Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 13: True Heroes
This is, I think, unless I'm missing something, the mid-season finale of Young Justice: Outsiders, marking the closure of the first half of the season -- which mostly focused on world-building and the formation of the Outsiders team. It's actually a pretty less hectic season than I expect it to be, especially compared to how the second season was. I like it! The second half of the season, if I'm remembering my cartoon news correctly, is going to come into play in summer of this year.
And I'll start off with the B-plot first, with Cyborg, Halo and dr. Jace being left in Superboy's house while the rest of the superheroes basically go off to crack down on all of the metahuman kidnapping facilities all over the world, which they extrapolated from the data obtained from the Goode VR goggles conspiracy discovered by Beast Boy in the previous episode. I really wished we actually got a brief montage of, oh, I dunno, Captain Marvel or Dr. Fate or Batman Inc or the Team or some of the other heroes doing their thing, but I guess it can't be helped.
The B-plot, though, is pretty interesting -- I've always been suspicious of dr. Jace, and apparently throughout the ten or so episodes since she's been a tentative ally of the Outsiders, she's sort of considered enough of an ally to be allowed to hang out in Conner and M'gann's house, and... I dunno. Maybe it's the insane mad scientist portrayal of her in the live-action Black Lightning show that makes me wary, but I don't think we would've gotten so much focus on maybe not trusting her immediately if she's not going to be relevant in some way.
Cyborg doesn't go with the Outsiders because, understandably, he just got superpowers and hasn't even trained, while Halo's left behind in case Cyborg goes on full Terminator mode again. But Halo utterly panics because Brion goes on a mission without her, and what if he's hurt? It's actually a fun inversion of the dude-protecting-the-girl dynamic. But Halo's powers are apparently closely tied to her emotions. And while dr. Jace tries to calm Halo down by being nice and brushing her hair and everything, the Father Box takes over Cyborg and turns his circuits back into purple, and we get some pretty horrifying bit as Cyborg rampages in the house with Halo unable to control her powers because the Mother Box is unable to process emotions, Jace being a normal human, and Wolf... Father-Box Cyborg just straight-up punches Wolf, and this is where I really, really hoped the Father Box burns in hell.
(Wolf is fine, as revealed by the final scene in this episode. Wolf is a good boy.)
We get some fun badass moment as Victor's mind manages to retake control briefly to tell Halo to run the hell away, and the scenes as Father Box Cyborg creeps around the house and stalks Halo is genuinely chilling. But Halo basically finds some inner strength and unleashes the mother of all violet light zaps, and, according to both Cyborg and Halo, permanently cleanses Cyborg of all Father Box influences.
I... I'm not sure how I feel about this. I do kinda feel that this does move a bit fast with the concept of Cyborg even having the potential to be taken over by the Father Box just being introduced in the previous episode... but then again, it's sort of similar to the Blue Beetle storyline in season two, so I can appreciate them wanting to get it over with quickly after establishing the Mother/Father Box stuff.
That's all for the B-plot, and we return to the Bio-Ship where Nightwing tells the rest of the Outsiders -- and the audience -- how everything ties together. I feel it's way more obvious than anything going on in the first two seasons where you do need a moment to stop and think and go 'aha!'. After the Goode Goggles stuff from the previous episode, it's honestly not a huge stretch to realize who's the villain behind the metahuman trafficking. We get the brief little attempts at tie-in about how Slade had handed Tara Markov over to 'Granny', which... which, yeah, okay, I guess that's a revelation for the show's characters. And apparently that random dude Tara kills with Black Spider was a renegade from the Goode company or something. Okay?
Anyway, after a pretty cool hologram segment courtesy of Nightwing's little beetle-bug drone that shows off the interior of the metahuman trafficking base, we get to see that it's being run by this dude called Mr. Bliss, and that in addition to selling metahumans, they're also having them fight in cage matches. Because... yeah, because that's somehow super-practical to have your merchandise fight and potentially break each other. But I guess these are supervillains. We also get the return of the Fearsome Five -- now calling themselves 'the Onslaught' after a Suicide Squad antagonist team, with a couple of new members.
And, of course, little Tara "Terra" Markov is in the ring, fighting with her earth-manipulating powers against some fire dude called Holocaust. I do like how the show makes it clear that while Tara and Brion have similar powers, the way they utilize them is different, with Brion focusing more on creating molten lava most of the time, while Tara levitates and throws around rocks. The fight is kinda brutal, especially with the context that these poor kids are mind-controlled and forced to fight for entertainment and then sold off to the highest bidder.
I do really like that the obligatory Dick/Brion fight ends up being quashed almost immediately by them telling Brion to calm the fuck down -- not because they're trying to prevent him from rescuing his sister, but because Psimon is among the villains present, and he definitely would be able to notice the emotional spikes. Which he did when Brion actually sees Tara fight... but, hilariously, Psimon has the unfortunate mistake of leaning on a metal railing while he does this, and gets instantly zapped to unconsciousness by Black Lightning from half the room away, which has to be an unintentional comedic highlight in this episode. (Also, Psimon and Devastation are apparently a couple, which is kinda neat!)
Also, another comedic highlight in this episode? The way they manage to get Tara out of the scene without risking losing her again? They just freaking bid and bought Tara while infiltrating the scene, which is just a hilarious scene of superhero pragmatism.
