Young Justice S02E06 Review: Flash Family

Young Justice: Invasion, Episode 6: Bloodlines

Some characters, like Bumblebee and Batgirl, could probably have their origin stories sort of handwaved with a single line, if it's even explored at all. Some, like the first Robin or Beast Boy, only have their origins alluded to as part of an episode that does not quite focuses on the origin story, but is heavily involved in it. Some characters, though, have their origin story be relatively... convoluted so there really isn't much of an excuse but to actually bite the bullet and spend the entirety of an episode exploring their origin story.

Take Bart "Impulse" Allen, for example. He's the time-travelling grandson of the second Flash, Barry Allen, who gets stranded in the past. That's certainly a storyline worth devoting an episode to, and while Young Justice drops the whole "hyper-accelerated mind" that made Impulse a bit of an unstable kid in the comics, they worked in a Terminator/Days of Future's Past storyline into Impulse's time travel antics. What initially seemed like a solitary episode focusing on the origin story of one of the new (and possibly main) characters of the second season ended up loosely tying into the main alien invasion storyline too, which is neat!

The episode starts off with a boy and a man in a strange, post-apocalyptic wasteland later revealed to be the future, and then cuts away to the present day when Bart Allen shows up and acts like the biggest fanboying fool, quite literally running circles around Robin and Beast Boy. Nightwing manages to get him to swallow a tracker, and even if Impulse and the Team got off on the wrong foot, it's clear that he's harmless to our heroes. Nightwing doesn't get a lot of screentime in this episode, but he makes the best of what he got by pulling off both amusement and exasperation in the same line deliveries.

Impulse's introduction is neat, and he quickly zips over to the Allan household, where Barry Allen (Flash II), his wife Iris and his nephew Wally West (Kid Flash) are celebrating the wedding anniversary of Jay Garrick (the retired Flash I). It's a glorious, glorious bit of geekery just seeing all these Flashes together in the same room and interacting, as well as the quick rapid-fire bits of confusion and mythology gags as Impulse 'spoils' the fact that Iris is pregnant with twins. Despite the clear bizarreness of Impulse's whole backstory, the Flash family quickly shrugs it off, especially when, as a superhero episode is wont to do, a villain begins to threaten a city.

In this case, the villain is the nuclear-powered supervillain Neutron, who unleashes pulsating blasts of nuclear energy that makes it really hard for these superheroes that rely on running really fast to touch him. Barry and Jay are clearly not the focus of the episode (or the show) but the episode makes both characters -- especially Jay's very limited screentime -- work. Jay's the old, retired mentor who isn't afraid of breaking out the metal bowl hat when it means saving his family. Barry's the big, shining Silver Age hero that everyone looks up to, the mentor that Wally is sometimes exasperated with because Barry's just that damn good... but to his family, Barry's also the guy that makes one too many "in a flash" puns. I liked that.

There's a neat sense of frustration in Wally's interactions with Barry and Bart that show that his retirement from superheroism might not just be because he's pursuing a life of peace. Sure, that certainly is a huge factor considering how happy he was in the previous episode, but on the other hand, the way he was so clearly unable to keep up with either Barry or Bart -- whether it's being unable to keep up with their superspeed talking, or lagging behind and getting lapped when Barry and Bart just zips around Neutron to create a wind funnel... Wally's conflict about retiring from superheroism because his speed hurts him is a huge factor of his role in New Teen Titans/Tales of the Teen Titans, and it's interesting how much of that story gets adapted here.

Impulse treats this all like a bit of a superheroing vacation, and to the cast he acts like a gigantic goober, but the audience gets to see that Impulse is actually here with a purpose. He knows that he arrives at the same day that Neutron appears (Nathaniel Tyron doesn't even know he's called Neutron) and unseen by anyone, he drops a weird little blue sphere while Neutron is regenerating, seemingly breaking Neutron from the aliens that are controlling him and deactivating his superpowers. Of course, Impulse doesn't reveal this to anyone, and when his time machine fails to work, he plays it up as a "huh, that's strange! What is going on!" moment, but when the audience sees the future scenes in clarity, we learn that Impulse made the trip back to 2016 with full knowledge that he's not coming back to his time. That's some neat depth to Impulse's character , for sure, promising a far more serious take on the character while keeping his jokester personality intact.

