Young Justice: Outsiders S03E26 Review: Geo-Force and the Outsiders

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 26: Nevermore

Clocking in at a slightly longer runtime than its predecessors, "Nevermore" is the final episode for the third season... and, yeah, season 3 of Young Justice has been one that's pretty polarizing. There's the highly controversial depiction of Halo around halfway through the season, which is not something I'm going to bring up too much, but even so season 3 of Young Justice has had huge pacing problems where they know exactly which characters and storylines they want to focus on... but didn't have the best time showcasing them. A lot of the B-plots (like Superboy and the Genomorphs) were brought up with minimal foreshadowing, some of them (like Bumblebee's metagene alteration drama, the News-girl Legion, Barda) were a one-episode deal and relatively forgotten, and some were even resolved offscreen (Batman Incorporated, Mantis, Ma'ale'fa'ak). Again, I don't want to be that guy that goes back and points at the first season and go "it was better"... but it kinda is. Throw in my constant complaints of the show having too many characters and doing nothing with them (Kaldur'ahm, Static, Kid Flash II and Wonder Girl probably got hit with this the most for showing up a lot but never doing much), or characters like Cyborg and Halo reduced to being plot devices first and actual characters second... yeah.

Still, I do actually agree with the decision that the final conflict of the season ended up going back to the conflict that started the season, and the main characters that the season focused on. With the buildup done in episode 25, we get the Team and the Outsiders basically deciding to take the fight to Markovia. And with Luthor and the UN grounding the Justice League, we get this montage of everyone around the world, from the superheroes up in the JLA's satellite, Batman Incorporated in the Batcave, or the metahuman refugees in Taos all looking to see just how the Outsiders will resolve this. The actual action sequence is another symptom of the 'too many characters, hard to juggle' problem, where we get a roll call of 'this team will do this and that team will do that', but we don't even get to see half of the characters. It's the same problem that season two had, where we barely get to see the team-ups of the superheroes going around disabling the Reach bombs after a huge roll call.

Meanwhile, while all of these little glimpses of the Outsiders' operation are shown, we cut back and forth to Black Lightning demanding Oracle to tell him about the details of the operation and what she isn't telling him. The Light also has a vested interest, wanting to use the Outsiders' failure to disallow them and essentially implement a superhero registration program, starting with the Luthor-allied Infinity Incorporated... and this plan is going to succeed by having their double-agent Terra kill Beast Boy on live television. Which... okay? Terra killing Beast Boy sure is shocking and evil, but I'm not sure how that's going to specifically progress Luthor's plans.

Essentially, the couple of brief action scenes we show boil down to just getting the pieces into play as Geo-Force and Baron Bedlam engage each other once more, while Vertigo manages to slow down the rest of the superheroes for about as long enough as the plot needs, while the rest of the characters go to arrest Dr. Double-X and whatnot.

And, of course, things end up going back to the standard superhero emotional drama of "should I kill the bad guy?" This is the second time that Geo-Force and Baron Bedlam have fought each other with their destructive earth-manipulation powers, and Beast Boy manages to talk Geo-Force down because "that's not what the Outsiders stand for". There's also the matter of Terra being instructed by Deathstroke to murder Beast Boy right then and there to... uh... allow Geo-Force to bring stability to Markovia or something? And Terra's about to attack Beast Boy... until Artemis shows up and reveals that apparently she knew all along that Terra was receiving instructions from Deathstroke and she didn't have to do what he tells her.

Which... came out of nowhere? Of course, it makes sense that the superheroes would run a background check. Likewise, it also makes sense (if a dick move) that they would keep it a secret from Geo-Force, considering how hot-tempered Brion is. After all, a huge portion of the themes of Young Justice as a whole is 'keeping secrets is sometimes necessary but man it's going to fuck with your friendships'. But the explanation that "Batman read Deathstroke's lips that one time in that one scene", and the fact that no one's ever done anything, not hide information from Terra, or feed information to Terra, or anything of the sort, felt like a complete ass-pull. I genuinely felt like we really could've had given Terra more of a chance to develop, considering how the episode Antisocial Tendencies ended with her going back to Team Deathstroke. I dunno,

And, of course, despite some bit of "haha, we caught Lex Luthor red-handed in cahoots with the Light", the focus of the drama is Geo-Force's literal meltdown in Markovia, going ballistic at the betrayal that the heroes have done to him. Throw in some appropriate whispers from ambassador Baazovi (the Bad Samaritan, later on revealed to be an agent of the Light), the populace of Markovia gathering around them and cheering for Prince Brion, and Baron Bedlam's attempted escape... it's a shitty thing to do, of course, but you really can't blame Geo-Force for snapping. Geo-Force murders Bedlam in a pretty graphic manner, via lava-to-the-throat, and Baazovi declares Geo-Force the king of Markovia, with Brion believing that he's the strong ruler that Markovia needs as opposed to his weaker brother. Neither Terra nor Halo wants this sort of behaviour from Brion, though, and the Outsiders leave Markovia and Geo-Force alone.

While I might not agree with the foreshadowing prior to the whole Brion/Tara debacle, I do agree that this has been a pretty great and satisfying event to shake up the status quo both emotionally and in a more general sense. It's not the most elegant end to the season, but at least it ends in something resembling a neat conclusion.

The rest of the episode acts as a bit of an epilogue. We get to see the superheroes sort of sad. Deathstroke is angry at the loss of that specific operation, and Luthor's insistence that everything is all right and something that he can twist to their favour ends up undermined when Black Lightning reveals the investigation that shows Luthor's betrayal of the UN, and Superboy coming clean about his origin as a Project Cadmus experiment, which ties into the whole Genomorphs-visibility thing from episode 25. With evidence that he can't handwave with "fake news"*, Luthor ends up being ousted from the UN.

