Young Justice: Outsiders S03E05 Review: My Brother's Keeper

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 5: Away Mission

I tried to keep myself as unspoiled as possible before entering the season, but I did see some of the promotional posters. And while being a DC fan I was quickly able to piece together who the newly-revealed characters were, one stood out in particular -- a four-armed red-skinned squat little dude. Everyone made jokes about how it's a Ben 10 alien, and some cited that it's a brand-new character, or a heavily-retooled one. Honestly, I have enough faith with Young Justice's creators, and they did take relative nobodies like Artemis and Kaldur'ahm and turn them into some of my favourite fictional characters, so I wasn't worried. Turns out that this dude's Forager of the New Gods, which... wow, that was honestly unexpected! And this episode, which sort of functions as a standalone pilot episode for Forager's introduction into the cast, is definitely a well-done one.

We return to New Genesis -- and the whole New God setting was built up for one episode in the first season, and briefly hinted here and there throughout the second season. It's perhaps not quite as evident to more casual viewers, so the brief little re-introduction of New Genesis, and in particular, the proper introduction of the divide between the land-dwelling Bugs and the self-styled New Gods literally living on a floating golden city is made clear. Moreso when one of the New Gods, Orion, appears to basically fool Mantis and Forager of the Bugs, reneging on their deal and attacking them with what I thought to be aliens, but are later revealed to be more metahuman kids.

Of course, it's not wrong for the Bugs to immediately call out the New Gods for having no honour, but where Mantis and the other Bugs have a one-track mind, one of them, Forager, wonders why the New Gods are behaving so differently than they usually do. The actual redesign of the Bugs into having a more uniform, more insectile look is definitely a welcome one for me. I love Jack Kirby's designs for the New Gods, but I've always felt that the "Bug" race really doesn't have its own identity and feels more like just any other design.


And then we get the little plot hook to bring our main cast to New Genesis, and it turns out to be... Big Bear of the Forever People! The stars of that one episode in season one which admittedly isn't the more memorable episode, Bear's portrayal by the energetic Bill Fagerbakke is nonetheless infectiously charming. All you need to know is that Big Bear and Superboy are buddies, they trade talks about their own wives, and he's a representative of the New Gods asking for human help to investigate the escalating tension between the Bugs and New Genesis... especially when their technology detect human DNA, which basically ends up sounding alarms in the Team's heads -- more Earth metahumans used in alien space-war. It's honestly a plot point that I wasn't sure was going to work, but the combination of keeping the conflict both have the "in the backyard of your city" feeling while simultaneously having universal impact is pretty well executed.

We get a brief check-up on some of the new Outsiders, with Brion still being exiled from Markovia despite Gregor's efforts, and the brief, glancing note that Markovia is still cracking down on both the Quraci and metahumans. In a neat twist, it's not Superboy that goes off with Big Bear to New Genesis, but rather Miss Martian. That's a nice little scene where M'gann is confused since she's trying to "help you help your friend", but the two are understanding of each other. It's nice, honestly, considering so much of the source of their conflict in the first two seasons is miscommunication. It's at this point that the episode splits into two parts, although M'gann's side of the story ends up taking the bigger priority.

And finally, we get to see other members from the Team other than the Outsiders, which is nice. It's Traci Thirteen's first lines, and she's... she's energetic? We get some rather awkwardly shoehorned exposition that she causes bad luck, a different take of her traditional comic-book powers, but eh, it works. We also get Wonder Girl basically being angry at Tim for keeping her out of the loop of Batman and half the League resigning, which is a nice little background event. Especially when she snarks about bad boyfriends in response to Bart's off-handed remark about how they need Robin to do the detective thing. I absolutely love, by the way, that Big Bear apparently just thinks that the humans can just "detect other Earthlings", which is why they brought them along. Oh, Big Bear, you goof!

Of course, the conflict quickly comes to them as Mantis and the Bugs attack them because they see a New God, and they attack a New God. It's a fun bit of the politics battle that I love so much in previous seasons of Young Justice, and I love how while Big Bear gives the explanation that the real Orion is away from New Genesis, it's also admittedly the reason that a New God defending their own kind would say.

