Young Justice S03E17-19 Review

So three more episodes of Young Justice dropped over the last three weeks. As I warned in my last review, after three episodes dropping on one night, DC Universe went with a weekly schedule for most of the next 10 episodes of season 3B. Even though they dropped them in four batches over four weeks back in January. Why? Who knows? I'm sure it made sense to someone somewhere.

Young Justice has changed a bit, but the basics are the same. There's still a bunch of junior heroes fighting the Light and their meta-trafficking operations. Granny Goodness and her Apokolips lackeys are still involved. Lex Luthor is the chairman of the UN and still up to no good. And there are still plenty of Easter Eggs and obscure comic book trivia tossed in.

The main difference is the junior heroes have changed. Beast Boy (Greg Cipes) has assumed even greater prominence and finally got around to forming the "Outsiders", which are a team of superheroes including Geo Force, Terra, Halo, and Forager from the earlier part of Season 3. Kid Flash, Blue Beetle, Static, Wonder Girl, and Thirteen are also members. Also a member is Ed Dorado Jr., who uses his teleport powers to become a superhero, El Dorado. Now that there's a team of Outsiders, we finally have a reason the season 3 subtitle is "Outsiders".

Unlike the original Young Justice, these Outsiders are united under the hashtag #WeAreAllOutsiders. Beast Boy has united them to fight the Light and to give inspiration to all of the meta-teens that have been rescued from the meta-traffickers. The hashtag is trending worldwide, and the Outsiders are high-profile, Which is good, because Batman and his secret cabal of heroes are using them as unwitting pawns to fight the Light and undermine Lex. Heroes like Wonder Woman and Miss Martian aren't entirely on-board with that.

E17, "First Impressions", shows the formation of the Outsiders. Beast Boy tells the League members still in the Watchtower--Aquaman, Miss Martian, Superboy, and Tigress--that with the League off-planet, the Light up to shenanigans, and anti-superhero hysteria at an all-time high, it's time for a younger group of superheroes to become the public face of superherodom on Earth. He assembles a team of supposedly young superheroes. I suppose Static and Blue Beetle are younger than the average superhero. But Wonder Girl? Geo Force? The grouping seems mostly random.

The above also points out one of odd production trends in these episodes. Superboy is dialogue-less since they didn't or couldn't pay Nolan North to voice Superboy. A lot of recurring characters show up without dialogue, not just background "extras". But one-shot characters get dialogue. It seems a bit... cheap. And there are odd jumps. Terra has no dialogue in episodes 17 and 19, but she does in 18 when Tara Strong does her voice. Granted, Terra doesn't have anything to say in those episodes. But it still feels odd for her to be not talkative, then talkative, then not in the third episode. Ditto with Terra's brother Geo Force (Troy Baker), who has no dialogue in 18 but talks up a storm in 17 and 19.

Speaking of Troy Baker, like several voice actors he does several roles in many episodes. The oddest is in this episode, when he plays a town sheriff who sounds just like Patrick Warburton. It's strange to hear the voice of Brock Samson, Puddy, and the Tick (among others) coming from the character.

The plot itself is the Outsiders' first mission. Reach drones and a battle cruiser activate and attack a small town. The Outsiders have set up shop in a tower in Hollywood paid for with Beast Boy's residuals from his role on a knock off Star Trek show. They're called to action in Brooklyn, Maine, when the ships attack. And we get an Easter egg or two when three of the town's girls capture the action on their cameras and dub themselves the "Newsgirl Legion". The Newsboy Legion has been around in the comics since 1942, and have popped up in one incarnation or another throughout the decades.

Another Easter egg is the three girls who dress like Fred, Daphne, and Velma of Scooby Doo fame.

The Outsiders defeat the Reach ships since Blue Beetle has the same technology and can shut them down. At the end, the Outsiders go viral and we find out that the "inner cabal" of superheroes set the whole thing up to lure out Inter-gang, who were trying to salvage the Reach weaponry aboard the ships. Aquaman and Miss Martian are happy there's now a public group of superheroes to do the missions the League can't do because of the UN tying their hands.

"First Impression" is a pretty standard episode of Young Justice, but then again, all three of these episodes are to a large degree. When you've got 26 episodes in a season, that's what happens. If you want to see more Blue Beetle and Static, this is an episode to watch. There's humor, mostly from Blue Beetle arguing with his Scarab battle suit AI. Scarab is eager to shoot anything and everything that moves, Blue Beetle not so much.

