Young Justice S01E19 Review: Children's Day

Young Justice, Season 1, Episode 19: Misplaced

"Misplaced" is actually a pretty fun episode, and I absolutely love how it made great use of Captain Marvel's unique ability to transform between an adult and a child. It's essentially similar to an oft-recycled plotline, one that was used in various incarnations of Justice League cartoons, but I do like how it's particularly relevant here due to the subject matter of the setting. Two teams of superheroes, one adult, one children. It's not just the Justice League, de-aged, but rather the League having to fight in the world of adults without children, while the Team has to fight in the world of children without adults, with Captain Marvel being able to freely pop back and forth due to his ability to transform. I particularly love the sequence where our characters were moving objects and the adults suddenly disappear, making it look like the villains were kidnapping all the adults... and later on we see the exact same scene replayed, but it's the children that disappear this time.

The main villain of this piece is Klarion the Witch-Boy, who gathers a gaggle of DC's evil magicians, none of them actually get lines but are nice cameos for big DC geeks like me. It's a smart move because the episode is crowded enough as it is, with Zatara, Zatanna, Dr. Fate and Captain Marvel all getting important guest roles, focusing most of the villainous screen time to Klarion (who, lest we forget, is a central member of the Light in this incarnation).

Of course, there is a slight lack of subtlety that the main character of the Team to get focus is Zatanna, who complains about her father's insane overprotectiveness -- something we've seen bits of over the previous times Giovanni Zatara shows up on-screen. Of course, all the adults in the world disappear right at that moment, causing the Team (and Billy Batson, trapped in his child form) to try and figure things out. There's a neat bit where the Team ends up being the de-facto leaders of the world as they try their best to rescue all the panicked children in Happy Harbour, while they send out broadcasts to the rest of the world, with a neat montage of other youths -- both powered like Rocket, and non-powered like Barbara Gordon and Robin's other proto-superhero classmates. (You'd imagine there would be a lot of who get plonked down onto the floor thanks to mommies and daddies disappearing, but best not to think about that)

Of course, the huge revelation that Klarion did this insanely powerful thing -- separating parents and children from each other and creating two alternate realities just so Sportsmaster and Riddler can steal the Starro piece from STAR Labs is... really, really hard to swallow. It's insanely convoluted, even by comic-book supervillain standards, but I'll kind of let it slide because I do like the rest of the episode.

Captain Marvel/Billy Batson ends up finding the specifics of the magic, travel back and forth to update both teams with what's going on, and they end up using the Zees to track down where Klarion's little cult is summoning from. I do like the limitation of Zatanna's powers, with various scenes making it clear that Zee is a lot weaker compared to her father, but still pretty talented. Klarion learning from his previous defeat and transforming Teekl into a monstrous cat-demon to defend itself is also well done.

Of course, throughout the episode, we've got both sides of the team constantly discussing using Dr. Fate to end the battle, and indeed, Dr. Fate's helmet has been a bit of a deus ex machina in the last two times they pulled it out. And Zatanna does don the helmet of fate, allowing Zatanna and Zatara to do a dual-world spellcasting thing to shut down the portal, driving Klarion and his cronies to a retreat. Except this time, Dr. Fate (or, well, Nabu) refuses to relinquish his host, and no negotiation via Kent Nelson or prior-struck arguments is going to stop him... because Nabu has already released Kent Nelson's soul into the afterlife. Zatara ends up offering himself to become the new Dr. Fate, because he couldn't bear to lose his daughter -- and also, he's stronger in magic.

It's the ultimate gesture of overprotection, of sacrifice, as Zatara allows Nabu to take over his body and basically overwrite his personality, leaving Zatanna basically an orphan. It's quite literally separation on a near-permanent basis for this pair of parent-and-child, not the type of break Zatanna wanted, and while she ends up joining the Team permanently, you can't help but really feel sorry for the poor girl.

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Superboy, Batman, Miss Martian, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Zatara, Red Tornado, Zatanna, Artemis, Captain Marvel, Rocket, Dr. Fate
• Villains: Klarion the Witch Boy, Teekl, Wotan, Blackbriar Thorn, Felix Faust, the Wizard, Sportsmaster, the Riddler, Vandal Savage, Ra's al Ghul, Lex Luthor, Monsieur Mallah, the Brain, Queen Bee, Ocean Master
• Others: Cat Grant, Uncle Dudley, Barbara Gordon, Bette Kane, Amber Joyce, Commissioner James Gordon, Rudolph & Mary West, Paula Crock

DC Easter Eggs Corner: 

• Lots of continuity nods in this episode! The Helmet of Fate returns from "Revelations" and "Denial", with Nabu's insistence that he be allowed to permanently take control of the host happening there. Riddler last showed up in "Terrors", where it is revealed that the Belle Reve breakout was engineered by the Light to let him out. The Atlantanean creature (Starro) was previously the target of the Light in "Downtime".
• While they don't have a lot of lines, in addition to Wotan (who appeared as part of the Injustice League before), Klarion's group of dark magic practitioners are:
• Felix Faust is one of the Justice League's earliest enemies, a sorcerer who attempts to mimic literature's Faust by selling his soul to demons for power. While initially powerful, he has became somewhat of a laughingstock among DC's magic community due to his constant failures and losing chunks of his soul due to bad bargains.
• The Wizard, a.k.a. William A. Zard (oh, Golden Age writers...) is an enemy of the Justice Society of America, was a criminal who took up the art of illusory magic to commit crimes. He is also strongly associated with various incarnations of the Injustice Society.
• Blackbriar Thorn was an ancient druid whose soul was bound into a tree thanks to a burst of magic. He has since been unearthed by archaeologists, and unleashed upon the modern world, menacing the likes of Superman, John Constantine, the Justice Society and the Golden Age Green Lantern (Alan Scott).
• Commissioner James Gordon, the iconic mustachioed police commissioner of Gotham City and ever-loyal supporting character to Batman, makes his Young Justice debut here, albeit as a brief cameo.
• Amber Joyce is named after a minor Superman supporting character.
• In the comics, Zatara's 'death' is somewhat similar here, where he sacrificed himself to be consumed by an all-powerful mystical force to save his daughter with a similar line "Ekat em daetsni", take me instead said backwards. Except instead of the relatively extremist but ultimately good-aligned Nabu, Zatara in the comics is taken by the villainous Original Darkness. 
• Captain Marvel's line, "world without grown-ups", is a reference to the very first storyline that introduced the comics' version of Young Justice. The plotline of this episode is similar to the Justice League Unlimited episode "Child's Play" as well, although not quite as intricate as this one. 
• Captain Marvel is said on a news report to have apprehended Ibac and Sabbac, who are both his enemies. Ibac and Sabbac, like Captain Marvel, can transform into a very powerful mortal by saying their names, but instead of being an acronym for history's mightiest heroes, Ibac and Sabbac's names are made up of demonic names and vile villains of history.