"Young Justice" S03E24-26 Review

And so the DC Universe Channel "season" of Young Justice ends. With a bang and a whimper. And if anything, it firmed up my previously stated opinion. That there was a lot going on--the episodes are overstuffed--and while things were more or less wrapped up, there was a lot of stuff that was rushed. Other subplots were brought up and then discarded. And several less-than-convincing proclamations occurred that didn't jibe with what we had seen before.

The final episode decided to cram in more things. We got foreshadowing of the Legion of Super Heroes and possibly Lobo for Season 4. And yes, Young Justice has been renewed.

"Into the Breach" was the resolution of last week's cliffhanger, with Halo as the avatar of Anti-Life mind-controlling the entire galaxy. Yes, my hopes we'd see an episode dedicated to Darkseid's conquest of the galaxy were overly optimistic. But what we got was so far from that I don't know how to take it in. I'll just describe what happens.

The episode focuses on Beast Boy and his team. They track Gretchen to one of her buildings, an abandoned prop and costume storage facility. Gretchen has Overlord drop them into the X Pit and fights Beast Boy, using the power provided to her by Overlord while the other Outsiders (minus Static and Geo Force) moan in pain and El Dorado tries to teleport them out but fails repeatedly.

Vic manages to enter Overlord's cybernetic domain and soon defeats the construct. This depowers Gretchen, letting the Outsiders kick her around a bit. She teleports back to the Orphanage space station with Overlord, where... absolutely nothing has happened. We do find out Gretchen is some kind of clone/projection of Granny Goodness, and the two merge since Overlord is defeated. Vic captures all of this on video.

Remember when Halo projected the Anti-Life across the galaxy last week. That means nothing. Vic knocks Granny's control device off of Halo's head, and they smack Granny some more. Violet "reverses her polarity" (no mention of a neutron flow) and ends Anti-Life. Everyone is free, and the heroes destroy Granny's machine that does who knows what. Granny teleports away, leaving Overlord among the wreckage.

The dismissal of the Anti-Life threat established in the preceding episode is... very abrupt. "Into the Breach" mostly spotlights Vic, who comes into his own by mastering his powers and saying "Boo-yah!" a couple of times. At the end, he takes the name Cyborg and becomes a member of the Outsiders. When he's not a member of the Doom Patrol (on that show) or the Justice League (in the cinematic universe). Vic's a busy guy.

More importantly, the defeat of Darkseid, Granny, and Anti-Life ends one Big Bad prematurely. You thought the Outsiders and the League would have a showdown with the Apokolips forces? Fat chance.

"Overwhelmed" is more of a series of quiet conversations than "Quiet Conversations". The main plot is Artemis having Zatanna send her to Limbo so she can have a conversation with an imaginary Wally West. And... you wonder why Wally is so important to her. Young Justice could really use some Previously Ons. I remember because I've been with Young Justice since the beginning. But for people just tuning in this year after the six-year "hiatus", they must be confused by the emphasis on Wally.

We get hints of a romantic relationship between Artemis and Will Harper. I had pretty much forgotten Artemis is Will's sister-in-law. So they almost kiss and then back off, which brings on Artemis' angst. It doesn't help Wally looks a bit like Will, although maybe that's the point.

"Wally" eventually tells Artemis to open up to people. And I hadn't noticed that she was particularly closed off throughout season 3. That's what I mean about Young Justice being overstuffed. The Artemis/Will/Dead Wally triangle is interesting. But we've only seen brief glimpses of Artemis and Will together. And references to Artemis and Wally being involved before Wally died. Then suddenly we get a third of an episode dedicated to the situation.

Elsewhere, Metron abducts Halo and Cyborg and tells his "grandchildren" he looks forward to watching them evolve. If Darkseid doesn't kill them first. Gaslighting ahoy as Metron talks about the coming galactic conflict.

Conner takes Forager to Geranium City, which is where the genomorphs from waaaayyy back in season 1 are hiding out, using mental illusions to disguise their genomorph appearance as they create their own place to live. We get grief dumped on Conner by the genomorph mayor, Dubbilex, about how Conner is also a genomorph but is hiding his true nature to be an individual, rather than represent to the world and set an example as a "good" genomorph. Again, this is an interesting subplot. But there's been no mention of Conner's outsiderness this season I recall. So it's hard to empathize with whatever emotions Conner feels about himself and his genomorph nature.

Gregor meets with Brion and Tera to talk about bringing them back to Markovia. Which ends with a declaration bad guy Baron Bedlam has staged a military coup (secretly backed by the Light) and has taken control of the country. So we end with Brion and Tara heading back to Markovia to stop their uncle. Keep in mind Tara is also a Light mole.

"Nevermore" kinda features the battle for Markovia, as three squads of Young Justice/Outsiders invade the country. Geo Force and Tera confront Bedlam and beat the crap out of him, and Geo Force executes him. The heroes reveal they knew Tara was a mole for some time but decided to let it play out so she could choose to betray them or not. To no one's surprise, she turns against the Light. Cyborg and Jeff track Deathstroke's radio signal to him and get evidence Lex is a Light member.

Tara and Violet both turn against Geo Force since he murdered a man. Markovian ambassador, Zviad Baazovi, steps up, rallies the people to support Geo Force as their new king, and we find out later he's secretly a member of the Light and has mental "pushing" powers. Which makes him the Bad Samaritan from the comics, if you want to look it up.