With some talk, the Team and the Bugs decide to set up a trap for Fake Orion. And as the exchange goes on, M'gann realizes that the Orion impostor is using telepathy to make them angry... and immediately reverts to her true monster-white-martian form and talks to Orion in a very, very stern way before essentially dragging him away, much to the confusion of everyone present.

In another surprising twist, the impostor is M'gann's little brother M'comm M'orzz... who is Young Justice's iteration of motherfucing Ma'alefa'ak! Yeah, that name might not mean anything to most of you, but it did made me go whaaaaat when I first realized. Still, Ma'alefa'ak is basically reimagined in this show, although he keeps the whole "twisted, racist brother of a protagonist martian" bit  intact. Ma'alefa'ak's little manifesto about how they has been oppressed so much by the green martians while M'gann and J'onn are busy playing superhero on Earth, and how M'gann is even ashamed of her white heritage (considering season one, M'comm's not wrong). Ma'alefa'ak basically operates on the sort of hateful "fuck everyone, my race comes first" mentality that has a lot of real-life subtlety in it, which is honestly pretty well told. An interesting twist is that Ma'alefa'ak thinks he is justified in even harming the Bugs, noting that he sees himself in them, and he's trying to help the Bugs have the hatred and incentive to rise up and rebel against the New Gods, just like what he's planning to do to the green martians. And Ma'alefa'ak clearly doesn't give a shit about being the oppressor.

And then we get some action scene, which ends up being a three-way battle royale between Ma'alefa'ak's forces, the Team and Mantis, who just runs in with his Bug buddies to fuck everything up. The others' fighting is pretty neat, but the emotional climax is, of course, the mental battle between M'gann and Ma'alefa'ak. "This is how you perceive yourself?" Ma'alefa'ak reacts to how M'gann's mental avatar is her human form. We actually get some context to their backstory, about how the two of them were bullied by green martians and it was M'gann that defended them. The battle goes into a bit of a cheesy (but, again, well-told) route -- first with Ma'alefa'ak faking a surrender, but then attacking... only for M'gann to defend herself with avatars of her loved ones.

Ma'alefa'ak is utterly beaten, while Forager, of course, realizes who is in the wrong and attacks Mantis to save his newfound friends. Ma'alefa'ak refuses to admit defeat, and activates Failsafe: Omega, killing the two nameless mutated meta-children and branding Forager for death before escaping. Meanwhile, Mantis and the other Bugs refuse to admit their mistakes and still hate the New Gods, branding Forager as a 'race traitor'. 

This leg of the episode ends with Forager basically going along with his new family, being 'adopted' by M'gann... but honestly, it's actually a pretty great introduction to him. He doesn't get to do much in this episode, admittedly, other than be utterly adorable, but he does that pretty well. M'gann and Ma'alefa'ak's conflict is the main focus, but it also helps to frame Forager's story in context and honestly? This whole sequence between M'gann and her brother might be one of my favourite conflicts in this season so far.

Meanwhile, outside Conner and M'gann's farmhouse, the not-quite-Outsiders-yet team meet up, with a cheeky nod to Young Justice's almost-OCD-levels of attention to designations. Halo and Pierce-comma-Jefferson are given G-designations because Dick hacked the JLA computer, which is a hilarious bit. In a smart move, while Jefferson trusts Helga Jace, Superboy and Nightwing are far smarter and refuses to allow the proven mad scientist to be too much in the loop, not wanting another "Red Arrow incident". Granted, Halo and Brion are hanging out there, but I guess their situations and motives are far more transparent.

Oh, and Snapper Carr is randomly hanging around with them, talking about how he accidentally let the Joker into Mt. Justice one time, and I legitimately forgot Carr was an established character all the way back in season one. Silly Snapper Carr!

Anyway, amidst Snapper Carr and Superboy taking turns delivering dry wisecracks, we get to see Brion and Halo finally showing off their powers. Brion's power experimentation leads to some angry shouting, burning trees and a naked Brion. Troy Baker's delivery of "MOTHER OF GOD! don't look!" is utterly hilarious, and Halo's completely innocent "do not be upset, you are nicely shaped." is a perfect follow-up to that.

