Young Justice S02E20 Review: Run, Wally, Run

Young Justice: Invasion, Episode 20: Endgame

I'm not sure just how far in advance the Young Justice showrunners know that their show was getting cancelled after two seasons, because for all of my gushing over just how great the storytelling and buildup have been (albeit at the cost of its secondary characters and villains) the final episode of the season is a bit disappointing. The final episode just tries to wrap up every extraneous plotline, while dropping hints at the Vandal Savage/Warworld buildup that ends up feeling like a bit of a distraction. Add in that scene around halfway through the episode that displays the show's some thirty or forty-strong superhero cast... ramping up for at least a huge montage of them doing generic saving-the-world stuff... and then it shows maybe two, three scenes before going "hey, by the way, all of those other dudes? They've finished their job". Throw in a genuinely poorly-written heroic sacrifice for shock value, and it just felt mean-spirited more than anything.

The episode starts off at Rimbor, with the long-running and honestly ridiculously long trial of the League finally having its conclusion. Not before a bunch of fake-outs regarding how the Tribune will totally not change its decision, though, which I felt wasn't really necessary at all and hurt the episode more than anything. Also, the fact that the season keeps reusing the same scene of the six Leaguers standing on trial really leads me to question -- are they just standing on trial the whole time? Don't they have, like, cells to sleep and eat in? Anyway, this sub-plot ends up being resolved when Superboy, Miss Martian and Adam Strange show up with the brand-new evidence of the Light and Reach's duplicity. This takes like two or three more scenes longer than it should, and honestly could've been wrapped in a "yay we got the evidence, now to get back to Earth!" two-minute scene in the beginning instead of being dragged out through the first half of the episode with an honestly uninteresting set of scenes of Superboy and Miss Martian trying to sweet-talk the corrupt court to preserving their reputation as a fair court.

Oh, we also have a brief scene that will probably excite the shippers, with M'gann asking Conner about Wendy, and apparently Conner's actually playing wingman for Wendy and is helping her in her new relationship with Marvin. It's honestly a bit sudden and I'm not the happiest with how the Conner/M'gann/La'gaan love triangle was handled and how jumbled up it is at the end, but I do appreciate the episode for keeping the relationship at a "maybe" and not just revert it to a "first couple wins".

Meanwhile, as Black Beetle wants to wage war on Earth, the Team continues their streak from last episode, and the entire force of the Team is already attacking the Reach's mothership. The fight scenes themselves isn't actually that bad, and I do like the fast zipping through the monitor with some blink-and-you'll-miss-it scenes of the Team kicking ass. Black Beetle finally faces off against Aqualad, Blue Beetle and Green Beetle, and it's an appropriate trio to face off. Both Beetles have suffered under the Reach's manipulation and mind-control, and last episode established Aqualad and Black Beetle as having some bad blood between them.

The battle ends with Black Beetle killing Green Beetle's scarab, but the shared bond that Jaime and his own Scarab have end up... reversing Black Beetle's attack and destroys his Scarab instead? Okay? While it's certainly thematic, the way this is done felt rushed, especially since Black Beetle's Scarab-destroying powers came out of nowhere, and the balance between Jaime and his own Scarab being the key to avert this also sort of came out of nowhere. It's badass, but it's also an ass-pull. Oh, and of course, Black Beetle has already set in plan a generic summer blockbuster movie to destroy the Earth that cannot be reversed, with a bunch of Reach drones going around the world to activate a doomsday device to blow up the planet.

Again, it's really a bit of a piss-off that we get long scenes of exposition regarding the mechanics of the Reach's doomsday device or Superboy and M'gann trying to bullshit the Rimbor court when it could show some of these heroes in action for the last time. After a montage of the Reach devices activating and our heroes expositioning, we get the very welcome return of the most prolific member of the Light, Lex Luthor, who, of course, has a bunch of anti-Reach devices ready for the heroes of Earth to utilize. Blue Beetle helps to duplicate Luthor's virus, and a forty-strong army of heroes that we've seen throughout these two seasons -- Justice League members, Team members, the Runaways... basically everyone except the Green Lanterns, whose absence is written in.

And this is the biggest cocktease of it all, because out of the forty heroes, the resulting montage maybe shows off like three or four pairs. We basically get Aqualad and Lagoon Boy making up, the latter re-acknowledging the former as a hero after the whole double agent business; Artemis and Kid Flash having a romantic Big Damn Kiss in Paris; and Static and Black Lightning fighting together and Static basically gets a mentor and decides to join organized superheroing.


Oh, meanwhile, on Rimbor, the freed Justice Leaguers walk down the alien planet, when we suddenly have the proclamation by Vandal Savage on multiple news reports, threatening anyone who tries to breach Earth's security with retribution via the Warworld. It's a bit of a "my gun is bigger than yours" game by Savage, but I dunno... telling the alien invaders to fuck off isn't as evil of a plan as the Light stealing Warworld ended up being. And in fact, if we don't already know that Savage is pretty evil, his actions here could be interpreted as that of simply a more morally-gray human hero.

