"Young Justice" - S03E10 – S03E13 Review

And ... that's it? Don't get me wrong: Young Justice Season 3 was an entertaining run. But it was written and structured like the creative team knows that they're only being allowed to do 13 episodes but they have a full 26 to tell their story. As such, the 13 episodes we do get are both padded and ultimately incomplete.

It doesn't help they're still going several directions at once. There's The Light, and the Outsiders, and the meta-human trafficking which I guess The Light members are involved with. And we get the YJ version of "The Judas Contract", with Terra teaming up with Deathstroke to betray the not-Titans. There's kind of a feel of "This time we're going to do it right". Brion wasn't part of Terra's story in "Judas", and was more-or-less added in after *spoiler alert* Terra died. There was one brief Titans/Outsiders crossover, as I recall. But Brion in the comics spent more of his time mourning his dead sister than spending any time with her.

And we get the introduction of Victor Stone/Cyborg. They've gone the "Cyborg = Apokolips Technology" in The New 52 and the Justice League movie. I like how they tie in Halo with a Mother Box, and that sets up a rivalry and a connection between her and the yet-as-unnamed Cyborg. It's certainly a cleaner and more integrated approach than the comics, which had the lily-white Halo possessed by alien "Aurakle" energy beings and has gone through more deaths and resurrections than Jean Grey over at Marvel.

Still, the addition of Cyborg is kind of weird even if they write it to make sense. I'm not sure if they're "reintroducing" him so he'll be a little more visible before he shows up in Doom Patrol. Or if they just thought he should be an Outsider, or what. His story arc is the most constant in the last four episodes, which brings us to those four episodes.

"Exceptional Human Beings" features more Nightwing-training-Outsiders scenes. So if you're a big fan of these, this episode is for you. However, like Brion, I'm getting rather impatient with them. They seem to go on forever, we don't really see the Outsiders progress (they're only slightly better than they were in the first training session), and they seem more like a plot-stalling device than anything. If they're going to advertise season 3 as "Young Justice: Outsiders", I want to see the Outsiders. Not watch them train a lot.

Without the training sequences, the episode breaks down into two parts. The first is introducing Victor Stone. He's a high school football player with a father, Silas, who is too busy in the lab to devote time to his son. Victor isn't happy about that, yada, yada.

The second part is Batman sneaking into Santa Prisca to find out what happened to Brion's sister, Tara. I'm not sure why he would undertake a mission like this. And he has Katana and Metamorpho with him. There's no explanation for why they're with him, or who they are. We've seen Katana briefly at the beginning of the season as a member of the League before she leaves with Batman. Why he chose the two of them to go with him, or who they are, we never really find out.

However, the Santa Prisca caper is the best part of the episode. There's a lot of running around. Metamorpho and Katana dodge guards as they head ... somewhere to do something. Meanwhile, Batman monitors a conversation between Deathstroke, Lady Shiva, and Cassandra Savage where they reveal "Granny" took Tara after she flunked out of training. This already sounds kind of strange, since we saw (presumably) Tara kill a man by dropping a boulder on him. There's no real effort to explain that until S03E13.

The running around is boring, but then we get a big showdown as Batman takes on Bane (Danny Trejo). Deathstroke and Lady Shiva fight Metamorpho and Katana in a nice bunch of choreographed fight scenes. We get that Metamorpho is clearly an experienced hero, whatever the heck his background is. But Deathstroke and Shiva aren't portrayed as lightweights, either. Bane has dialogue about how he no longer uses the Venom steroid, and thanks to the "six year gap" between season 2 and 3, I'd forgotten that he was more of a major player in the early days of the show.

There's also a cute bit where Bane claims he knows everyone who arrives and leaves Santa Prisca, and Batman rattles off a list of all the season 1 & 2 intruders like has an Internet/Wiki hook-up in his cowl.

Overall, though "Exceptional Human Beings" is rather abrupt, both because we get Batman and his "Outsiders" on a mission without any mention of who they are, and we get Victor Stone dropped into the mix when there's been no mention of him except for some background radio chatter.

"Another Freak" gives us more of Victor Stone, as first a guard, and then Victor, kick loose a cable on the Reach device Silas is studying. This causes a massive explosion, which rather gorily reduces the left half of Victor's body to blood and some bones. Silas sticks the Father Box on his son to save his life, and the machine turns Victor into the Cyborg that we know and love.

Meanwhile, Violet and Forager go to high school. In the previous episode, Violet decided on "Harper" as her fictional last name since she's living at the Harper house. Which makes a nice nod to "Violet Harper" in the comics. Forager goes with the name "Fred Bugg" and wears a magical amulet created by Zatanna to make himself look human. They go to Happy Harbor High School and Violet is feeling ill, and they met another "outsider" student named Harper Row. And she's apparently Bluebird in the comics, but there's no reference to that here. Other than some initial confusion between her name and Violet's new fake last name, she doesn't add anything to the episode.

Violet's illness turns out to let her create an indigo aura that lets her create a boom tube (New Genesis/Apokolips teleport tunnel) to Victor. Her violet aura lets her "cleanse" him of the Father Bos's influence, since she's part Mother Box. Which are sentient computers from Apokolips and New Genesis, respectively. And if you want to know more about what that all means, that's why they invented the Internet. Right? If I try to describe all of Jack Kirby's Fourth World stuff here in any meaningful detail, it's going to be a very long article.

Once Victor is temporarily cleansed, he decides to go with Violet rather than hang out with his jerk-ass father. And so another Outsider is born.

During all of this, Brion has been checking in on things with his fraternal twin Grigor, ruler of Markovia. Nightwing calls him on it and to have patience, Brion gets sick of all of the patience (I agree with you, buddy!), they fight, and Nightwing eventually tells Brion to think about the future rather than the past. And he does. Conflict solved.

"Nightmare Monkeys" is even weirder and one-off than usual. It focuses mostly on Garfield Logan, aka Beast Boy. In the six-year-gap, I'd forgotten that they retconned him so he's literally Megan's blood brother because she gave him a transfusion to save his life. Which made him green-skinned and shapeshifty like her. and he since has become the low-SFX-budget Martian shapeshifting lieutenant in a Star Trek knockoff. And he falls under the sway of Granny Goodness' "Goode Goggles".

This leads Gar to a mental dreamscape where he meets the Doom Patrol. This means that Greg Cipes (Beast Boy) gets to have a reunion with his fellow Teen Titans actors Tara Strong (Raven), Scott Menville (Robin), Hynden Walch (Starfire), and Khary Payton (Cyborg). They are all in the non-real TV cartoon Doom Patrol Go! voicing Doom Patrol characters Negative Woman, Chief, Elasti-Girl, and Robotman, respectively. With Beast Boy looking like his animated self in Teen Titans Go! They have a catchy musical number about how they're going to die, and then all go off and die.

We also earlier had Gar on the bridge of his Trek knockoff with dead Young Justice members like Jason Todd, Aquagirl, and Kid Flash, who is voiced by Jason Spisak and is easy to cast because Spisak also voices Forager. The whole thing is kinda weird, and then we get a monkey who claims Beast Boy is the avatar of an animal god. And the Hello, Megan! from earlier Young Justice episodes shows up. Gar figures out it's a dream of extraordinary magnitude and snaps out of it on his own, and reveals the whole Goode Goggles/Granny Goodness thing to Megan and Conner, who showed up to help him.

We also get a brief appearance by Casey Brinke, a character in the newest Doom Patrol comic book. Because writer Greg Weisman is the kinda guy who does that sorta thing.

"Nightmare Monkeys" is pretty weird, and how much you like it probably depends on how much you are invested in Beast Boy, Teen Titans, Teen Titans Go!, and the Doom Patrol. And I suppose it's another attempt, like Victor Stone, to synergize with the upcoming Doom Patrol series. Although Negative Man is the one in that series, presumably, they needed a female character so Tara Strong could voice her. And there's no Crazy Jane in this episode. And they talk about how the Doom Patrol is dead. Which ... they're not in the Doom Patrol series, presumably. Not that I expect Doom Patrol and Young Justice and Titans to all be set in the same universe. Still, what's the point of implying that they are? Or might be? Or make reference to Doom Patrol on Young Justice, by using YJ to promote some interest in Doom Patrol?

It's also very odd to have it placed as a penultimate episode. While watching it, I figured we weren't really going to get much of a finale to the season. And ... we didn't.

We also get a brief fight between the Father Box-possessed Victor, Violet, and the New Genesis Super Cycle. They lay out the explanation I mentioned above, about how the Boxes force the people possessed by them to fight each other. There's also a brief subplot of Megan and Conner not having any time with each other alone, even though they supposedly have quarters on the League Watchtower from the end of season 2. Oh, and Brion and Violet finally romantically link up and kiss.