We basically don't learn anything new about Brion's powers other than the fact that he's still a raging magma rock man, and that he's sticking around to find his missing sister Tara. This episode makes it far, far more evident that Halo's powers change depending on the colour of the rainbow she's currently emitting -- red is shield, orange is flying, violet is healing, and a new colour, yellow, unleashes blasts. Interestingly, in addition to the whole mystery about the 'old soul', it seems that Halo isn't quite able to control which power manifessts.

Ultimately, the episode's main focus is on the M'gann/Ma'alefa'ak storyline, and I am definitely pleased to see this! It's a well-written and very personal storyline, taking a classic Martian Manhunter enemy and molding it to fit M'gann's character and motivations, as well as fitting the whole overarching metahuman trafficking storyline in Young Justice: Outsiders. I was somewhat expecting that season three would focus almost exclusively on the not-quite-Outsiders-yet (basically Nightwing, Superboy, Tigress, Black Lightning, Halo, Geo-Force and Forager) but it appears that Miss Martian's going to have a fair bit of focus in this season as well, something that I definitely find to be very welcome. Overall, definitely one of my favourite episodes!

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Forager, Brion Markov, Superboy, Miss Martian, Wolf, Sphere, Big Bear, Dreamer, Moonrider, Serifan, Vykin, Beast Boy, Blue Beetle, Traci Thirteen, Kid Flash II, Wonder Girl, Static, Nightwing, Tigress, Black Lightning, Halo.
• In addition to other heroes featured here, Aqualad, Wally West, Martian Manhunter, Marie Logan and Zatanna appear in M'gann's memories. 
• Villains: Ma'alefa'ak, Blister, Giant
• Others: Mantis, Snapper Carr, Gregor Markov

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Forager in the comics shares a lot of the same backstory that he has in Young Justice, being part of the "Bug" race that live on the surface of New Genesis, below the New Gods living on "Supertown". While the Bugs are looked down upon by the higher gods, Forager would prove to be far more independent than his race and participated alongside Orion and other members of the Justice League in battles against Darkseid's forces. 
• Mantis, in the comics, is the leader of a colony of humanoid insects that migrated from New Genesis, and was granted great power by Darkseid, namely the power to absorb any form of energy launched towards him. He's a frequent minion of Darkseid, and like the comic-book version of Forager, looked more like a dude in a funny suit more than a bug alien. 
• Ma'alefa'ak, known here as M'comm M'orzz and little brother of M'gann, is... a highly abridged take on the Martian Manhunter villain Ma'alefa'ak. Ma'alefa'ak in the comics is the brother of J'onn J'onzz. Born without telepathy and a weakness to fire, Ma'alefa'ak felt ostracized and engineered the death of his people, unleashing a telepathic virus called H'ronmeer's Curse that was spread through the martians' telepathic hive-mind. This version of Ma'alefa'ak doesn't share much with his comic-book counterpart other than being an evil sibling of a member of the J'onzz family. 
• Orion doesn't personally show up in this episode, but he's the son of Darkseid raised by the New Gods of New Genesis, having all of Darkseid's rage but raised with good morals. Orion would join the Justice League in various iterations, and basically being one of the more prominent New Genesis characters. 
• Supertown, the floating city where the New Gods live, is named several times in this episode. 
• Bear briefly notes that he and Dreamer has some sort of relationship -- the two are lovers in the comics. 
• Superboy's "Fortress of semi-solitude" is, of course, a reference to Superman's base in the Antarctic, the Fortress of Solitude. 
• Ma'alefa'ak refers to green martians as a "superstitious and cowardly lot", which, interestingly, is a term commonly used by Batman to refer to criminals.
• Lucas "Snapper" Carr mentions that he apparently let the Joker into Mount Justice one time. In the comics, the (highly unpopular) Snapper Carr was written out of Justice League of America comics in #65 when he was manipulated by a disguised Joker into revealing the secrets of Mt. Justice.