Young Justice, Season 1, Episode 16: Failsafe
I'm not a huge fan of this episode. It's a very filler-y episode, starring the Team trapped in a mental simulation of a reality where the Justice League were all killed by an alien invasion. Honestly there was no way that they would randomly killed all the big names of the Justice League literally out of nowhere, and as the story becomes more and more apocalyptic, it's obvious that this is either a nightmare sequence or an alternate-reality story. There's still a moment of suspended disbelief when the initial group of Leaguers are vaporized (they could be captured or teleported elsewhere) but when the episode starts brutally and wantonly murdering not only heroes but civilians, you know it's not going to last. It's like a hilarious edgy Elseworlds scenario as one by one the superheroes get killed like flies, including members of the team. (Wolf, noooo!)
It's an episode that tries to play up the darkness of a world where all their mentors are killed, but the episode never managed to grab me or make its conflict really as engaging as even the Psimon-amnesia episode.
The best thing about the episode is how involved J'onn J'onzz is in the second half, when he inexplicably joins the cast, but that doesn't really salvage the ultra-gritty episode as it kills its heroes in rather pathetic attempts at cliched heroic sacrifices. The final five minutes reveal that apparently it's all a simulation exercise where M'gann's powers are apparently way, way more powerful than J'onn or anyone else thought, with her emotions going to overdrive when she sees Artemis die, causing all of them to think that the simulation is actually the reality. J'onn's attempts to fix it by entering the simulation caused him to be overwhelmed by emotions until everyone other than M'gann died. Which... which is really, really hard to buy. All it really served to do is to give another reminder of how potentially powerful M'gann is, something that the not-too-impressive Psimon episode already demonstrated.
There are the seeds planted for what would come to fruition in the second season, with the last 15 episodes' worth of supporting characters, the 'reserve Teen Titans', to use a comic book term, rally together and stuff -- and Alfred, for some inexplicable reason is hanging out with Dick's schoolmates. But honestly, it's not really enough to justify the episode running as long as it did. Considering prior episodes, like the Injustice Society or Red Tornado episodes could've worked better with a longer runtime, it's a bit of a shame that some of the series's runtime is devoted to this.
Overall, if I was to pick out any episode in Young Justice's first season as the weakest episode, this would probably be it. Robin did get to wear that very awesome arctic suit variant of his, though, which is pretty cool.
Roll Call:
- Heroes: Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Green Lantern (John Stewart), Batman, Martian Manhunter, Superman, Captain Marvel, Captain Atom, Red Tornado, Zatara, Superboy, Aqualad, Robin, Miss Martian, Kid Flash, Artemis, the Flash, Black Canary, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Wolf, Rocket, Zatanna, Red Arrow, Aquagirl, Tempest
- Villains: Random nameless aliens
- Others: Iris West-Allen, Cat Grant, General Wade Eiling, Mal Duncan, Karen Beecher, Bette Kane, Barbara Gordon, Alfred Pennyworth
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- General Wade Eiling, otherwise known as the supervillain called the General, is DC's go-to evil military man, having starred in Justice League Unlimited and the live-action Flash as a villain. Here he's portrayed somewhat sympathetically and not too much of a jackass, but still, this is a dream world so he doesn't count.
- Superman's Fortress of Solitude makes its first appearance here.
No comments:
Post a Comment