most of his life under partial mind control) is absolutely angered at hearing a telepathic voice in his head.

We then meet M'gann's Bioship, an organic space shuttle, and a good chunk of the episode is spent on Superboy kind of keeping silent due to being both angry at M'gann and being ashamed for overreacting, whereas M'gann tries her best and starts overcompensating in trying to apologize and get Superboy to like her. It's not the most elegant of plotlines, but it's also something that's arguably necessary relatively early on in a team's formation, especially considering both M'gann and Superboy are newcomers to the group -- the trio already have chemistry and history together, and are more savvy about the workings of human society.

Another in a series of actually well-delivered and well-crafted introdumps are the revelation that, like Superboy not having access to Superman's full range of powers, neither Miss Martian nor Kid Flash are able to do what their mentors can. Miss Martian's powers of shapeshifting is limited to turning into only female body-shapes, while she can't do density shifting at all; Kid Flash is unable to speed-vibrate-phase through things.

After the series of introdumps -- easily one of the best and organically-delivered ones I've seen -- they are sent to investigate Happy Harbour, where they are attacked by a tornado controlled by a robotic villain calling himself Mister Twister, who mop the floor with the Team and mocks them for being pale imitations of 'actual' superheroes. Miss Martian's attempts at mind-reading fails, and the Team quickly surmises that Mister Twister is Red Tornado in disguise. And, mind you, it's not a completely implausible claim. A robot with an unreadable mind (M'gann tried to read Tornado's mind earlier this episode) and the power to control typhoons? Add that to the general sentiment of being pissed for being treated like kids, and this can easily be treated as an obvious 'test' for the Team to power through.

Of course, turns out that, well, Twister isn't Red Tornado and tries to murder the team. They survive thanks to M'gann's bioship, but Superboy gets absolutely livid and the team decides to let M'gann sit the mission out due to her relative inexperience. The team's relatively fractured this early on, but while it might be a little too emotional (a little too much on Superboy's part, granted) it is, again, a very nice episode that highlights how human these kids are. They defeat Mister Twister in the end, after all, using M'gann's shapeshifting powers and Kid Flash's own tornadoes to trick Twister into attacking what he thinks is the Red Tornado, and the Team soundly beats Mister Twister with explosives.

And then M'gann lifts a giant rock and murders the man in the suit of armour, which caused me and the rest of the Team to go WHAT THE FUUUUUCK. Robin's horrified reactions and anger is amazingly well-conveyed, but of course all M'gann killed was a smaller, humanoid android inside a bigger android. We, the audience, get to see the people behind Mister Twister -- Bromwell Stikk, who was piloting the android, and T.O. Morrow, the man behind the man -- but not much beyond some vague mysteries. A later investigation leads Red Tornado to think that the android was built with the express purpose of sabotaging him, and he also notes that he considers the Team to be able to handle their own problems, hence why he didn't step in. So yeah, Red is actually a cool mentor, the type that the Team wanted -- not intruding on their operations.

Also, while Robin is the master of bad puns in this show, his note about how it's nice to have a heartless machine as a mentor, and Red Tornado's subsequent sarcastic comeback, is hilarious.


Is this a perfect episode? Not really. While I liked the emotional conflict between the members of the team, and the many foreshadowings to the huge Myth Arc this series will have isn't tiresome yet at this point, the scripting definitely could use some work. Some of the characters -- Superboy's anger, M'gann's try-hard cheeriness and Robin's unfunny-funny jokes -- are a bit too much at times, but it's not something I particularly condemn the series for. The main point of the episode isn't really about defeating Mister Twister or proving themselves to Red Tornado, but rather it's learning how to work as a team and accept each other (also, a whole lot of introdumps) and in that regard, 'Welcome to Happy Harbour' worked relatively well... even if Superboy really, really needs to take a chill pill.

Also, a brief acknowledgement so I don't repeat it every episode -- I'm not a big fan, at all, of the code numbers that our heroes use every time they teleport in via the base's teleporter.


Roll Call:

• Heroes: Speedy, Kid Flash, Robin, Aqualad, Superboy, Miss Martian, Red Tornado, 
• Villains: Brick, Mister Twister, T.O. Morrow

DC Easter Eggs Corner: 

• Miss Martian, a.k.a. M'gann M'orzz, a.k.a. Megan Morse, is a relatively new addition to the DC lore, appearing in 2006's One Year Later series, briefly before the DC comics' reboot with New 52. M'gann was introduced as a member of the Teen Titans, claiming to be the Martian Manhunter's niece. She went through a fair amount of story arc which will be explored in the season so for anyone who's following my reviews episode-to-episode I won't spoil any of them here. 
• Red Tornado, a.k.a. John Smith, a.k.a. Ulthoon, is... a superhero with a relatively complicated backstory, introduced as a robotic creation of the evil scientist T.O. Morrow to infiltrate the Justice Society of America and having the power to travel between Earth-1 and Earth-2. However, he quickly became sentient, chose the side of good and ended up being one of the most persistent (if never actually that major of a character) members of the various incarnations of the Justice League of America. He also ends up becoming Earth's air elemental. More importantly, when the comic-book equivalent of the Young Justice was formed, Red Tornado was assigned as the team's mother hen. 
• Mister Twister, a.k.a. Bromwell Stikk, in the comics is a bona fide sorcerer wielding a magical wand that makes twisters, famous for being the first villain defeated by the Teen Titans. Stikk would later resurface, possessed by a demon, as a new supervillain called the Gargoyle. His robotic suit appearance is a completely original model created for the show. 
• Thomas Oscar Morrow, (sometimes Tomek Ovadya Morah) often shortened to his alias T.O. Morrow, is a brilliant scientist that was first introduced fighting the Flash, before menacing the entire Justice League. By peering into the future using a special invention of his, T.O. Morrow was able to copy the future's technology and create super-advanced robots to menace the JLA and JSA, among them Red Tornado and Tomorrow Woman.
• Brick, a.k.a. Daniel Brickwell, is a Green Arrow villain with very hard skin, rising into power as Star City's mobster when there is a vacuum in power. He's recently been portrayed as a recurring villain in the live-action Arrow's fourth season, portrayed by Vinnie Jones. 
• The story about how the Secret Sanctuary was abandoned when its location was compromised was actually the reason why they left it in the comics -- a brainwashed Snapper Carr gave its location to the Joker.
• As mentioned before, Mister Twister was the first villain faced by the Teen Titans -- or at least three of them (Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad).