Alright! Today I'm reviewing the much-beloved children's show Young Justice, which aired between 2010 to 2013 before being canceled due to low toy sales (Although I stand by the Aqualad McDonald's toy I got when I was six). But, lucky for us, we live in a time where studios are exploiting every IP they have to get people to subscribe to streaming services, and consequently, seasons three and four have arrived safely on DC Universe and HBOMax, respectively.
Season One
I don't have much to say about season one. I thought it hit the right balance of fun and episodic, had a great roster full of memorable characters, great animation, and the right amount of catchphrases to be ingrained into your head so you wouldn't feel overwhelmed.
The group dynamic was fun, the banter was pretty great (Even if it occasionally hit banal levels of "That didn't even make sense"), and Wally West's simping was entertaining to watch. Fan-favorite characters like the Joker and Captain Marvel also appear sporadically, accounting for some of the more fun team-up episodes. Captain Marvel is a favorite of mine, and I loved his entire dynamic with the group versus the League. Like, of course he enjoys their presence more, he's a kid himself!
Season one had something you can't truly measure quantitatively - it had a great vibe. The group dynamic combined with the location and the format of "Batman gave us a mission, let's go to it" created a world you could see yourself living in, which is a must-have for any children's show. Throughout episodic adventures, a real family is created, and due to the fantastic character development of Connor Kent, it feels like these characters are alive.
I appreciated the character work that went into it. Every character here was at some point or another my favorite in the show. The group dynamic of the original six worked well, and it was always pleasant to see what frequently dark hijinks they got into. And I stress how much I liked the characters because each one they introduced quickly became a favorite I wanted to see more of. Specifically Zatanna, Captain Marvel, Dick Grayson, Connor Kent, Aqualad, and Wally West. Which is, like, half of the roster.
But above all else, the thing I loved about the show was how large it felt. It just dropped you into the world of DC and rolled with it. Despite focusing on the six characters, the presence of the Justice League and more recognizable heroes always looms large. Questions like "What would Superman do?" are prevalent and impact the decisions the characters make. I love it when these superhero projects do that.
We know the more popular characters and have an outline of the world ingrained through pop culture. Focusing on new characters while still having iconic and pitch-perfect scenes with older characters is a hard mix to get right, and Young Justice was superb at it. When the team faces off against the Joker, you know it's serious because it's a character you already know and have expectations for. The smaller focus in a large world made it feel more alive and personal. My only real comparison is to Spider-Man: Homecoming. The bigger world exists and they acknowledge that and occasionally interact with it. But its focus is always on the main characters.
Invasion
Season two was the perfect escalation to season one. Switching out the episodic nature of the first season for a longer, more serialized form of storytelling, it became a truly great and interesting invasion story that I was very invested in.
However, this is where things get tricky. There's a five-year time gap between seasons one and two, which left me in a state of utter confusion for the first few episodes. All the arcs and characters I cared about in the first season seemed to have been resolved off-screen or resolved in unsatisfactory ways, and there were so many new characters and developments that I really would have liked to see onscreen (Specifically Dick's transformation from Robin to Nightwing and Superman's relationship with Connor).
However, as the season went on I saw the purpose of the time gap. It was like taking the hardest left of all time at first, but eventually, you worked out that it was the same road. But with this hard left came a lot of opportunities to look at characters in new lights and have a more sophisticated, darker story.
Even though I was drowning in new characters who kept referencing things that happened off-screen or things that happened for two seconds in season one, I eventually grew to like all of the new guys. Tim Drake is my favorite Robin, so I was particularly invested there. I absolutely loved Bart Allen, his introductory episode set the new tone for the show, so I found that very cool. Hopeful optimism tinged with desperate stakes.
This season also spent a great deal of time developing the Jamie Reyes incarnation of Blue Beetle and the alien race the Reach. I didn't find the Reach particularly interesting, but the careful political maneuvering of their relationship with the earthlings was rather fun to watch, especially how they manipulated public opinion.
Overall, the sudden and jarring difference between the arcs season one set up and the arcs season two carried through with threw me off for a large while. But after that shock wore off, I really appreciated everything season two did and the darker and more mature themes it touched on, all the characters it was able to introduce, and the thematic impact of the season.
