Young Justice: Outsiders S03E18 Review: Rutabaga

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 18: Early Warning

This episode was pretty neat, although any cartoon that randomly ends up throwing some hideous horrifying flesh-blob abomination at the heroes is definitely going to get this reaction out of me. For the life of me, of course, I can't understand what the shit Klarion was trying to accomplish with "Project: Rutabaga", where he fuses a bunch of metahumans into a gigantic multi-eyed flesh abomination. All of the Light and Apokolips' plans so far have seemed interconnected, whether it be to make an army of superhumans, connecting Goode VR to hunting down kids with the metagene, or using them in underground gladiatorial rings, or using them as undetectable shock-troopers in intergalactic politics... but I guess Klarion's just nuts.

Either way, as shown with a younger news reporter (Stargirl!) to contrast G. Gordon Godfrey's presence earlier in the show, we get to learn that the Outsiders are becoming increasingly more popular, and, again, I am definitely quite pleasantly surprised that we've basically changed the focus from Nightwing's original "Outsiders" team to a different one. And... and again, this episode still does kind of suffer from the same problem that "First Impression" has where a lot of the characters are still just kind of generic heroes. Even with the show taking out Bart and Jaime out because they are attending Joan Garrick's funeral (noooooooo), the reduced cast members honestly still doesn't allow a whole lot of character showcase for everyone that's not Garfield Logan. Wonder Girl's genuinely just there, Geo-Force is mostly off-screen doing crowd control throughout the fight, and while Static does get a couple of fun lines, he's also just kinda there. Hell, I honestly think returning guest star Zatanna ended up getting far, far more impact in the couple of lines she mutters about her continuing frustration with the whole Dr. Fate/Nabu/Zatara situation. 

Outside of this complaint, though, the Outsiders side of this episode flows on pretty well. Klarion's shtick of being a whiny little lunatic that argues with himself (okay, with his far saner cat) runs thin after a while, although he does end up being a pretty effective antagonist, particularly the very casually maniacal way that he burns marks into his metahuman prisoners and treats it all like a toy. It's the first time Klarion has honestly been in the spotlight for this long, and... and I dunno. I'm not the biggest fan, but I wouldn't say that I dislike him either. Maybe I'm just hungry to actually see more members of the Light's inner council have a more active role?

We get a couple of fun politics that the Justice League can't be seen fighting for fear of causing an international incident, while the Outsiders, being a huge, more public team of youngsters saving other youngsters, can. Basically, this means that Geo-Force shuts off the Cuban police with his lava powers, Zatanna has to use a magical spell to make her invisible, while the Outsiders do battle against Klarion and Project Rutabaga. It's an all right action scene, and we get another nod to the fact that Klarion's cat familiar tethers him to the mortal plane. Eventually, though, it's Zatanna that ends up banishing Klarion and Teekl away to Nabu's Tower of Fate (which could either be a gag or lead to some kind of consequence in the future), while the Outsiders end up playing the PR squad. It is admittedly very fortunate and lucky that one of the police officers' child is among the kidnapped metahumans, immediately gaining the Outsiders an ally, but eh. It's pretty neat inspirational stuff as the other metahumans rally behind the Outsiders, and they end up transferring the metahumans to Taos to get some help. And, well, Dolphin gets to go to Atlantis, I guess. Also, Ed Dorado joins the Outsiders, in order to give his charges in Taos "one of us" to look up to... which is cool and all, but I kinda hope that Ed gets to be more memorable than Static and Wonder Girl, y'know?

Ultimately, this all feels honestly a bit samey with the "First Impression" Outsiders debut mission. And I get that not every single episode can be some sort of huge, ground-breaking event, particularly since we're still establishing the dynamics of this brand-new team... but I dunno, I kinda wished that there was more excitement or something to this, y'know? Klarion ultimately ends up just as a very simple antagonist doing a pretty straightforward evil plan, and we get another generic "we are just good people doing good things, viva la modern media!"

Oh, and we get a bit of Terra's backstory as a C-plot, in a scene where she's training with Artemis and she ends up flashing back to her more brutal training with Deathstroke and nearly snaps... but manages to rein herself in and just pass it off as part of her 'trauma' while being used as a child soldier.

