Young Justice: Outsiders S03E14 Review: Sacrifices and Decisions

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 14: Influence

Oh man, it's been a while for sure! I did enjoy a whole ton of Young Justice's third season, and we're jumping into the second half of its third season and it's just so much fun to watch what's growing into basically one of the hands-down best adaptations of the DC comics universe.

And while the first half of Young Justice: Outsiders was content to take things slow and basically revolve around the formation of the core members of the Outsiders team and the new characters we're introducing, "Influence" suddenly throws us headlong into the wider world. And it's a pretty refreshing, if slightly jarring, sequence. For the vast, vast majority of Young Justice episodes we've seen before this, we tend to just follow the actions of the younger superheroes, the Titans and the Outsiders, while the most we could hope for from the larger-than-life Justice League members or the villains would be slight hints here and there about what they're doing.

But here? We get a good chunk of the episode following around Superman, Wonder Woman, Guy Gardner and the Hawks as they deal with their own investigation about what the evil forces of Apokolips have been up to. Having to deal with the asshole Thanagarian commander Hro Talak (a neat callback to Justice League!), we get the gist of how no proof of actual Apokoliptan Parademons are around, which seems to be the primary usage of Darkseid's Earthling metahuman army -- a disposable army of superhumans that will move suspicion away from Apokolips. Even if Hro's clearly a dick, his casual note about sending an army of Hawkmen to put Earth under martial law, as well as the Justice League's own poor popularity thanks to the Rimbor incident, isn't going to help matters out.

Team JLA ends up investigating and finding out a massive Apokoliptan satellite base where the metahuman children are being held, combined with a bunch of other rare plot devices that Apokolips have been collecting from all over the world. We get to really hammer home that Gretchen Goode is the evil Apokoliptan commander Granny Goodness, with her and Desaad discussing their evil master plan and their preferred methods to inflict pain.


And, hell, we even get the very unexpected introduction of Big Barda (with a strangely oddly-smoker-sounding voice), and she spends the entire episode as a fully indoctrinated "hail Darkseid!" minion of Granny Goodness. Sure, knowing what I know about the character, this will probably lead to something much more -- particularly with Granny Goodness torturing her and being shown to be willing to unleash the superweapon on Barda and her Furies squad... but other than that, it's a neat little peek into whatever cosmic master plan Darkseid's minions are doing. And getting to see the Female Furies straight-up engage the Justice League in a straight-up action scene is definitely a treat!

Oh, and Guy Gardner is voiced now, and boy oh boy he is a massive glory-hog and ass, and I love him.

Throughout the episode, we get to see a bunch of interesting news from all over the world, too, delivered by the always welcome presence of everyone's smarmy G. Gordon Godfrey. While the Goode VR googles have been recalled and more public heroes like Kaldur'ahm and Donna Troy get to give huge speeches to the world, the media's essentially spinning the whol thing to make Gretchen Goode out to be just some poor lady who got hoodwinked, and that the true villain was her old partner Jaqqar Marlo, who has been killed thanks to some karmic retribution by supervillains... which we know isn't exactly true, since Jaqqar was killed by Terra earlier in the season.

We also get a pretty effective usage of politician Lex Luthor, something I cannot get enough of. The scripting is excellent, if a bit preachy, as Lex talks about how the League's rash actions have caused strains with other world governments, and scared the metahuman trafficking ring to go underground, all the while talking about accoutability and the whole "who watches the watchmen" deal. And when Luthor, of course, claims to have transparency and accoutability, about how he allows his company to be seen by the public and how it's ran by her completely-credible sister, all the while LexCorp and Goode are pledging huge funds to rehabilitation clinics... pretty effective scenes of twisting the truth just enough to fool the public.

Again, at this point, while Granny Goodness and Lex Luthor are both clearly members of the Light, and we know Vandal Savage met Darkseid at the end of season 2... I'm not sure just how much information is shared between the villains. If nothing else, though, they're doing a great job at making people like Luthor and Goode look pretty great, while passive-aggressively dissing the Justice League's methods.

Meanwhile, the Outsiders team -- Geo-Force, Halo, Forager, Cyborg and now Terra -- are sort of hanging out while their mentors Nightwing, Artemis and Superboy give this huge speech about them making their big decision, and I do really, really love how they don't glorify the fact that this superheroing business isn't particularly safe, that even Artemis has needed to take time off to live as a civilian for a while, and web bring up the sacrifice of both their mountain base and Wally West as concrete examples of what they stand to lose. Cyborg seems to not take to this quite yet, which is understandable, but the other four ends up being formally welcomed by M'gann into the Justice League Watchtower.