Specficially the finale! Man, that was some emotional stuff. I really wasn't expecting anything like that when I started the show, but you spend two seasons doing your absolute best to endear these characters and, well, you get attached. I highly recommend these first two seasons, they were fantastic.
Outsiders
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| Wasn't a fan of Meghan's look in this season. |
The now shocking bloody violence made the show lose that special "kid-friendly" appeal that made the darker themes more noticeable and commendable. The violence became too much - Cyborg's origin story became quite a bit more gruesome than even the R-Rated Zack Snyder's Justice League tried to do (And ultimately did better, natch).
The violence and language randomly dropped in and were never at all consistent, mostly being used for shock factor. Sometimes it was cool, like "Whoah. They went there." Other times it was like "You know, Primal wasn't that violent." It didn't accentuate so much as it did detract.
But in terms of raw storytelling, Outsiders had quite a bit of turbulence. Remember all the cool characters they had last season? Static and Blue Beetle and Bart Allen? Yeah, once again they threw all of that away and restarted with a new core cast of Beast Boy, Geo-Force, Halo, Cyborg, Forager, and Terra. But you know what? Even though they threw away all the other characters that I absolutely loved, spending an entire season on these characters did develop them a ton. I ended up really liking most of them (Cyborg especially, who continues to be a great character when not on Teen Titans Go!).
Geo-Force was, by far and away, the most interesting and complex out of the newest batch. His lost sovereignty, his quest to regain his honor, and his decisions in the finale of the season were far more shocking than any amount of blood they could show. He's a bright spot of the show, and I was excited to see how season four continued his story.
Halo was interesting. I'm always happy to see Muslim representation in American media, but the show wanted a dichotomy of applauding itself for that Muslim representation and also having the character eschew it almost entirely, and their religious doubts aren't even touched upon until a post-credit scene in season four. Additionally, Halo became the flagship non-binary character of the show (For Motherbox reasons, which was truly an interesting subversion of the coming-out story, but the dialogue surrounding it was reminiscent of a cookie-cutter "Yay acceptance!" ad from a mega-corporation) and had a really out-of-place same-sex kiss with a random character who had one random episode devoted to her and went against her established relationship with Geo-Force. Just... lots of strange narrative choices (Namely infidelity) were made to show their coming-of-age story.
The rest of the characters were whatever. They were fine and for the most part interesting, but one does bemoan the lack of focus on the original team from season one. Beast Boy really stepped up his game in this season, becoming a headliner and the better part of the dual narrative: The titular Outsiders, a young group of hashtag enthusiasts who go around and fight crime, alerted and supported by social media.
Digression, but the show made a rather big deal about something "Trending" for this season, and how that corroborated real-life interest. Spoiler alert - it doesn't. In the Heights trending and being well-reviewed online didn't lead to box office success, and nor does it make the ever-trending Zack Snyder any more popular. That type of thing happens time and time again. Twitter hashtags =/= real-life. Trending is indicative of buzz, not a recommendation to put the money where your mouth is (See: Morbius being rereleased due to memes only to bomb again).
But above all else, the biggest issue with this season is a very strange, very weird plot twist - the season is kicked off by Batman and his supporting cast resigning from the League so they can operate as free reign vigilantes again. But the even greater plot twist is that the Outsiders and the resignation was all planned by Batman for... reasons? And this was after a similar and much better plot twist in season two. It brought characters like Batman and the League, who had been missing for two seasons, jarringly back into the spotlight. It was contrived and lame.
The season also suffered from too many leagues and groups. The Justice League needed to be reordered, the Bat Family was breaking away, the Outsiders were forming, the actual Young Justice team was still operating, and the new team led by Dick and Artemis was started. And then characters would hop between all of them and it was treated with the utmost fanfare.
Phantoms
Remember when Young Justice thought it was cool to have a time jump and then switch out the cast of main characters for Invasion? And then remember when they did that again for Oustiders? Well, I raise you Phantoms, the fourth season that, you guessed it, switched out the cast of main characters. The detailed intricacies of Geo-Force's surprisingly layered character are completely absent for a large part of season four, which is constructed into four to five episode arcs that focus on each of the original members back in season one. Which is cool, for the most part.