"True Heroes" is the finale, and it has the League and Young Justice raiding meta-trafficking depots. However, all of that takes place off-screen. We get Nightwing taking his team to Bialya (minus Violet and Victor) to raid a depot where Brion's sister Tara is supposed to be. It's not only a bidding depot (for people wearing Court of Owls masks from Batman), but is also a fight club hosted by Mister Bliss, a really obscure comic book character.

There's also a lot of previous YJ villains acting as security: Psimon and Devastation and the Terror Twins and Icicle Jr. and Shimmer and Monolith. The best part is arguably the Icicle Jr. vs. Conner fight. We get more callbacks as Icicle Jr. complains Conner stole Megan from him, and then a few seconds later he's congratulating Conner on his engagement to Megan. We also get a cool Black Lightning vs. Devastation fight. Cool in the "cool" sense, as opposed to the temperature sense of the Icicle Jr. versus Conner fight.

Meanwhile, back at home, Victor has another fit of Father Box possession and tries to kill Violet. She can't summon her auras because of her emotional turmoil what with dating Brion, but she sucks it up in the end and apparently cleanses Victor of Father Box's influence for good.

We come away from all of this with Brion having recovered his sister Tara from the meta-traffickers. But since he doesn't know what we know--that she killed a guy for the League of Shadows--he's all happy to have her back and she's all happy to be rescued. In the end, we get Tara secretly texting Deathstroke to let him know she's infiltrated Young Justice. Or the Outsiders. Or Dick's team. Or whatever the heck they are.

So as season 3 ends, we have the meta-traffickers seemingly ended as a menace. But The Light is still out there, and we have Deathstroke and Tara doing their own version of "The Judas Contract" from the comic books. Which again, look it up. But short version, Tara is a sociopath and is having an underage relationship with Deathstroke, and infiltrating the Titans/Young Justice. She has a fake romantic relationship with Beast Boy, which I don't see happening on YJ because he doesn't seem to be that connected with Young Justice. Eventually she goes full-on psycho, turns on Deathstroke, and is killed turning her powers up to eleven to wipe out everyone.

So presumably season 4 (or season 3b) will give us some version of that. Although Deathstroke in YJ isn't nearly as sympathetic a character as he was in the comics. And given it was early in his comic book career, he wasn't that sympathetic then. But having his son, Jericho, showing up, and Deathstroke's other son, Ravager, dying a few issues earlier help with that.

And presumably we'll get more with The Light. And probably more with the Outsiders, as they bring Katana and Metamorpho into the team (and have Batman take it over). I like Forager and the "new" Halo: Jason Spisak and Zehra Fazal do well with the characters. Troy Baker has the relatively thankless role of the hot-headed Prince Brion, who more or less falls in love with Violet because IITS (It's In The Script) and has to carry a lot of the initial exposition. Zeno Robinson is okay as Victor Stone: we only get three episodes of him and most of it is either Victor possessed by Father Box, or Victor as an angry young man toward his father.

The rest of the main YJ team is okay. There's a continuation of the various subplots from the first two seasons. Thankfully, the show stops focusing quite so much on Dick Grayson, a mistake Titans never stopped making. There's still some stuff that I'd like to see more of, like a focus on Aqualad-now-Aquaman. Kaldur'ahm was arguably a breakout character in the original series: here's he's reduced to a supporting character. And Khary Payton's new character, Jeff Pierce aka Black Lightning, is okay but doesn't get the screen time or the development. Giving him a romance with Helga Jace is interesting, but it doesn't go anywhere.

In fact, most of YJ and YJ seems to serve as a backdrop to the Outsiders, and also Beast Boy for one episode, "Nightmare Monkeys". And Vandal Savage for one episode, "Evolution". Producer and creative team head Greg Weisman pours on the continuity and never lets up. We get obscure characters like Mister Bliss who even The Flash wouldn't touch, and Harper Row and Orphan. And lots of continuity references to Hello, Megan!, Icicle Jr.'s one-time relationship with Megan, Psimon, Devastation, Kirby's the Fourth World, Beast Boy's past, and a lot more.

Overall, I'd consider Young Justice a success. Fans wanted it to come back, it came back, and Weisman & Co. gave them more of what they wanted. The net was spread a little too thin to make it quite as good character-development-wise as Justice League or Teen Titans or Batman Beyond, and the creative team never seemed to focus YJ quite as much as those shows. But YJ is still entertaining as a "serious" superhero cartoon. And it's better for it to be too full than too empty.

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