Young Justice S03E01 Review: Unexpected Return

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 1: Princes All

Wow, it has been... too long. I watched both seasons of Young Justice in 2013, lamenting that despite being one of the absolute best superhero cartoons I've ever seen bar none, it's a series that was sadly cut short after its second season, due to executive meddling. It has some of the most impressive world-building and character buildup I've seen in a superhero series, and honestly puts a lot of the actual comics and live-action adaptations to shame. 

Still, I did cherish what we got, both seasons, and definitely enjoyed my time rewatching and reviewing them on this site. (All my reviews are collected here). Considering cancelled cartoons tend to never be touched at all, imagine my utter shock last year when, more than five years after season two's ending, they announced that Young Justice: Outsiders, a third season, is going to air in 2019!

And here we are. Five years after Young Justice's second season ended, and we start off with a fun little recap of the final scene of season two, with a new version of the Young Justice Team being formed after the wake of Wally's untimely death and the Reach's downfall. And while not quite as disorienting as the beginning of season two, the opening scenes after the "two years later" timeskip does end up being another fun romp of "ooooh, what else have changed?"

The episode and season also doesn't waste a lot of time setting up the titular Outsiders storyline, loosely adapting the storylines of Justice League International/Batman & the Outsiders, a set of stories that I definitely enjoyed a lot. But before that, we get to see the horrifying abduction of a little girl called Anna in a hospital in Markovia, with her brother being told that she died in operation while in reality she's being brought for meta-gene experimentation. The scene as the poor, helpless child is sent for horrifying science experiments, before the scene jumping to blob-monster Ana being sent alongside an army of Parademons (!!!) to attack the planet Rann. That's what the main crux of the whole Young Justice: Outsiders plot, it seems. Metahuman creation on Earth, to be shipped across the galaxy as weapons. 

Darkseid's little cameo at the end of the second season seem to be leading into what I'm going to call the "background JLA plot", I guess, and we can just justify that members of the JLA like Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern are just busy fighting Parademon invasion all over the galaxy. It's also neat to see Rann again, after its prominence in Young Justice: Invasion's first half. It's also very neat to see Ice -- hell, I was squeeing like a little fanboy at every new character, let's just put it that way. 

But what seems to be just another day for the Justice League, repelling alien invasions and shit, ends up in disaster as a weak blast from Black Lightning sends Ana into a heart attack and she straight-up just keels over dead, and the voice acting for Black Lightning's utter shock and guilt at accidentally killing Ana... and even moreso when the others confirm that she's a 14-year-old human girl... it's pretty sobering. 

And then we get the introduction of the Justice League/The Team dynamic after two years. Lots of things have changed! Batgirl is gone, despite season two's ending setting her up as Nightwing's replacement. (We later learn that she's now Oracle, yay!) We've got at least three new members of The Team (Arrowette, Traci 13 and Spoiler). We've got more members of the Justice League. (Batwoman, Steel, Katana, Hardware) M'gann has embraced her white martian heritage, appearing as both white and bald. And, most interestingly, Kaldur'ahm has became the leader of the Justice League, and assumed the mantle of Aquaman.

The emergency meeting of the JLA ends up with a bit of an exposition dump, with how this confirms that teenagers and children are being kidnapped all over the world for this sort of human trafficking and weapon-making. And while not everyone is as curt as Batman, it's clear that the sentiment in the room is pretty sour, especially with the revelation that Luthor is abusing his position at the UN to basically place restrictions on the Justice League.

This leads Batman into giving a speech about how the League is no longer useful to the mission, and he is now going to do things his way, quitting the League. Green Arrow is another vocal member of the team, and despite the argument with Dinah, he also leaves the team, alongside four others, who are conveniently not voiced and quit via holograms. I guess it's to keep the focus of the scene on Batman, Green Arrow, Aquaman and Black Lightning, which is actually smart pacing. From the Team, it's Robin and two of the new characters (Spoiler and Arrowette) that leaves with Batman. We get a neat, little scene of Robin squeezing Cassie's hand before going away, which I thought was neat. 