*One thing that always rankled me about this season of Young Justice is the shoehorned attempts to make Luthor sound like Trump, which felt genuinely poorly done and not even a good fit for Luthor's character.

We get some notes of how the League has gotten all the good press, Commissioner Gordon is allowed to bring out the Bat-signal again, Tara's been released to the custody of Gregor Markov and the two of them are affiliated with the outsiders... and, well, Brion now rules as king with Helga Jace and Infinity Incorporated all showing up as his advisors. This is around the point when we learn that Baazovi is actually a member of the Light, and as usual, the Light decides that everything is up to their plan, despite the loss of Luthor's legal issues since they control Markovia via Brion. As far as the Apokolips plotline goes... Vandal and Darkseid apparently smoothed things out? Somehow? Man, for all of the promise that we might learn more about the pretty ambiguous plans of the Light in this season, they're still just kinda there as a weird wild-card with so many plans upon plans, and it's honestly starting to piss me off.

The final big scene of the episode is a huge gathering and another roll-call of the superheroes as Nightwing and Batman and the rest of the Anti-Light made a public apology, and all the superheroes ended up deciding to admit their mistakes, that all of their secret-keeping has been more harmful than anything, and they ended up bringing Black Lightning as the new chairman of the League that's going to keep the League honest. Which... okay, that kinda makes sense. No one's bringing up the whole "not telling anyone that they know Terra's a double agent" thing, though?

Oh, and Megan and Conner are still engaged, so all that nonsense drama in previous episode ended up just being kinda pointless. Windfall ends up accepting her metahuman powers and takes off her collar. Victor shows up at high school again and is buddies with Cisco Ramon. Forager also reveals his true self as a bug alien. There's a foreshadowing of the Legion of Super-Heroes (don't, the show's as crowded as it is already!) and Lobo steps on the brick-joke of recurring post-credits scene of his thumb growing into a second Lobo.

Overall? There are a lot of things I loved about Young Justice: Outsiders. Moreso than its previous seasons, it's not afraid to throw in a lot of random in-jokes or pull on the show's history to bring up characters and events from the past. It's not afraid to quickly rotate through its vast cast of characters both new and old, and it's not afraid to keep some of the storylines (Apokolips and the Light for one) relatively close to the chest to continue with the slow burn of their super-long plan for subsequent seasons. I still think that a lot of the things they do in this season could've been done a lot better, though -- I believe I've made my complaints on those valid enough. But hopefully next season'll be better, and I really, really hope they do a better job at juggling plotlines and characters. 

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Black Lightning, Oracle, Black Canary, Red Tornado, Bio-Ship, El Dorado, Wonder Girl, Miss Martian, Traci Thirteen, Kid Flash II, Blue Beetle, Static, Halo, Tigress, Forager, Nightwing, Superboy, Geo-Force, Beast Boy, Terra, Cyborg, Robin II, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman II, Captain Marvel, Zatanna, Rocket, Spoiler, Arrowette, Orphan, Green Arrow, Superman, Dubbilex, Tempest, Commissioner Gordon, Green Lantern (Guy Gardner), Metamorpho, The Flash II, The Atom, Wyynde
• Villains: Lex Luthor, Dr. Double-X, Deathstroke, Klarion, Ultra-Humanite, Vandal Savage, Queen Bee, Baron Bedlam, Count Vertigo, Dr. Helga Jace (flashback and present), Lady Shiva (flashback), Bad Samaritan, Darkseid, Granny Goodness, Desaad, Lobo
• Civilians/Others: Trajectory, Infinity Inc. Members, Pete Danbury, Gregor Markov, The Genomorphs, Windfall, Ron Evers, Cisco Ramon, Lenore Parris, Snapper Carr, Harper Row, Trajectory, Infinity Inc Members, Amistad Ervin, Lian Harper, Bibbo Bibbowski, Unknown Legion of Super-Heroes Member

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The waitress at Bibbo's Diner, of course, is wearing a Legion of Super-Heroes flight ring. One of DC comics's properties that has popped up here and there outside of the comics, the Legion of Super-Heroes hail from the 31st century and are a group of young superheroes hailing from different planets and races. Depending on the writer or series, they tended to be associated with Superman and his family, and time travel tends to be involved. 
• Zviad Baazovi finally reveals his true colours and his mind-manipulation metahuman powers. In the comics, Zviad Baazovi is the civilian identity of the Bad Samaritan, a Soviet agent who became embroiled in the politics surrounding Markovia when the Outsiders and Baron Bedlam engaged each other in combat, and would be a minor recurring antagonist that keeps showing up in various other countries, trying to manipulate events. He would later be recruited into the government organization Checkmate. 
• Black Adam, last seen in the Injustice League episode, was briefly brought up in this episode. 
• Pete Danbury, the reporter covering the news, was a one-issue news anchor who appeared in exactly one issue in the comics, Action Comics #821, filling in for Jack Ryder. 
• Guy Gardner uses the term 'poozers', an alien cuss-word usually associated with the Green Lantern drill sergeant Kilowog. 
• Lobo's severed finger transforms into a minitaure baby version of him. Lobo has had the ability to regenerate from the smallest wound or drop of blood, although just how awesome this regeneration ability tends to vary depending on the writer and the tone of the book that Lobo's shown up in. In the comics, one such clone, "Slobo", ended up joining the original Young Justice team and the reaction to him was relatively mixed. In any case... seems like we're not going to get Slobo.