After Tara gets freed and reunited with Brion (and, of course, meeting the ever-pleasant Forager) the Outsiders minus Brion goes off to give the human traffickers hell, and I absolutely loved how Bliss tries to pass off Forager firing missiles into the building as "one of our combatants... er... farting!" Of course, this cover ends up being utterly blown to hell as the Outsiders attack.
Superboy fighting Icicle Junior is a pretty fun confrontation. Icicle rants about how he is the one who should've ended up with M'gann, referencing the prison episode from the first season, but when Superboy pretty cheerily notes how they're getting married, Icicle actually bursts into a surprisingly sincere "DUDE, CONGRATULATIONS!" and starts rattling off reasons about how he knew the two of them are right for each other. All while fighting and shooting ice beams and throwing cars at each other. Yeah, Superboy ends up knocking Icicle out, but it's still a hilarious and pretty cute scene.
Everyone goes off on their own opponents while Nightwing and Tigress frees the enslaved kids. Black Lightning seemingly takes out the Terror Twins before finding out that his lightning doesn't work on Devastation. Mammoth takes on Forager on board the Bio-ship, while Superboy fights Shimmer. While all of this is going on, we get a fun scene on board the ship where Tara tells Brion that they need to help out. Brion is clearly conflicted, having been molded into a hero over the past half-season, but feeling responsible to protect his sister over everything else, so it's neat that it's Tara that tells Brion that they need to fight instead of the other way around.
The Terror Twins recover and fight against Nightwing and Tigress, who, in addition to being non-powered heroes, also has to deal with rescuing the enslaved kids. It's actually a pretty badass action montage as the two of them fight the Terror Twins... and then the Geo-Twins show up, and it's actually pretty damn badass! The superheroes eventually unleash hell on the Onslaught, completely taking them down and rescuing everyone present, and they leave the arena/auction house burning, with later dialogue noting that the other teams enjoy similar successes.
And the rest of the episode is... it's pretty neat epilogue stuff. Dr. Jace apologies to Tara for being involved in turning her into a metahuman, while Tara shrugs it off as something that she was forced into doing, and that Jace's the only nice member of the Bedlam trafficking ring. We get Halo and Brion kissing each other. We get Nightwing noting that the new members of the Outsiders are ready to be officially integrated into the Team.
And, of course, while Tara has been shown as a slightly-rattled but ultimately good little sister to Brion, anyone familiar with Terra is definitely waiting for the other shoe to drop... which, of course, is the stinger for this episode. Perhaps adapting the Judas Contract isn't the most exciting thing since it's a story that we're more familiar with compared to the stories running through season one and two, but I definitely love the fact that the person that's going to feel the most betrayed this time around is going to be Tara's brother Brion instead of the sorta-boyfriend-while-she-was-under-cover Beast Boy. It's definitely a simple but a pretty great change to the Terra story, and it's definitely not going to be a simple rehash considering all of the other moving pieces going around.
Overall, it's a pretty great mid-season finale to Young Justice: Outsiders. We bring a close to the metahuman trafficking ring storyline, the Terra rescue storyline, as well as Cyborg going out of control... and we're left with the potential of something larger down the storyline. Eagle-eyed viewers sort of note that there's a pattern forming with the titles of the episodes for this season, but there are a whole lot of larger storylines going on -- the new members of the Light; Grany Goodness; Darkseid; Terra... things are definitely looking very, very exciting for the second half of season three, and I, for one, am very excited to see where we go from here!
Roll Call:
- Heroes: Wolf, Halo, Geo-Force, Black Lightning, Forager, Cyborg, Nightwing, Tigress, Superboy, Bio-Ship, Beast Boy (flashback), Batman (flashback), Miss Martian (flashback), Oracle
- Villains: Deathstroke (flashback and present), Lady Shiva (flashback), Cassandra Savage (flashback), Granny Goodness (flashback), G. Gordon Godfrey (flashback), The Court of Owls, Icicle Jr, Terror Twins, Devastation, Psimon, Mammoth, Shimmer, Mister Bliss, Holocaust
- Civilians/Others: Dr. Helga Jace, Queen Perdita (flashback), Tara Markov
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Bliss is a Starman villain, an incubus who fed off negative emotions. He ran a circus and abused the freaks working there, feeding off their fear before Starman arrived and defeated him.
- Holocaust, a.k.a. Leonard Smalls, was a Static villain who gained fire-manipulating powers after the Big Bang that transformed a lot of Dakota's youth into meta-humans. He would later be imported into mainstream DC continuity with the rest of Static's cast and would battle the Teen Titans several times.
- Psimon's team is identified as 'the Onslaught', which is the non-racist new name for Suicide Squad's early antagonists, originally named 'the Jihad'. In the comics, the Onslaught was a group of state-sponsored terrorist mercenaries from Qurac.
- The customers for Bliss's little metahuman auction wear masks that are way too similar to that of the Batman villain group, the Court of Owls, to be a coincidence.
- Terra working for Deathstroke and being sent to infiltrate a superhero team as a seemingly innocent young hero, of course, is a reference to the iconic storyline associated with the character, Teen Titans: The Judas Contract.
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