Black Lightning also quits, which is a... very powerful scene. He's clearly in shambles after accidentally killing that transformed girl (especially when we learn later that he's got two young daughters of his own) and while he's not willing to join Batman's "Incorporated" squad, he's in no shape to do superheoring at the moment. 

And after these two set-up scenes, the rest of the episode basically follows two main storylines -- Nightwing and Oracle's little detective mission, and this whole storyline about the Markovian royal family. I am definitely pleased that the Markovian royal family was given ample screentime to properly set it up, even if it did feel a bit expositiony as the interview between Cat Grant and prince Brion Markov ended up being a bit of a "as you know" as we introduce the king, queen, missing sister Tara, crown prince Gregor, military-minded uncle Baron Frederick and political stance towards Quraci refugees (not going to touch any real-world political parallels in this review) in the span of a single minute. We also learn that Brion has tested positive for the meta-gene, and both he and his doctor lover Jace is thinking of... fighting fire with fire, to use his own words. 

Of course, things don't go quite as well for Brion, as a Quraci assassin with super-speed, Jaculi, ends up zooming in and murdering both the king and queen. The speed of the assassination is pretty well-executed, and the brutality of it is actually delivered quite well, a pretty neat feat considering that it's mostly offscreen. Jaculi ends up being killed by Baron Frederick in a probably unintentionally-hilarious bit with a gun. 

We get the glorious return of G. Gordon Godfrey, talking to Baron Frederick about how Markovia's now instituted a state of martial law to root out terrorists, and that for the following year until crown prince Gregor comes of age, the Baron will be the regent. It leads to Brion ending up seeming to make a hero for Markovia, and, again, while it's probably a bit bizarre for those less accustomed to the DC comics lore to have so much of this episode devoted to new characters, I do think that this is some pretty neat setup. 

Besides, we've got the Nightwing plot to tide us over. After he was mostly ignored or the "mission control" in season two, we get Nightwing and Oracle's little detective journey. Nightwing gets to free a bunch of kidnapped kids in Moscow, and the two discuss their current target, a villain called "Bedlam", as well as a doctor called Simon Ecks. And to this end, Nightwing ends up recruiting a team. It's... it's a fun process, with Nightwing first going to meet up with Tigress, who's living with her brother-in-law, Red Arrow (the clone, if you forgot -- he's now called "Will") and her niece Lian. Artemis/Tigress goes pretty easily with the flow. 

Meanwhile, Nightwing's second recruit is Superboy (interestingly, not M'gann?), who accepts a bit too readily for M'gann's tastes. It's a neat little bit showing how the two of them are being troubled by expectations especially after a good chunk of the JLA/Team ensemble just up and left. M'gann is afraid of how she's performing since she's leader of the Team, while Conner notes how he has a 'burden' to step up since Superman is off-world. We do get some pretty... interesting dialogue about how "it's just one mission", which... never really bodes well in storytelling. I loathe the term "death flag", but there's certainly one flying over Conner's head right now. 

That engagement scene was surprisingly sweet, and comes right out of nowhere... but definitely very sweet. 

Interestingly, Nightwing's final recruit is Black Lightning, who we see visit his ex-wife and daughters. It's definitely fun to see that even though the character is handled in different storylines, themes and iterations, both the live-action Black Lightning show and Young Justice: Outsiders do manage to get a whole lot of things pretty similarly between the dynamics for Jeff and Lynn, as well as Jeff's own struggles with responsibility. Interestingly, Black Lightning's powers doesn't seem to be working right after his accidental murder, but he ends up joining Dick's team anyway, who I'm going to call the "Outsiders", for lack of a better term, as they zoom into the night. 

And... and that's the first episode! A bit of a packed one, but I have to give extra kudos for the credits, which rolls over a vignette of Artemis and Wally's dog snoozing next to a doll of Kid Flash. D'aww.