We also have the very neat revelation that "the mode" and "crash" aren't just futuristic cool-speak lingo, but actually does mean something because the mysterious aliens experimenting on Neutron and deciding to abandon him walks away, muttering about "the mode". And most interestingly, the episode ends with Neutron in the future as Bart successfully changes the past and restores Nathaniel Tyron into a human... but not the destroyed future, meaning that while Impulse does prevent the Neutron crisis, Earth gets destroyed by some other apocalypse... which is definitely a neat way to conclude this story while ramping up the dread factor. We also have some neat little build-ups to the invasion plot. Nightwing discovers that the Kroloteans are hoping to isolate something called the 'Meta-Gene' from the humans they capture, and Neutron is implied to be the result of experimentation with this Meta-Gene.

The B-plot in this episode deals with Red Arrow, the clone Roy Harper, as he and Cheshire charge into some temple in Tibet and fights a lot of ninjas. As dark as the Roy storyline can get, this episode's smash-cut when baby Lian cries and spoils their stealth mission, causing the entirety of the temple's ninjas to appear, is pretty hilarious. "I told you we should've left her with your sister". Yeah, bringing a baby during a stealth mission into a ninja temple? Not the brightest move. Most interestingly, though, is the fact that Clone Roy doesn't actually get to move on or find closure just yet, because in the temple they actually do find the original Roy Harper (who's going to be called Speedy from now on for the sake of clarity). Speedy is still preserved at his younger age, and is missing an arm... and just how Red Arrow and the rest of the superhero community will react to the original Roy's discovery... and indeed how Speedy himself will react, is going to be interesting.

Overall, "Bloodlines" is an episode that, I think, balances the seriousness of the time-travel/alien invasion/cloning blues plot with a whole lot of great character beats and comedic beats, and probably one of my favourite episods in an already stellar season of Young Justice.

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Impulse, Robin, Beast Boy, Nightwing, Red Arrow, Malcolm Duncan, The Flash (Barry Allen), The Flash (Jay Garrick), Kid Flash, Speedy
• Villains: Neutron, Cheshire, Unnamed Aliens
• Civilians: Lian Nguyen-Harper, Joan Garrick, Iris West

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Impulse, a.k.a. Bartholomew "Bart" Allen, is the time-travelling grandson of Barry Allen, born to Barry's son Don Allen and his wife Meloni Thawne (yes, Thawne). Bart spent his childhood in virtual reality due to developing his super speed at a very young age, and was eventually sent to the past where his grandfather would be able to train him to control his speed. Impulse would be one of the original members of the team called Young Justice (alongside Robin III and Superboy), and later 'graduated' into the Teen Titans, assuming the mantle as the second Kid Flash. He would also briefly become the fourth Flash. The whole "Days of Future's Past" mission that Bart undertakes here is original to the show. 
• Neutron, a.k.a. Nathaniel Tyron, is a Superman villain in the comics who was a security guard caught in the meltdown of a nuclear reactor, turning his body into living nuclear energy that can only be contained in a special containment suit. Angered that the government covered up the incident, Neutron became a criminal. His portrayal in Young Justice as being more sympathetic is original to the show. 
• The Meta-gene in the comics was introduced in the "Invasion" mega-crossover, where the Dominators revealed that a portion of humanity carry the gene that would allow them to develop superpowers in response to a traumatic incident, explaining the large amount of superpowered humans in the DC comic universe. 
• Bart says hi to his dad and aunt Dawn while they are still unborn babies, alluding to Barry and Iris's twin children, Don and Dawn Allen, who would become the vigilante superheroes the Tornado Twins in the future.
• I think this is the first time we've seen Flash's ring-costume in this show? The Flash and Kid Flash does traditionally keep their costumes collapsed into a ring with a special compartment. 
• Wally being slower than Barry and Bart is actually a plot point from the comics -- as Kid Flash, Wally was slower than the other Flashes due to a subconscious mental block as deep down he refuses to replace Barry as the Flash, but eventually during his career as the third Flash, the mental block was removed, and Wally would become the fastest of the Flashes.