Young Justice: Outsiders S03E09 Review: The Nuclear Option

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 9: Home Fires

Oh man, this episode was... it answers a question that has been lingering in the minds of everyone watching superheroes from day one and looking at super-smart villains like Lex Luthor or the Calculator or Ra's al Ghul and wondering why they don't just strike at where it hurts. The family. And it's not like a superhero's secret identity is the most secure thing in the world, especially when they've been operating a while and gather together with their superhero buddies both in and out of costume.

And here? Here, attacking the families of the heroes is treated as the 'nuclear option' for the villains, who know that if they ever cross that line, it's a line that they can never, ever walk back from. It's more pragmatism than anything, because you don't want Superman and the rest of the Justice League on a massive manhunt for whoever shot Lois Lane in the head. And a good chunk of this episode features a mysterious sniper watching as the spouses and children of superheroes (some of them superheroes themselves) gather at the West-Allen household for a huge meeting, and this mysterious sniper continues to count the many, many mortal civilians that walk into this house.

And it's pretty chilling to see these people laugh and crack jokes with each other. The episode does go pretty hard and fast and introducing the wife of so-and-so or the child of so-and-so, which might be a bit overwhelming, but the gist is that these are the many, many family members of our heroes. Indirectly, it also explains the absence of some of the Justice League/Team members that we haven't seen in a while. Apparently, Red Tornado, Bumblebee and presumably Guardian are all just busy enjoying the civilian life, and presumably Will/Red Arrow retired for the same reason. Still no answer to where the first Aquaman disappears off to, though, even if his wife and son shows up for this gathering. (Also conspicuously missing so far? Lagoon Boy, another Atlantis-based superhero).

We get a whole lot of fun moments like Red Tornado entertaining the kids with his little cyclones, or Bart Allen running around after the Tornado Toddlers with Iris constantly screaming at Bart to stop calling Baby Don "dad", or the fun little conversation of the wink-wink-nudge-nudge on whether Will and Artemis are sleeping together. They're just housemates, jeez -- I feel like that's something that the showmakers pre-emptively directed towards the fandom.

Interestingly, despite mentions of an assassin (Lobo) elsewhere in the plot, turns out that the sniper trying to murder the loved ones of our superheroes isn't part of some master Light plan. It's Ocean Master, not seen since season one and mentioned to be 'disgraced' and kicked out of the Light's inner circle at the beginning of season two. Now in full Ocean Master garb and ready to unleash vengeance with Neptune's Trident, Ocean Master rants to Lady Shiva, a representative of the Light, that he will have his VENGEANCE, and that, yes, he is aware of the consequences for he is the mighty Ocean Master.

At which point -- and it's a genuinely shocking shot -- Lady Shiva just straight-up slices Orm's head off mid-rant. Yes, Ocean Master genuinely thinks that he's a big-shot that can take on the world, but the Light is definitely not ready for a Justice League that's going to put Priority #1 in hunting and exterminating the Light. It's genuinely interesting that the Light ends up being the one employing one of their enforcers, Lady Shiva (taking over for Slade in the second season) to eliminate Ocean Master who has clearly shown that he's a massively loose cannon willing to cross a line that should not be crossed, which will lead to 'mutually assured destruction', as Shiva puts it. Considering how seemingly in-control of the good guys the Light is in the first and second season, it actually makes a whole lot of sense that the villains just plain want the good guys to assume that the Light is still in the dark about their secret identities.

We get a genuinely haunting scene of the clueless superhero family gathering joking in the background as the visuals of the shot go from the bloodied corpse of Ocean Master amidst a room filled with weaponry, to a fade-out leading into an empty room. Pretty great stuff.

The other big A-plot of this episode is a bit less interesting, since it's ultimately an extended fight scene. The Light contracts the bounty hunter Lobo -- who is always a treat to see in this show -- to murder Forager. And their side of the story starts off with some fun Outsider adorableness, with Forager initially confused on how to properly greet humans, leading to some training exercise of Nightwing sniping Geo-Force with a rubber bullet mid-conversation with dr. Jace. Geo-Force gets into an argument with Nightwing, noting that the training exercise proves nothing and is pointless -- leading to Nightwing's glorious snarky comment of "proves you need to train for surprise attacks", which, of course, almost predictably leads to Lobo's literally bombastic arrival.

And the subsequent fight is pretty amazingly choreographed, and is the first real extended fight sequence we've had for a while. We get a lot of great bits of Lobo just tanking everything the Outsiders throw at him, and the Super-Cycle even gets to fight Lobo's space bike for a bit. Lobo ends up just tanking everything the Outsiders throw at him -- Black Lightning's lightning blasts, Geo-Force's magma, Halo's beams... we get a surprisingly gory bit of Halo being stabbed straight through the chest with Lobo's chain-blade, and while part of me do like the sudden increase in goriness in this season (Orm's head being sliced off is another example) I am not okay of the show devolving into "do terrible mauling to Halo since she can regenerate". Give the poor kid a break!

Of course, it's not just Halo that gets mauled in this episode, because Lobo quickly smashes what appears to be a rolled-up Forager into cracked bug goo, which... yeah, the animation team did a really good job of making it look and sound like a squashed bug. With Lobo gone, Forager shows up all naked and "goochy", which is a pretty predictable bait-and-switch. Overall, it's a great action scene, topped off with the most amazing line from Artemis: "welcome to the fake-your-own-death club". Oh god, that's hilarious.