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Nightwing, Aqualad/Aquaman II, Batgirl/Oracle, Static, Guardian, Bumblebee, Kid Flash II, Tigress, Beast Boy, Miss Martian, Superboy, Robin, Lagoon Boy, Wonder Girl, Blue Beetle, Adam Strange, Alanna, Superman, Ice, Wonder Woman, Black Lightning, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern (John), Thirteen, Arrowette, Spoiler, Steel, Dr. Fate, Black Canary, Green Arrow, Captain Marvel, Rocket, Zatanna, Batman, Red Tornado, Plastic Man, Katana, Flash, Hardware, Batwoman, Wolf, Red Arrow, Sphere 
• Villains: Baron Bedlam, Dr. Double-X, Plasma/Ana, Parademons, Lex Luthor, Jaculi, G. Gordon Godfrey
• Others: Otto, Cat Grant, King Viktor Markov, Queen Ilona DeLamb-Markov, Tara Markov, Brion Markov, Baron Frederick DeLamb, dr. Helga Jace, Lian Harper, Lynn Stewart-Pierce, Anissa Pierce, Jennifer Pierce

DC Easter Eggs Corner: 

• We're going to be splitting this into two segments because there's a lot of new characters in this episode. This one will be for non-character easter eggs.
• Batman thinking that the Justice League has became useless, bound by UN rules and leaving because the "mission matters first" is basically the origin story of the Outsiders team, as told in the Batman and the Outsiders spinoff series.
• Katana and Black Lightning (even if Jeff doesn't join Batman in this episode), two of the members that quit, are members of the first iteration of the comics' Outsiders.
• Green Arrow was a member of the fourth Outsiders team, quitting for a similar reason as detailed here. 
• While never actually a member of the Outsiders, Plastic Man has actually shown several times in the JLA comics that he's very much indebted to and inspired by Batman, probably explaining why he's one of the ones that left.
• Markovia is a fictional nation in the DC comics universe whose politics are extremely tied into Outsiders and Teen Titans stories, due to two members of its royal family -- Geo Force and Terra -- being prominent members of the respective teams.
• Qurac is another fictional country in the DC universe, located next to Arab and is a common enemy for various DC teams like the Suicide Squad, the Outsiders and Checkmate. 
• Passing dialogue indicate that Young Justice's Qurac has been invaded by Bialya, which, as we learn in the first two seasons, is sponsored by the Light's Queen Bee.
• Jefferson makes a snide remark of not wanting to join "Batman Incorporated", which is a concept and ongoing comic title released in 2010 that has the concept of Bruce Wayne basically training and getting a Batman for every country in the world. 
• The clone Roy Harper/Red Arrow (you can tell because he has two hands) now goes by the name "Will", which was Roy's middle name in the comics. 
• Black Lightning's ex-wife has had the maiden name Stewart since her first appearance, with the original intention making her related to the fourth Green Lantern, John Stewart, but this never actually amounted to anything in the comics. It's a common "fan canon" that they're siblings, which is actually the case in the Young Justice iteration.
• Both Arrowette and Spoiler's civilian alter-ego have had cameos in the show in the second season, following Young Justice's tradition of having the civilian alter-egos of characters who would join The Team between seasons appear as cameos in the previous season.

DC Easter Eggs Corner: [Characters - Spoiler Warning]