"Early Warning" is about the Outsiders yet again, although we also get some subplotting. Violet finds out from Dr. Jace (the Outsiders' "den mother") her cells are deteriorating and she'll die in a few months despite her violet healing aura. This makes Violet reckless, so she goes out with previously established character Harper Row and shoots at some bottles on the beach. Then Harper impulsively kisses Violet. Then they get arrested, and Violet won't tell Miss Martian what happened.

This is all set against the backdrop of a team mission to Cuba. Klarion the Witch Boy, a member of the Light, is torturing meta-teens by triggering their powers, branding them with a mind-control brand, and merging them into a giant flesh monster. Beast Boy, Geo Force, Static, and Wonder Girl show up to stop him. Zatanna tags along even though she's a Justice League member and has to stay hidden with a glamour spell.

It's fortunate she does go along, since it's her magic that is required to defeat Klarion. Zatanna teleports Klarion into the Tower of Fate, which is inter-dimensionally transcendental. So he can't teleport out since either she's the only one other than her father (who is the current host body for Nabu, aka Dr. Fate) who knows how to get in, or she used a buttload of magic to get in that Klarion can't duplicate, or both. A dialogue-free Geo Force holds off the Cuban army, and one of the meta-teens turns into a fish person who can't breathe out of water. The Outsiders takes the meta-teens to the youth center in Taos.

The final episode, "Elder Wisdom", starts with the Outsiders defending Lex and a UN conference from a bunch of women in armor claiming they're local freedom fighters. We get a bit of Troia and Wonder Woman chatting, and then a voiceless Garth gets darted unconscious. Why Wonder Woman gets dialogue but Garth doesn't, I have no idea. The Outsiders show up and defeat the freedom fighters, with an assist from Flash/Barry Allen. Lex says he called in the League and dismisses the Outsiders as inexperienced children.

The Outsiders get called to Dublin to help a young girl who has reported robot monkeys in her father's factory. It turns out Lex is storing his spider-bots there along with Professor Ivo's robot monkeys. Beast Boy, Static, and Blue Beetle go there, rescue Moira, and blow up the robots. Lex tries to make the Outsiders look bad, but recurring gadfly G. Gordon Godfrey interrupts him to say the Outsiders are more popular than ever. Afterward, Godfrey tells Lex in private that his plan to discredit the Outsiders is failing so they're going to make them popular and then co-opt them.

I like the fact the show jumps from locale to locale. We have the tropical nation in the opening bit, and then later Dublin. Small towns in Maine, Taos, the Batcave, the Watchtower, an alien planet, an alien space station. On live shows but even some animated shows, the characters tend to stay in only a few locales for an entire season.

Another strength Young Justice plays to is it isn't afraid to bring in old DC Comics characters, and find the occasional unusual voice actor to portray them. Jay Garrick, Helena Sandswick, Ed Dorado's father Eduardo show up to tell their respective children/wards Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, and Ed (who is now going by the superhero name "El Dorado", another Easter egg for Superfriend fans) that they can't go out and risk their lives. Jay Garrick is the original Golden Age Flash, the one with the Mercury helmet. He's voiced by Geoff Pierson, which is an odd bit of casting that works surprisingly well. They also get in some history with Jay, even though I don't think he's had a speaking role before. Lex suggests a superhuman registry like the one in the 50s, and Jay texts in to say it didn't work then.

It's not that Pierson is some kind of recluse: he's stayed gainfully employed in the industry in a variety of roles. It's just surprising--but appropriate--to have him pop up on Young Justice for a one-shot role.

In the subplot department, Geo Force tries to find out why Halo is acting strange. Halo has been avoiding talking to him, and won't reveal to anyone she's dying or why she's acting strangely. She has remembered that when she was Gabrielle, she helped the assassin kill Brion and Tara's parents. Halo finally tells them the truth. Geo Force isn't thrilled and walks away. Tara starts going unstable and as they've already revealed in earlier episodes, she's secretly sending messages to Deathstroke because she's a Light mole.

In the end, Halo is in her room and writes a note. Presumably she's quitting the Outsiders since Geo Force now hates her for helping kill his parents.

There are seven more episodes in five "batches": the last three episodes will air together on 8/27. I'll probably wait until 8/20 and do the preceding four episodes, and then do the last three after they all air as a bunch. Meanwhile, I'd still advise people to watch Young Justice. The current episodes are a little repetitive and I'm already sick of them constantly saying, "We are all Outsiders". But the characterization is solid, it draws on the history of the DC comics, and the show is probably the best superhero show currently out there.

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