Meanwhile, over the episode, a bunch of random news reports and discussions show off other happenings in the world. Apparently, Eduardo Dorado Senior has opened a metahuman youth center, where last episode's two brainwashed villains -- Livewire and Mist -- are sent to rehabilitate. In a great continuity nod to the previous season, apparently Neutron and Ed Dorado Junior are there as counselors! Wonder what happened to the other Runaways. In a moment of less acceptance, though, Prince Gregor has continued to support Quraci refugees, but not metahumans.

We also learn who's been distributing the Goode VR consoles that we've been seeing pretty obviously shown throughout the season, and I am actually kicking myself in the butt for not realizing it a bit sooner. It's Granny freakin' Goodness, in her civilian guise of "Gretchen Goode". In a particularly interesting bit, we get Gretchen Goode arguing with G. Gordon Godfrey on live television, and I absolutely love Godfrey lambasting everything from the metahuman 'delinquent center' to Bruce Wayne to just being a racist ass towards the metahuman kids. Godfrey has had a smaller role in this season, but knowing what I do about the real allegiances of Godfrey and Goodness, it's definitely an interesting stance to show them as apparent rivals.

The bookends of this episode is the most interesting ones, showing shadowed figures attending a meeting led by Queen Bee and Vandal Savage, showing them contracting Lobo. Turns out, as always, the Light is behind everything. We get to see the revamped council of the Light, with Savage, Luthor, Queen Bee and Klarion still being on it, while we've got newcomers Ultra-Humanite (he's got a cool voice), Deathstroke... and Granny Goodness. It's a pretty great introduction of her, even to viewers who aren't aware of her real powers. We learn that, yes, they did plan to protect the superheroes' families; and that the Lobo attack is just something to test if Nightwing (or rather, Grayson) is indeed behind the new Outsiders team.

Ultimately, a very solid episode. It could've been a pretty standard episode showing off the new Light members, introducing Granny Goodness and having a huge fighty-fight scene with Lobo... but the whole concept of the villains protecting the heroes' children is such an amazingly told and executed storyline that this episode honestly went from good to pretty fantastic. Am I sounding like a broken record already? Good, because Young Justice IS that good. Watch this show.

Roll Call: [Changing the 'others' label to civilians and others to fit those that are more neutral]

• Heroes: Aquaman II, Black Canary, Captain Marvel, Kid Flash, Forager, Superboy, Geo-Force, Batman, Miss Martian, Red Arrow, Rocket, Bumblebee, Tigress, Halo, Sphere, Red Tornado
• Villains: Queen Bee, Vandal Savage, Lobo, Kroloteans, Ocean Master, G. Gordon Godfrey, Granny Goodness, Lady Shiva, Klarion, Ultra-Humanite, Deathstroke , Lex Luthor
• Civilians & Others: Cat Grant, Iris West-Allen, Don Allen, Dawn Allen, Eduardo Dorado Sr, The Mist, Livewire, El Dorado, Neutron, Mera, Arthur Jr, Snapper Carr, Gregor Markov, Lynn Stewart-Pierce, Jennifer Pierce, Anissa Pierce, Lian Nguyen-Harper, Amistad Ervin, Traya Sutton, Lois Lane, Jonathan Kent Jr, 

DC Easter Eggs Corner: [potential spoilers ahoy!]

• Granny Goodness is perhaps one of the most well-known of Darkseid's minions, appearing in practically every cartoon adaptation that Darkseid shows up in. Granny Goodness is a hideous crone from Apokolips that is deathly loyal to Darkseid, and is charged with brainwashing and training a cadre of warriors -- the Female Furies -- that are fanatically loyal to Darkseid. 
• Lady Shiva, a.k.a. Sandra Woosan, is the antagonist to minor DC superhero Richard Dragon, and is known as the most skilled martial artist in the DC comics universe. Initially training to avenge her dead sister, she ended up rising among the ranks of the League of Assassins, becoming on par with various other martial art masters like Batman, Richard Dragon and David Cain. She's been heavily associated as an antagonist to both Batman and various Gotham-city-related characters. 
• I had to check, but this episode marks the first appearance of Lois Lane, Superman's love interest and wife, as well as daredevil reporter and the most prolific damsel in distress of DC comics lore. 
• -deep breath- THE SUPERHERO KIDS! (We've covered Lian Harper, the Allen twins and the Pierce girls before)
• Arthur Junior (parsed as 'Artur' without an H in the credits) is the son of Aquaman and Mera. Interestingly, in the comics, Arthur Jr was brutally killed by Black Manta in the comics as a baby -- evidently, this Arthur escaped the fate that befell his comic-book counterpart. 
• Traya Sutton is the adopted daughter of Red Tornado (John Smith) and his wife, Kathy Sutton, a girl that was saved by Red Tornado from war-torn Bialya.
• Amistad Ervin is the son of Rocket and her boyfriend Noble.  
• Jonathan Samuel Kent is the son of Superman and Lois Lane, introduced relatively recently in 2015. While various 'Elseworlds' have had Clark and Lois have a child of some sort, Jonathan Kent II is the real 'canonical' child of the two.
• Bumblebee and Herald have a child in the Rebirth rebooted comics, an as-of-yet unnamed daughter. 
• Bart called Don and Dawn Allen the "Tornado Toddlers", a reference to their comic-book name, the Tornado Twins. 
• Orm finally calls himself by his comic book moniker, Ocean Master, for all of two seconds. He's wielding Neptune's Trident, a plot device in the comics. 
• One of the children is reading a comic book of Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, which is a reference to the old Hanna-Barbera cartoon Dynomutt, Dog Wonder that's a pastiche of 70's-era superheroe cartoons.