I mean, I'd love to see them work together as a team, something that hasn't really happened in three seasons, but I'm glad they're going back to the core characters, especially after sidelining Nightwing, Superboy, and Zatanna for most of seasons two and three. However, none of these arcs really flow together well. Vandal Savage has been hinted at as the "big bad" of the show since season one, and while this season delves into his origin, he and Darkseid still have been given disappointingly little to do.
This season starts off with four episodes of the marriage customs of the Martian culture and focuses on the discrimination that happens in the Martian society, which I found incredibly interesting and relevant. It also gave Beast Boy a lot to do, namely a grieving arc. And then that arc ends and you think the next episodes will pick up where they left off, but they don't. You don't get back to that ending until episode 14. 10 episodes are spent with Little Savage and some out-of-place Tigress flashbacks that would've worked better earlier in the show, and the other arc is spent with Zatanna and Klarion.
Now, I really like Zatanna and Klarion. They were both scene-stealers in season one, and Klarion's delightfully bratty manners make him a blast every time an episode focuses on him. So I enjoyed the set-up of that arc, the mood, and the delve into the mystic aspects of Fate and Chaos. However, once again - a ton of new characters are introduced who have never shown up before, specifically Mary Marvel, the Khalid Nassour iteration of Doctor Fate, and Traci Thirteen, who were background characters at best before they became full-on main characters for this arc. And then the show has the audacity to expect us to care about these random people!
Zatanna's arc was also split with what is, by far, the largest exposition dump I have ever seen. For, like, six minutes for four episodes, straight-up exposition is given about Vandal Savage and his immortality and dealings with Klarion. But it's literally just exposition, the equivalent of the 1984 Dune opening. The animation quality dipped in general for this season, but the exposition dumps had it especially rough, with literally just voiceover accompanied by still images of Savage's past like it was a documentary. I enjoyed it, but it was lazy (Doc Ock moment).
The next arc on the rotation centered on Aqualad, which was dope. He hadn't been a main character since season one, and he was always one of the best characters the show had to offer. So enters four episodes of Atlantean politics inter-spliced with some hard-hitting stuff about Beast Boy's depression and some resolution on Halo's Islamic plight. These four episodes were the return to form the show had been needing, and the best content since season two. Going into the release of the second half of season four, I wasn't too excited. But the superb quality of these episodes got me back on the hype train. Concrete arcs for Aqualad and Aquaman, a heartbreaking monologue about the past ten years, and some truly interesting character work made these four episodes superb.
The next arc focused on Rocket, which I was initially apprehensive about - she had been a relatively minor character for the entire show, so to have one centered on her made no sense. Luckily, her arc focused on a mission to New Genesis, meeting Orion (Always an interesting character), and the class conflict between Bugs and the Gods. Or at least it did until it was hijacked by a Red/Blue Lantern Corps conflict with a character that popped up out of nowhere and had an offscreen history that suddenly became a big deal. It felt like I was reading the big crossover but didn't read all the tie-ins so didn't know what was going on (Which, upon inspection, was correct - it was a continuation of Green Lantern: The Animated Series).
This arc also happened to contain more exposition with still images, like a Civil War documentary but a (Legitimately interesting) story about General Zod, who I normally dislike but found pretty appealing in this scenario (Even if villain teenagers are an overplayed trope for the show by season four). Rocket's arc resolved itself adequately, satisfying the New Gods itch and once again affirming that Orion is one of DC's best and most dynamic heroes.
The next arc centered around Dick Grayson, and first of all - yes. Dick is always a win. This arc was the combination that brought all the ties together and created a unified vision for the rest of the season. It was also at this point the animation became completely awful. It got to the point where the first season, made over a decade ago, looked better. Shoot, it got to the point where animation YouTubers had more quality. I vividly remember one conversation where it was barely three frames - like a slideshow was being played with dialogue instead of a smooth and realistic feeling.