• Ice, a.k.a. Tora Olafsdotter, is an ice-controlling metahuman and the princess of an isolated tribe of Norsemen who can apparently wield magic. She was trained to suppress her powers as a child, but wiped out a significant amount of her family as a child when she lost control. She would later be recruited by the superhero team Global Guardians, and then by Justice League International where she was constantly paired with her best friend Fire, and her love interest Guy Gardner, the second Green Lantern. Since then, she's been on-and-off the JLA rosters. 
• Steel, a.k.a. John Henry Irons, is one of the four "replacement" Supermen that rose into prominence after the death of Superman, embodying the "Man of Steel" epithet. Doctor Irons was a former engineer for AmerTek industries, but left due to their unethical practices, and, inspired by Superman's heroic sacrifice, built a suit of armour to honour him. After Superman's return, Steel would continue serving Superman as one of the fellow members in the Justice League. 
• Arrowette, a.k.a. Cissie King-Jones, a fangirl of Green Arrow who joined the comic-book's first iteration of the Young Justice team. Unlike most of the heroes of that team, however, Cissie would retire from superheroism, and only appear sporadically as a supporting character. 
• Thirteen, a.k.a. Traci Thirteen, was a member of the elusive Homo magi race, but was forbidden from practicing magic. She lives in Metropolis, but ended up befriending Superboy and ended up tapping into the powers of Metropolis's "urban magic". 
• Spoiler, a.k.a. Stephanie Brown, is the daughter of Batman's villain Cluemaster. Donning a superhero suit to thwart her father's plans, she ended up getting far more heavily involved in the crime-fighting scene of Gotham City, even briefly assuming the mantle of the fourth Robin. 
• Batwoman, a.k.a. Kathy Kane, is visually based on the post-Infinite-Crisis version of the character, presumably sharing the same backstory of being the spoiled rich child of one of Gotham's elites, inspired by Batman to fight crime during the time where Batman was absent. 
• Katana, a.k.a. Tatsu Yamashiro, was a woman in possession of a cursed sword, the Soul-Eater, which, as its name implies, traps the souls of those it slays. The sword was used to kill Katana's husband Maseo by his jealous brother, and Katana killed him in revenge -- but not before being marked as a pariah. She would train in martial arts, and was recruited as part of Batman's Outsiders. 
• Hardware, a.k.a. Curtis Metcalf, is another DC superhero from the Milestone comics, a child prodigy who creates his own high-tech gadgets to fight crime. I totally thought that he was Cyborg when I first saw him in this episode. 
• Oracle is, of course, the identity adopted by Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon after she was crippled by the Joker, acting as the definitive support team for the DC universe, operating and communicating from a distance. 
• The Markovian family is a significant portion of the founding Outsider member Geo-Force's backstory -- which I won't really delve into too much because it would be a bit too spoilery and I'm pretty sure that's one of the main storylines of this season. Likewise is the identity of the enigmatic Bedlam, one of the main antagonists of Batman and the Outsiders.
• Dr. Helga Jace is actually a canon character, and, as you could probably guess, the scientist that turned Brion into a proper meta-human! She actually showed up as a villain in the live-action Black Lightning, and I completely missed that she's a DC canon character.
• The little girl "Anna" that got turned into a goopy slime monster seems to be heavily based on Teen Titan/Doom Patrol villain Plasmus, who was a man called Otto von Furth, who was mutated by the Brotherhood of Evil into a plasma monster. This is supported by Ana's brother actually being called "Otto".
• Supplementary material by the creators have given Anna the official name "Plasma". 
• Dr. Simon Ecks is the alter-ego of one of Batman's older villains, Dr. Double-X, who had the ability to create "doubles" of himself, complete with superpowers. 
• Identified by the creative team is the super-speed Quraci metahuman, who's called Jaculi, based on a member of the supervillain team the Jihad (the team was later renamed Onslaught), and one of the earlier enemies of the Suicide Squad. In the team's first appearance, they did cause mayhem in Qurac. 
• Parademons! They're the disposable alien shock-troopers of Apokolips and the main bulk of Darkseid's forces, tending to be depicted as winged cyborg aliens. While not actually named in this episode, it's pretty clear what they are. 
• Lynn Stewart-Pierce, Anissa Pierce and Jennifer Pierce make their first appearances. They are, of course, Black Lightning's family. Both Anissa and Jennifer would later be superheroes of their own (Thunder and Lightning respectively), while Lynn would be a supporting character for Black Lightning. They recently got a live-action adaptation!