Black Lightning and Cyborg reveal the evidence against Lex, getting him kicked out as UN Secretary. Despite this, Lex gloats everything is going his way. This is one of those proclamations that I mentioned don't jibe with what has gone before. Losing his Secretarial position seems a pretty big blow to Lex and the Light. But he papers it over as essentially nothing, and Brion killing a man and taking the throne will help Lex get "good" metahumans registered and regulated.

All of the heroes get together on Watchtower and Nightwing makes a speech about how they've had too many secrets. He admits there's been a secret cabal of heroes fighting the Light, and Batman looks all shifty-eyed. They nominate Black Lightning as the new League chairman, and he makes a big speech about how if they go down it will be with honor and they won't work in the shadows and keep secrets from each other. Batman is all "I'll follow your lead" and this is another of those proclamations that don't jibe with what we've seen of Batman. He's been operating in the shadows ever since leaving the League at the beginning of the season. And yet for some reason Batman falls in line with the whole plan. Maybe he's supposed to have a few secrets up his Batsleeve.

In the end we get scenes of Cyborg stopping a bully in a locker room from beating up a kid, and Wendy removing her inhibitor collar. Wendy, when was the last time she got any significant screen time? And I'm not sure why Cyborg is patrolling locker rooms for bullies. Is that what the Outsiders do to spread hope and inspiration these days?

Megan and Conner make up. The break in their relationship was one of those things that was tossed out in one episode and resolved in another. Again, it's interesting, but it's buried among so many other subplots and got so little screen time it's hard to care. They got along well, then they had a fight, then they got along well again. All in the course of three 30-minute episodes.

Lex's personal group of metahumans, Infinity Inc., pledge their loyalty to Brion. And Zviad has convinced Brion to take Helga back.

The heroes go to Bibbo's Diner in Metropolis to party down. The waitress, whose face we never see (although she appears to be blonde, so... Saturn Girl?), is wearing a Legion flight ring. So that means besides the League, and Young Justice, and the Outsiders, next season we'll get the Legion. Bend over, Abigail Mae, because here comes the gravy pipe to cram even more characters into the show!

And if you sit through the final credits, we get a brief tag of the vaguely creepy naked gray baby we also saw over the end credits of "Over the Breach". We find out it's a giggling clone of Lobo. Since Lobo lost his thumb a while back and parts of his body grow into full-size Lobos. But the "real" Lobo arrives, squishes the baby, and sets it on fire with his cigar. So I guess that means we'll get Lobo next year? We'll see.

So season 3 ends with the heroes being hailed as heroes once more. Although it wasn't ever clear they weren't being hailed as heroes. The whole "Lex turns the world against metahumans" plot has been one of those things that has been playing in the background but never got enough screen time to be convincing.

Black Lightning now leads the League and supervises everyone. BL is another character who has received screen time from time to time. But he faded out in the back half of the season, and it's hard to be thrilled he's now the League chairman. It seems more like a marketing ploy to cash in on the Black Lightning TV show.

Although season 3 was subtitled "Outsiders", it almost never focused on them. The term was applied to all metahumans, suggesting they're "outsiders". Beast Boy leads the team, and only Geo Force and Halo are members of it who were also members in the comic books. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but why hint at the membership of Katana and Metamorpho (and Looker, who got a brief appearance in her civilian identity) if they're not going to be in it.

So I don't dislike the Outsiders membership we got. It just seems random. Beast Boy, Geo Force, Halo, Tara, Forager, Static, Blue Beetle... Wonder Girl and Thirteen? It's like they got halfway through adapting the comic book Outsiders, and then started drawing names out of a hat.

Overall, Young Justice is still the most superhero-y of the DC Universe Channel shows. Compared to Titans, Doom Patrol, and Swamp Thing. The creative team took advantage of the animation to give us dozens of heroes. Many of them without dialogue, when some scenes would have been stronger for having all of the participants speaking. Forager in "Into the Breach" comes to mind. He stands around and clicks a lot, and Danica McKellar as Miss Martian tells Forager to think about it while he clicks thoughtfully.

I really like the Legion, and look forward to them in Season 4. But I wonder how much screen time they'll get. And do we want them to have a lot of screen time? The show is called Young Justice, not Legion of Super-Heroes. The Legion, with its occasional 20+ membership, is practically as big as the Outsiders and Young Justice combined. I'm almost positive we won't get people like Tyroc and Chemical King, but even if we do, they'll probably be background dialogue-less characters.

If I had my druthers on what's in Season 4, it'd be to have the episode order cut down to 13 or so. No big hiatus so we forget what happened in the first half of the season when the second season begins. Focus more on 5-10 characters, and don't go off on the adventures of Mal and Karen, or Wally and Artemis and Will, or Aquaman and Wynnde. If a character doesn't have dialogue, don’t include them. We got Guy Gardner with a voice, which is fine. But then why include Hal Jordan and John Stewart?

If the season subtitle is Legion of Super-Heroes, then focus on the Legion. We had 26 episodes subtitled Outsiders, and the concept wasn't even introduced until episode 13. If season 4 is going to primarily feature Young Justice, then don't give it a subtitle and just feature Young Justice.

Young Justice should cool its jets and narrow its focus. The creative team does great characterization, but when they spread that characterization too thin, it goes nowhere.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?