And the B-plot here is... well, it's Violet's story, and if the Wiki article is anything to go by, this was one episode that ended up blowing up and being pretty dang controversial, and it has to do with Violet's portrayal. To make things go quickly, she basically learns that she's dying because her cells aren't regenerating properly (makes all the times she gets stabbed brutally a more cringe-y, yeah?) and due to this she spends her day at school in a daze, ending up going off with Harper "Bluebird" Row, goes off to drink alcohol (with a very prominent "I am not a Muslim" line) and play with guns, and eventually engage in some lesbian kissing with Harper despite the two of them having boyfriends. And then they get arrested, and M'gann has to bail them out.

And honestly? I absolutely understand both sides of the argument. I get that Violet getting distressed and going through some drastic choices after being told she doesn't have long to live makes sense, but the way that the episode presents it is definitely... something that people could take offense to. Considering that Violet is Young Justice's only openly-Muslim character, as well as this being the first on-screen depiction of LGBT romance, the fact that she ends up declaring that she's not Muslim and that her kiss with Harper was done with her both being clearly distressed and less-than-cognizant... yeah. On paper, I can get that Violet's unique status as a person who's both technically a newborn and also dealing with baggage from a previous identity is something that will lead into a lot of identity exploration, but the fact that we get so many other labels slapped onto her could definitely end up with some unfortunate and offensive implications. I'm not going to comment too much about it, because maybe the next couple of episodes might give us something more out of it... but yeah, it's pretty unfortunate that this episode ended up blowing up so much, and I do wish that Violet's scenes in this episode had been handled with better tact.

Overall, though, the rather unfortunate choices and scenes does end up causing this episode to be a bit more of a downer for those that feel offended about it. It's otherwise kind of a middling episode that feels more like it's meant to be an in-between episode, though, showing a bit more of the same, and a bit more extra development on some aspects of the greater plot.

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Beast Boy, Geo-Force, Blue Beetle, Kid Flash II, Wonder Girl, Static, Forager, Halo, Zatanna, Aquaman II, Miss Martian, Tigress, El Dorado
• Villains: Klarion the Witch Boy, Teekl, "Project Rutabaga", Deathstroke (flashback)
• Civilians/Others: Courtney Whitmore, Dr. Helga Jace, Terra, Dolphin, Colonel Ramon Bracuda, Luis Garcia, The Six Rutabaga Metahumans, Harper Row, Officer Bethany Lee, Windfall, Eduardo Dorado Sr

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• I don't think any of the actual metahumans that's part of Project Rutabaga (other than Dolphin, of coures) actually got named, credited or identified as anyone important from DC comics. Luis Garcia certainly doesn't correspond to any known DC comics characters.
• Dolphin in the comics is a young girl who fell off a cruise ship who was abducted by a mysterious alien race who performed experiments on her, transforming her into what's essentially a fish-girl. Unable to speak, reduced to a feral state and only being able to breathe underwater, Dolphin was abandoned by her alien abductors, and ended up eventually coming into contact with humans, becoming a superhero... and eventually Aquaman, becoming an ally of Aquaman and Atlantis. She would eventually marry Garth, the first Aqualad and later the hero Tempest. 
• Klarion is finally referred to in dialogue as "Witch Boy". His comic-book counterpart's full title is Klarion the Witch Boy. 
• Courtney Whitmore makes her first on-screen appearance, and she calls herself by the moniker "Stargirl". We've covered her before, but in the comics, she's traditionally a superheroine associated with the Justice Society of America. 
• The police officer that arrests Violet and Harper is Bethany Lee, the ex-wife of Snapper Carr in the comics. M'gann and Bethany's conversation allude to a similar relationship happening in the past of this show's history. 
• The Cuban colonel is Ramon Bracuda, who in the comics is a minor Cuban drug lord that faced off against Catwoman. While still antagonistic, he's significantly less evil in this incarnation. 
• Terra nearly snapping and revealing her true nature after being beaten during combat training is the first sign that she's actually not what she seems in the original run of New Teen Titans, where the target of her frustration was Beast Boy, who was goofing off.
• Project Rutabaga was actually name-dropped by members of the Light in "Evolution", the seventh episode of this season. Rutabaga itself is sort of a small in-joke based on a background line during the farm-infiltration episode in season 2. 
• The "K" brand that Klarion brands into the heads of his captive metahumans was seen on one of the prisoners in Granny Goodness' satellite in "Influence". 
• Not a DC comic book superhero, but Static chuckles at the idea of Beast Boy turning into a "Green Hornet", based on the '30s radio drama.