Beast Boy gets a brief mini-arc in this episode. After a brief action sequence where he saves a girl from a thief and ends up going trending on social media, this ends up with Gretchen Goode praising Garfield for being such a great 'child'. And it's a pretty interesting bit as Garfield refuses to be coddled like a child by Goode (who ends up dropping the nice granny facade for a while), and ends the episode with fancy NTT duds and rejoins the Justice League in the Watchtower, finally coming out of his retirement.

We get a couple of short scenes in the Harper residence, particularly when Will Harper ends up with a conversation with Black Lightning and dr. Helga Jace. Now of course part of it is influenced by Helga Jace's live-action counterpart from the Black Lightning TV show, but she definitely seems a bit too desperate to try and integrate herself into doing more for the children. All the while, Terra's recording parts of this conversation and sending it back to Slade. Ah, same old same old subterfuge, am I right?

Overall, "Influence" is an interesting episode. A good chunk of it is just spent on both the Justice League in space storyline, as well as on news reports showing how the world is seeing the behaviours of the Justice League and their enemies, which is genuinely well-done stuff. It's a nice compromise from having an episode be entirely comprised of a G. Gordon Godfrey show, by putting our main characters out of focus but not entirely so. Some really interesting development is in store for Beast Boy, the double-agent stuff and the politics of the Young Justice universe is great as always, and between Granny Goodness and Desaad's bickering, Brion being adorkable and Guy being Guy, this is a very, very solid episode!

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Superman, Green Lantern (Guy Gardner), Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Forager, Halo, Geo-Force, Cyborg, Tigress, Nightwing, Superboy, Aquaman II, Beast Boy, Ms. Martian, Troia, Wolf, Red Arrow, Black Lightning
• Villains: Lex Luthor, G. Gordon Godfrey, Granny Goodness, Lena Luthor, Desaad, Deathstroke, Lashina, Gilotina
• Civilians/Others: Hro Talak, Terra, Commissioner Gordon, Catherine Colbert, Big Barda, Helga Jace, Lian Harper, Eduardo Dorado Sr

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The asshole Thanagarian that accompanied the Justice League, Hro Talak, is based on a one-off villain for the Justice League three-parter season finale, "Starcrossed", who was meant to be an evil version of Hawkman -- Hro Talak is an anagram of Hawkman's Thanagarian name, Katar Hol. Hro Talak invaded Earth with an army of Thanagarians in Justice League, which he snidely remarks to be a thing he might do. 
• We also basically kind of confirm that Hawkman and Hawkwoman in this universe are using the "alien" backstory, at least for now, as opposed to the whole amnesiac reincarnated Pharaoh storyline. For now, at least. 
• The Female Furies (just the Furies here) are an army of fanatical lady warriors trained by Granny Goodness to fight for Apokolips and Darkseid, essentially becoming a cabal of Amazon-esque warriors. We see Big Barda, Gilotina and Lashina in this episode, with the former being most well-known as the Fury who would break free from Granny's conditioning and join the Justice League. Lashina was one of the original members from the comics, while Gilotina was part of the Furies that was introduced in later stories. 
• While popularized by live-action adaptations like Supergirl and Smallville, various depictions of Lena Luthor has appeared throughout the different DC comics continuities, with most versions having her be the younger sister of Lex Luthor. How villainous she is tends to vary from writer to writer, though. 
• In-between glorifying his shapely ass, Guy Gardner sings about "Oa" and "the Rings of Mogo". Oa is the planetary home base of the Green Lanterns. Mogo is a gigantic planet who also happens to be a Green Lantern.
• A blink-and-miss it is that the not-Twitter accounts in G. Gordon Godfrey's show include "LSnart_CC" (making a "put on ice" pun) and "CNDMNTKNG" (making a "I relish" pun). These are references to the Flash villain Captain Cold and the Batman villain Condiment King. 
• Superman uses his Silver Age catchphrase, "great Scott!" like three times in this episode. 
• Nth Metal is name-dropped multiple times in this episode. It is a special metal common in Thanagar with a whole load of interesting effects, among others the ability to bypass magic and force-fields, as well as repulsing gravity. 
• Beast Boy's new red-and-white outfit is based on his outfit for the majority of the early issues of New Teen Titans, in which he briefly adapted the moniker "Changeling" before going back to Beast Boy. 
• The girl that Beast Boy saves is Angel O'Day, which is the main character of DC comics title Angel and the Ape, a title from the 60's featuring a youg girl running a detective agency with her ape partner. As a bonus nod, Beast Boy transforms into a gorilla to help her out. 
• Donna Troy's current moniker is confirmed to be Troia, her most well-known superhero name after she stopped being Wonder Girl.