And, of course, while all of this is going on, the rest of the heroes have succeeded in disabling their own doomsday devices, and of course there is one last one. And the Flash family end up zooming in to save the day, with Flash, Kid Flash and Impulse zipping around to use their speed to siphon off the energy. All the hints of Wally wanting to retire, Wally wanting to pass the Kid Flash mantle to Impulse and the Big Damn Kiss earlier in Paris are all pretty obvious death flags, but still... if they were going to kill off Wally, they really should've spent more time with Wally this season instead of giving him a couple of token scenes in these last two episodes, and the way he dies -- just because he's not fast enough and gets absorbed into the Speed Force -- seemed particularly mean-spirited. It's a pretty cheap move from the writing department, too.

The rest of the episode function more of an epilogue... and it's not bad. The Justice League's core members return to Earth. The Reach leave the universe under supervision of the Green Lanterns. Lex Luthor gets great publicity thanks to his role in the crisis and basically succeeds Tseng as the UN head honcho with aspirations of being president. The Team now operates side-by-side with the League from the Watchtower, although with some changes in the lineup -- Nightwing leaves, Static joins, Impulse takes over the Kid Flash mantle, and Artemis reverts to her Tigress persona. And as Nightwing observes his successors do "business as usual", another set of characters are doing the same as we cut away to the Warworld as it arrives next to Apokolips, with Vandal Savage meeting Darkseid, noting that it's likewise "business as usual". (Godfrey's here too!) This Apokolips buildup, of course, wouldn't be followed up upon until more than half a decade later, since it's not until next year that we're getting season three of Young Justice.

Overall, it's... it's a serviceable ending. It's clearly one of the weaker episodes of the season, with the previous episode delivering the huge epic showdown featuring multiple superheroes. This one felt more like the show just scrambling to quickly wrap up all the plot threads, and as such a lot of the things that happen in this episode, chiefly Wally's death but also the superhero team-up and Vandal Savage's plans all end up feeling rushed and uneven.

Overall, though, I can't fault a great season for a lackluster ending, and Wally's death aside, Invasion has been a pretty strong ride all the way through. It's been a wild ride rewatching this, and it's going to be likewise a wild ride next year when Young Justice: Outsiders finally hits the air.

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Hawkwoman, Green Lantern (John Stewart), Martian Manhunter, Icon, Hawkman, Miss Martian, Superboy, Adam Strange, Blue Beetle, Aqualad, Green Beetle, Captain Atom, The Atom, Nightwing, Dr. Fate, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Beast Boy, Wolf, Sphere, Batgirl, Robin, Wonder Girl, Aquaman, Tempest, Lagoon Boy, Flash (Jay Garrick), Flash, Impulse/Kid Flash II, Kid Flash I, Artemis/Tigress, Red Arrow, Arsenal, Longshadow, Samurai, El Dorado, Static, Black Lightning, Plastic Man, Red Tornado, Captain Marvel, Dr. Fate, Zatanna, Blue Devil, Rocket, Bumblebee, Guardian, Snapper Carr, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Green Lantern (Guy Gardner)
• Villains: The Scientist, Black Beetle, Lex Luthor, Vandal Savage, Mercy Graves, The Ambassador, Glorious Godfrey, Desaad, Darkseid. Other members of the Light appear in photographs. 
• Others: The Tribune, Galet Dasim, Tseng Dangun, Rudy & Mary West, Catherine Grant

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Darkseid makes his first real appearance in the show. As any self-respecting DC fan knows, Darkseid is one of the biggest villains in the DC universe, being a member of the race of New Gods, and ruler of the hell-planet Apokolips, and treated as one of the mightiest enemies of Superman and the DC universe in general. The New Gods were introduced in a single episode of Young Justice's first season, and Darksseid's minion Desaad makes a non-speaking cameo. 
• G. Gordon Godfrey's true identity is revealed, sort of, as a member of Darkseid's court -- Glorious Godfrey. Note how his eyes are glowing in Apokolips! Glorious Godfrey has a similar, if far less subtle, modus operandi in the comics, where he was a pundit that turned public opinion against superheroes before being exposed as Darkseid's agents. 
• Luthor being hailed as the world's saviour and joking that he should run for president is a nod towards the long-running President Luthor storyline in the comics, where Luthor did become President of the United States. 
• Nightwing leaving the Team after the death of a founding member and a close friend calls back how Nightwing disbanded the Teen Titans after the death of Donna Troy in the comics. 
• Robin and Wonder Girl are a couple. I think they dated on-and-off for a while after Wonder Girl's original love interest, Superboy, died? I'm not 100% sure about this. 
• As mentioned before, Impulse did take over from Wally as the second Kid Flash, although the comics takeover didn't quite feature a death. In the comics as well, it was actually Barry Allen that disintegrated into the Speed Force while running quickly to save the world as the biggest-name death during the Crisis on Infinite Earths saga. 
• I'm not 100% sure what Black Beetle's non-Scarab-ified race is supposed to be, although green skin leads me to lean towards Coluan, Brainiac's race. I don't think it's ever confirmed either way by the showrunners.