Young Justice: Outsiders S03E24 Review: Booyah

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 24: Into the Breach

Well, okay, so the Apokolips stuff, or at least Granny Goodness and his space satellite, is just... it's just over in this episode. And it's at least a lot more epic than the lukewarm "Terminus", yeah? And the episode more or less plays out like how you expect it to, with the Earth-bound team of Beast Boy's Outsiders to deal with things on Earth. And, hey, Beast Boy does have a pretty strong antagonistic relationship with Gretchen Goode,  Ultimately, though, it sort of all comes down to Cyborg and his exploration of his new superpowers, which is kinda Mary-Sue-y but at the same time Cyborg has been pretty foreshadowed throughout the season as slowly growing into a main character. I just kinda wish that, again, the pacing has been done a lot better.

The Outsiders end up fighting against Gretchen, Overlord and the X-Pit, which mostly amounts to most of the team being disabled by the X-Pit while Cyborg and Overlord tangle in some Matrix-ReBoot style dimension, while Gretchen Goode torments Beast Boy in the force-field cube, showing that apparently good ol' grandma can actually toss around gorillas and ma'alefa'ak's. The Cyborg sequence is actually pretty good -- Overlord is mute and is less of a character and more of an obstacle, but Victor looking at his 'avatar', which is fully human, and then embracing who he is -- a Cyborg -- is pretty damn great. It's just kind of a shame that this lesson of self-acceptance ends up coming off the heels of some superpower shilling of just how-awesome-Cyborg's-new-powers-are, which felt like it was throwing it on a bit too thick.

The fight between Beast Boy and Gretchen is perhaps a bit more brutal than I was expecting, but it was pretty well-animated and well-scripted... shame that there's... there's not a whole ton of thematic significance going on here beyond Beast Boy just being generically defiant against Gretchen. Once Cyborg wins against Overlord, the rest of the Outsiders is freed. The rest of the B-team try their best to contribute something (poor El Dorado's huge scene is basically his teleportation powers being useless) and help to subdue Gretchen and blow up her machine, but Gretchen teleports away, while Cyborg alone follows.

And this leads to Gretchen returning back to the Orphanage, with the completely-bizarre-why-did-we-need-this-twist of Gretchen and Granny Goodness apparently... uh... they fuse together? I genuinely don't get what use this whole storyline is all about. I don't think any of the superheroes in-universe ever believed that Gretchen Goode was not evil, it's the matter of actually proving that the old granny is evil, isn't it? I dunno. It feels like a completely unnecessary storyline, and the whole "two Grannies merge into one" scene feels like it's just there to give instant evidence for Cyborg proving Gretchen Goode's evilness in the epilogue.

Cyborg then basically frees Halo from the mind-control rig, allowing Halo to Plot Device MacGuffin the Anti-Life Equation away. The combined strengths of all the superheroes present blow up Granny's satellite machine, blows up Overlord, Halo threatens Granny with repercussions, and Granny ends up buggering off with her own Mother Box. And... and that's about it. As I mention before, it's just a matter of whose plot device is bigger, and I genuinely feel like there's a significant lack of tension over the events that's going on. It's not like the first season's climax where you're wondering who the traitor is, and why he became traitor. Or the second season, where Jaime and the Scarab's relationship was key on how they were going to react. Sure, Cyborg finally accepting himself and having enough confidence to do something superheroic is neat, as is Halo unleashing her rainbow stuff, but they both feel pretty tame and just like the show's going through the motions.

And I guess that's it for the Granny Goodness storyline? So I suppose that the final two episodes are just either going to be wrap-up plus foreshadowing for the fourth season? After a couple of shippy moments, we get a bit of an epilogue.The kidnapped metahumans are returned to Earth. The Furies and Mantis (who didn't even do anything) are captured by the JLA. Cyborg has evidence to bring down Granny Goodness, then adopts a codename and joins the Outsiders. Granny informs Darkseid of her failure, and about how it was Vandal Savage who sabotaged their plans, so at least we're maybe not done with the glacial Apokolips plotline?

We get a potential storyline for poor, ignored Forager -- with Mantis being among the supervillains captured by the Justice League, is he going to return to New Genesis? Also, going on throughout this episode is the slow revelation that Lex Luthor is the one sponsoring the Infinity Inc. team, which has been foreshadowed in the background of the past couple of episodes as the cast is far more preoccupied with catastrophic stuff. I guess this was what Luthor ended up taking from his conversation with Godfrey about "joining them"? I must confess that the idea of some publicity war between two teams of young superheroes in media don't really feel exciting.

Ultimately, it's... it's all right. There isn't enough things that went on that I would call this episode bad. But man, this Granny's Orphanage two-parter ended up really sort of just playing out as "well, we kinda need a big epic climax", and the events that happen feel like they just happened for the sake of happening. We still have two more episodes left for the season, and I wonder just what material we'll cover within those two. 

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Beast Boy, Bio-Ship, Cyborg, Wonder Girl, El Dorado, Kid Flash II, Blue Beetle, Halo, Elongated Man, Superman, Geo-Force, Icon, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Captain Atom, Forager, Green Lantern (John Stewart), Green Lantern (Guy Gardner), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Nightwing, Aquaman II, Miss Martian, Superboy, Tigress
• Villains: Gretchen Goode/Granny Goodness, Overlord, Lex Luthor, Killer Frost, Lashina, Gilotina, Mantis, Darkseid, Mercy Graves, Lobo (post-credits)
• Civilians/Others: Trajectory, Other Infinity Inc. Members, Terra
• Various other characters appear in flashbacks. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• "Booyah", of course, is Cyborg's catchphrase, popularized by the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon. 
• As mentioned before, the second incarnation of the comic-books' Infinity Incorporated was a publicity stunt play sponsored by Lex Luthor. 
• The credits scene hover over Lobo's severed finger transforming into what appears to be a mutated baby. Are we getting a Slobo out of that? Is that the whole foreshadowing going on there? That we're getting Slobo, one of the original members of the comics' original Young Justice team?