Young Justice: Outsiders S03E16 Review: Publicity Stunt

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 16: Illusion of Control

I do realize that I'm actually pretty slow with my reviews for Young Justice's third season, but... y'know. I'll get to the episodes when I actually watch them, yeah?

Definitely a fun episode, and one that is sort of a payoff to storylines that we've sort of covered throughout this half-season -- the metahuman rehab center as well as Beast Boy's increasing amount of scenes with frowny-faces as he tries to figure out how to be a hero with a public face.

And the actual episode itself is... it's basically a simple outing, perhaps the closest that this half-season has came to a proper self-contained villain of the week episode. We get a neat set-up where we welcome a bunch of older characters like Kid Flash and Blue Beetle (after their starring role in the previous season, they were near-missing in this one), as well as finally listen to Traci 13 actually have some voice lines. Also, Static's around, and he needs to get a girlfriend, according to the recurring joke in this episode... because every single teammate and even the villains act lovey-dovey. Poor Virgil!

Both the Young Justice Team and El Dorado's Taos staff decide to throw a little party at a carnival/amusement park in order to give the kids a chance to take a break and hang out, we get to see Beast Boy hang out with Queen Perdita and we get a lot of fun, fluff scenes of them just sort of... hanging out, y'know? We get to see even Livewire and Mist play bumper cars, and we get to see Ed Dorado sort of trying to figure out how to properly talk to Wendy, leading to Perdita having a pretty neat little girl-talk with her.... which, again, in turn leads to Garfield basically trying to figure out how the best way to help out really is -- the Justice League is too restricted, and the YJ Team's a covert ops agent.

Of course, it's a superhero episode and we need some action, so Count Vertigo shows up and kidnaps Perdita, using his vertigo powers to send everyone reeling and retching. Again, we get a couple of neat little action scenes as everyone gives chase to Vertigo and his helicopter, and I absolutely love just how the Scarab interacts with Blue Beetle. It may be a force for good now but it's still borderline psychotic, which is hilarious. The visuals are not 100% clear about Traci 13's powers, which just seems to be generic magic. Kinda wished we had a line of dialogue or two clarifying her powers for those that aren't huge DC geeks like me, y'know?

Eventually, thanks to the Scarab and Blue Beetle's disagreements about the height that they're flying in, as well as some bizarre stretchy walls, they figure out that something's going on. It seems like illusions, but Count Vertigo's powers doesn't include illusions... and after some neat display of Beast Boy's bear form, they figure out that everything from Count Vertigo's presence to the vertigo powers are caused by Psimon and Devastation. I absolutely love, by the way, how the two of them are apparently just this lovey-dovey couple now. The good guys win against the brains-and-brawn couple, but they figure out that Psimon and Devastation are just a distraction...

And the rest of the Fearsome Five the Onslaught are at the amusement park, using sleeping gas to knock out the civilian meta-humans and about to re-acquire their merchandise. Again, we get some neat showcase of superpowers from the Young Justice squad as they fight against a bunch of super-powered villains... and, again, I do like that whether it was Vertigo or Psimon, both of them are recurring villains that would honestly make sense to show up at this point in the season as a minor threat. Not much to say here, the action scenes are animated well and I'm a huge fan. Eventually, this leads to Beast Boy noting that he's done hiding and covering up crimes, and we end up with a scene where Beast Boy basically shows up in front of the crowd and gives a long speech about he and the rest of the YJ team were there to help out, with both Blue Beetle and Kid Flash also being shown in the spotlight. It's not much, but it's definitely something that the show's going to build up in subsequent episodes.

As a B-plot... Forager basically keeps trying to get Cyborg to come and eat Thanksgiving dinner with the rest of their 'hive'. Not a whole ton to say here... Cyborg's still full of self-loathing and refuses to go in despite Forager's adorable caterpillar/butterfly metaphor. Meanwhile, dinner at the Harpers ends up becoming sour when Helga accidentally lets slip in front of Paula Crock, Artemis's mother, about how Artemis is doing a great job as a mentor for these kids, and Paula just basically freaks the shit out -- she wants her daughter to have a stable life, especially after all that Artemis has lost with Wally. Paula points at her and Barbara Gordon's crippling injuries, and rants about how Artemis' life would've been so much better if she settled down with a proper job, a degree, maybe with Will, and as Lian's mother... and we get some amazing voice acting from Paula's VA, Kelly Hu. She genuinely sounds like a truly traumatized parent.

Speaking of trauma, Artemis's choice of words in giving a 'bribe' to their adorable woofer Brucely ends up triggering poor Violet, who runs out of the house screaming about how the dog should not be accepting bribes... and, of course, it's dr. Helga that consoles her. Between her earlier research with the hair (which I'm 90% sure is from Violet, but I'm not sure) and being such a supportive character that she ends up getting Violet to open up that her past persona of Gabrielle Daou was the one responsible for letting in the assassins that killed the Markovian royal family, Helga has a lot of shady things going on, particularly when she calls some unknown person about assistance. Again, while the audience understands that "Violet" and "Gabrielle" are two completely different people, it's an interesting secret to keep from Brion (it involves his parent's death!), and I'm curious to see how the show's going to handle it. The show's leaning pretty heavily on making Helga Jace suspicious, so I'm curious if that, too, is also a misdirection.

Overall, a lot lighter-hearted than the previous episode, and mostly feels like a breather one. Not that it's a bad thing, though -- a lot of interesting developments, and while the media perception of superheroes is sort of a trope that I personally am a bit tired of, I'm curious to see how this goes -- especially with the great work they've done with Beast Boy in this season.

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Kid Flash II, Neutron, Blue Beetle, Traci Thirteen, Static, El Dorado, Forager, Miss Martian, Superboy, Cyborg, Bio-Ship, Halo, Tigress, Red Arrow, Geo-Force, Beast Boy, Guardian II, Bumblebee
• Villains: Count Vertigo (illusion), Psimon, Devastation, Terror Twins, Icicle Jr, Holocaust
• Civilians/Others: Lian Harper, Paula Crock, Terra, Dr. Helga Jace, Queen Perdita, Livewire, Mist, Windfall, Celia Windward, Eduardo Dorado Sr

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Celia Windward is better known as Jet to comic-book readers, a character introduced in the pages of the Millennium event, where the Green Lanterns' bosses, the Guardians, attempted to create a race of New Guardians. Celia/Jet was one of the characters that the Guardians endowed with powers, specifically electromagnetic energies. Perhaps controversially, Jet is also a character that died due to contracting AIDS when fighting a blood-themed villain, something that is apparently ignored by subsequent comics who featured her as a recurring Green Lantern supporting character. 
• Psimon-as-Vertigo repeats Count Vertigo's catchphrase from previous seasons (and one that the fandom latched on to), "That's Count Vertigo to you, peasant".