Young Justice: Outsiders S03E19 Review: Publicity Stunt

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 19: Elder Wisdom

Another episode that centers around the Outsiders, we've had a couple of episodes where everything seems to go very well for Beast Boy's #Trending #ForTheYouth #WeAreAllOutsiders group... so it's about time that some adversity was thrown their way. And as a team that is meant to operate in the global spotlight, it's pretty obvious that this was going to happen some time or later. Hell, even random movie stars or Twitch video game streamers come under fire after every single thing they do, of course a bunch of young superheroes running around in public's going to come under the same criticism.

And a lot of this episode's theme is basically an exercise in both the Light and the Batman-Illuminati both making up their own situations and 'fake news', so to speak, in order to have our young, clueless heroes react and do things to advance their own respective agendas. It's honestly pretty damn believable, and considering the sheer amount of sway that huge media headlines like this would have in the world, one that feels far, far more organic and believable compared to the more stilted "First Impression" a couple of episodes back. The first act of the episode involves the Outsiders being made to look bad after a Light-sponsored attack on a U.N. climate conference, looking reckless and seemingly endangering young children. The second act of the episode, meanwhile, was a highly successful rescue mission that ended up making the Outsiders look good, particularly with some information manipulation among the Light's own internal sources... but it turns out that this mission was secretly staged by Batman's Illuminati, and I absolutely love how the episode ends with Wonder Woman calling out the rest of the Illuminati (or Anti-Light, or whatever you want to call this group) on how irresponsible this is, and how, just like every god-damned secret in Young Justice, it's just something that threatens to tear everyone apart once it gets out.

The first act is pretty awesome stuff, with the DC geek in me really loving the small roles that the JLA-allied ambassadors like Garth and Donna Troy are doing. They're in Bwunda, yet another one of DC's exhaustive list of random fictional countries, and they are attacked by a group of masked assassins calling themselves the Bwundan Independence Front, who are armed with metahuman powers and equipment, proving themselves able to blindside and take out Donna and Garth. The Outsiders were already watching the conference, hidden in the shadows, but the assassins were ready for them.

And, of course, this just seems like another filler episode. A bunch of rebel-terrorists being angry at the U.N. and Lex Luthor for legitimizing General Mbarra. And while the Outsiders do battle against the assassins, we get scenes of Lex Luthor asking Mbarra permission to 'make a call'. And while the Outsiders protected the civilians for sure, it's yet another showcase of Halo taking a mortal wound (via throat slash this time), and, more importantly, seen by the public is Kid Flash being thrown across a courtyard by an explosive dart. Bart's okay and honestly unharmed, but it ends up being something that the media ended up spinning as the Outsiders being irresponsible... something that probably doesn't help that Kid Flash's hero moniker has the name 'Kid' plastered on it.

Not helping matters is the actual Flash showing up to rescue G. Gordon Godfrey and zip around and round up the B.I.F. assassins, while the Outsiders were somewhat struggling to contain the situation. There was no doubt that the assassins would've done a whole lot of damage if they had succeeded in time, of course, but Luthor and Godfrey ends up spinning this as the Outsiders charging in without any responsibility, being all gung-ho and uncoordinated and disrespectful of international borders... unlike the Flash, who was legitimately called in by the Bwundan government in a system that works. It's an amazing showcase of Luthor's sliminess as a politician, willing to basically pretend to be buddy-buddy with one group of superheroes to defame another... and poor Flash ends up being kinda forced to go along with it lest both superhero teams get some poor press in public.

(The Outsiders also liberate one of the captured metahumans, which comic book fans would know as Looker's civilian identity, but she sort of disappears into the background after this).

We later get the revelation that, of course, Luthor and the Light planned the whole thing. The assassin leaders were Cassandra Savage and Lady Shiva, and their plan was to discredit the Outsiders. And, hey, if Garth or Troia bit the dust in their assault, that's some neat bonus. I also do love the little running theme of "knowing and proving are two different things". It doesn't take an idiot to figure out that the Light's behind this clear set-up, and Lia Briggs even confirms as such, but the lack of any hard evidence means that any attempt by the Outsiders to defend themselves is going to bite themselves in the ass.


More importantly, this goes against the whole mission intent of basically making metahumans look good to the kids or to rescue the kids captured by the meta-human trafficking ring. The Outsiders were basically doing what the Team would've done in covert missions, and with all of Godfrey's press leaking this out, it ends up causing a bunch of the parents and guardian figures -- Eduardo Dorado Senior, Helena Sandsmark and Jay Garrick -- to show up and basically bench their children. And the arguments are pretty damn well-done. In addition to basically painting huge targets on their backs, they're not setting a particularly good example for the other metahuman children.

The Dorados have always had a bit of a conflict ever since their introduction in season two, and being the pair we get to see together the most, their conflict is easily the most organic of the three. Bart and Jay have had some interactions, but with Jay being mostly a background character, it's a bit hard to get super-invested if you're not already familiar with the comic-book counterparts. Jay at least has had a bit of a focus in the past couple of episodes, with his wife Joan's death being kind of a background plot and one that is probably influencing Jay's judgment a lot. And that's not counting Wally's death at the end of the second season! Helena and Cassie... I mean, it's a neat adaptation of the comics, but poor Wonder Girl's one of the least developed recurring characters. This adds something, at least.

Also a bit of a confrontation is Halo, who is out of all sorts throughout the entire episode. M'gann calls her behaviour out, but she's clearly not in a talking mood. Dr. Helga Jace continues to talk to Halo privately, and keeps mentioning a mysterious 'mentor' (almost 100% positively a Light member; the question is how much in the loop is dr. Jace) trying to develop some sort of a clue, while Halo continues to basically have a relationship spat with Brion. I'm honestly not the most invested with this, but the writing of the relationship is believable -- from Violet using the excuse of kissing Harper as the reason she's distant, and Brion immediately assuming that she's unsure how to apologize.

The rest of the Outsiders end up seeing a help from a "little match girl" online who are attacked by the Monkey robots belonging to Professor Ivo, although Beast Boy only ends up leaving with half of his team due to the aforementioned parent/children conflict. Of course, people that's more attuned to DC lore will realize something's not quite right when they see that the parent looking for his missing daughter is named "Malone" and is working out of a Match store, but otherwise, it does seem like yet another convenient mission for the Outsiders.

This whole sequence basically ends together with a pretty neat montage of the plot threads being resolved with a neat speech from various characters. Violet ends up telling about Gabrielle Daou accepting a bribe that led to the Markovian royal family's deaths to Brion and Tara. Bart, Cassie and Ed manage to talk down their parents, making them realize that as afraid as they all are, the kids outside who are being held prisoner against their will need this inspiration a lot more than them. Team Beast Boy ends up beating Ivo and rescuing the little girl.

And then we smash-cut to the Gordon show, where he's talking to Lex Luthor who condemns the destructive explosiveness of the Outsiders' battle, which blew up the factory they were in after rescuing the little girl. But thanks to a bit of a late intel from Terra, Luthor ends up talking about how he's totally sure the Outsiders' parents are not on-board with their antics... only for Godfrey to frown and then show off how wrong Lex Luthor is, since all of the Outsiders parents are posting NotTwitter posts of their support. Again, this plays into Godfrey's role as an 'honest' news pundit, similar to how he is all-too-willing to call out the Reach at the tail-end of season two when their claims start to prove insubstantial. Apparently, despite being far more tied to the Light's operatives (what with him being an Apokoliptan and all), Godfrey's not going to make himself or his show look stupid. It's a genuinely unexpected moment, and throws another little wrench into the thick of things since the audience knows that Godfrey is technically allied with Luthor.

Of course, we get to see the immediate aftermath of this. As humiliated as Luthor was on live television, Godfrey ends up telling Luthor in backstage that he's allowed a personal vendetta to cloud his judgment, and going down this rabbit hole without this necessary sacrifice would've made them both look bad... and Godfrey tells Luthor to play the Outsider's game. Don't attack them, embrace them.

And then we learn of the true depths of the good guys' conspiracy, as the "Anti-Light" shows up in the Batcave in a meeting. And this is far, far more drastic than Kaldur'ahm throwing a fight to make the Outsiders look good against Reach ship. This time, Batman and M'gann genuinely cooked up a false crisis with reprogrammed robots (and plausible deniability) in order to give the Outsiders a solid win, while also blowing up Luthor's Spider-robot factory in the process. Batman echoes Luthor's "knowning and proving are two different things" ethos, but, of course, despite the conclusion, it's not something that everyone is on board with. Wonder Woman calls them out on their deception, not just to their allies but to the public as well, and, again... no one has a good answer. This is faking Artemis's death all over again, but on a far larger scale.

Ultimately... when viewing this from a review standpoint, there are a bunch of things that really end up standing out as being a bit more oddly-plotted. How was Luthor going to be so sure that the Outsiders would look bad as opposed to heroic in Bwunda? How fortunate was the discredit-Luthor-publicly operation was, since a huge chunk of it hinged on Terra's intel report being given too early? After all, that was the thing that made Godfrey go "no, wait", and... and they surely couldn't have coordinated the reconciliation between the parent-child pairs, right? And do they even know about Terra? Plus, I'm still not entirely sure what made the Dublin mission particularly look good for the Outsiders. And I'm still very much not invested in the Violet/Brion relationship drama, although to be fair... messy relationships have never been my cup of tea as far as fiction goes, so that might just be me.

Still, ultimately, other than these few flaws, there's a lot to love about this. The argument between the parents and the children are a bit cheesy and obvious, but ultimately well-written. The action scenes in Bwunda are pretty fantastic, for what little we get of it. The large amount of news manipulation (as much as some of it doesn't 100% make sense once we get the full story) ends up being a very, very solid topic. G. Gordon Godfrey and Lex Luthor are also very, very compelling antagonists and are written particularly well. Ultimately, though, while the episode does definitely have a couple of logic flaws, it's still a very solid one that ends up delivering on a couple of neat topics. 

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Tempest, Troia, Wonder Woman, Halo, Beast Boy, Kid Flash II, Wonder Girl, El Dorado, Miss Martian, The Flash (Barry Allen), Bio-Ship, Blue Beetle, Static, Geo-Force, The Flash (Jay Garrick), Wonder Woman, Aquaman II, Robin, Batman, Oracle, Nightwing
• Villains: Lex Luthor, G. Gordon Godfrey, Bwundan Independence Front, Lady Shiva, Cassandra Savage, MONQI, Professor Ivo
• Civilians/Others: General Simon M'Barra, Zviad Baazovi, Terra, Lia Briggs, Eduardo Dorado Sr, dr. Helga Jace, Harper Row (flashback), Helena Sandsmark, Windfall, Gaby Gabrielli

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The fictional country of Bwunda, led by General Mbarra, is one of the DC universe's many original countries modeled after real-life countries. Bwunda, in this case, is modeled after the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It first appeared in the Birds of Prey series.  
• The member of the assassination team that was rehabilitated by the Young Justice team is Lia Briggs, better known to comic-book readers as Looker, one of the original members of the first Outsiders team, and the only one missing from the show in any shape of form. Looker in the comics had psychic powers, gaining powers due to being abducted by an underground society known as Abyssia. She often butted heads with Katana, due to their very different world-views as well as regarding how they should educate their younger charge Halo. Looker was eventually transformed into a vampire when battling a coven of vampires that attacked Markovia. 
• Helena Sandsmark, Cassie Sandsmark's mother, makes her first appearance here. In the comics, Helena is very, very concerned about the dangers her daughter puts herself in thanks to her superheroing, but ended up later on revealing that she knew a lot more about Cassie's unique parentage, and the fact that Cassie's biological father was actually Zeus himself. 
• Eduardo Dorado finally gets called by his comic-book (or, well, Super-Friends cartoon) inspiration's cryptonym, El Dorado.
• Wonder Woman and Donna Troy's mother, Queen Hippolyta, is briefly mentioned and alluded to during the conversation between the two sisters. 
• "Matches" Malone is a pseudonym that Bruce Wayne likes to adopt in the comics, an underground mob informat with a distinctive mustache and a match between his lips. The original "Matches" was a small-time mobster who was killed due to a gun misfire during a confrontation with Batman when he was first investigating Ra's al Ghul. Taking advantage of Matches's uncanny similarity to Bruce Wayne's facial structures, as well as trying to help Matches avenge the death of his brother, Bruce Wayne ended up adopting Matches Malone as an alter-ego. In Young Justice, Bruce's alter-ego, not being a mobster, is Matthew Malone, but he works in a Match Electronics store, and M'gann's not-Twitter handle is LittleMatchGirl.
• In Godfrey's show, Luthor remarks about a blacklist in the '50's that Jay Garrick ends up responding to on social media. In the comics, a committee that demands transparency from the Golden Age superheroes in the '50's, the Joint Congressional Un-American Activity Committee, ended up causing the original Justice Society of America to disband in protest.