Around the halfway point though, the arc stopped being Dick's arc and more so a plot-driven mash of all the things the season had built up. While that was fine for the most part, I do bemoan a lack of focus on Dick. Like, if I had to sit through four episodes of Rocket character development, Nightwing easily deserves the same if not more.
Geo-Force makes his glorious return here, but it feels disingenuous to the well-developed character following his absence the entire season, and only factors into one episode - one. The best character of season three is not even sidelined but almost entirely absent. Halo pops up randomly, once again paired with Harper Lee (The random girl from season three and future member of the Bat-Family). I really like Harper's character, so I'll give the plot digression that, but it felt like leftovers of Halo's previous S4 adventure.
On that note, I question the breaking of each arc into individual episodes. If all were intercut, it may have made for a smoother flow, or it could have been twice as confusing given the seemingly hundreds of plotlines that the show has chosen to chunkily weave into this season's narrative. Now, how does it do that? By constantly losing focus. The first half of the season delved deeply into Darkseid and Vandal Savage teaming up, but the second half of the season eschewed it entirely for Zod, Ursa Zod, and Little Zod. It didn't help that most of this set-up was done through the laziest exposition I have ever seen.
Sometime along the show's run, it swapped the end credit music (Like most children's animation has) for little cookies of information and resolutions on previously set-up gags (Like an episode of The Office). That was fine as it didn't really detract and more often than not acted as a proverbial cliffhanger for the next episode. However, sometime in season four it went from being a cool end-credit stinger to straight-up exposition dumps. Like, completely disconnected from the episode, important for understanding future episodes, and played over an unmoving single frame of animation exposition dumps. Things such as the beginning of Halo's Islam arc, bits of Connor and Meghan's wedding, and - most egregiously - Aqualad's aforementioned superb monologue that gave him the chance to grieve over the past ten years. It's by and far away the laziest way I have ever seen anyone ever do exposition. It's just the audio! No movement! Like an audiobook I'm expected to look at!
The Zod arc eventually resolved itself in a precise way, Connor and Meghan got their happy wedding, and everyone has a nice happy ending (With an actual end credit stinger that introduced a character whose absence I had been wondering about since season one).
In Conclusion
Overall, The biggest problem with Young Justice was the sheer amount of characters the show introduced. It eventually reminded me of Once Upon A Time, which established a large cast of characters in the first season but, as the show went on, decided to randomly shift focus from time to time, and consequently never got the large ensemble effect back (The thing that made the show a hit in the first place).
While the vibe of the original six - Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash, Miss Martian, Superboy, and Tigress - was great, and the additions of Zatanna and Red Arrow were cool, even by the end of season one they gave the random character spotlight to Rocket. Season two kept those elements but downplayed them to focus on Blue Beetle, Beast Boy, Impulse, and Static, while introducing Bumblebee, Tim Drake, Mal Duncan, Batgirl, Lagoon Boy, Wonder Girl, and Arsenal. Season three kept those elements but further downplayed them to focus on Halo, Geo-Force, Forager, Cyborg, and Terra, while introducing Arrowette and Stephanie Brown. Season four kept those elements but further downplayed them to focus on the original six (Plus Zatanna and Rocket) while introducing Cassandra Savage, Orphan, Mary Marvel, Khalid Nassour, Thirteen, Little Zod, and The Legion of Superheroes. And it basically balances out with each character getting the spotlight for two episodes and then never being seen again.
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| Superman's still my favorite though. |
It's fine when it's, you know, Lagoon Boy, who just served no purpose in the story after Miss Martian broke up with him, but when you spend an entire season developing Blue Beetle, Halo, and Geo-Force at the expense of other characters and then drop them so easily it gets disorienting. With 170-ish named characters, one begins to wish for a Ninjago-style opening just to keep track of who's-who, because I sure don't remember what's going on.
I respected the ways Young Justice took the DC mythos and bended and twisted them to create something truly unique. I enjoyed twists on established characters and the directions they took that make for a truly interesting elseworld. Mary Marvel as a child of Granny Goodness, for example. Or depicting the "bugs" on New Genesis as actual bugs. It was the stuff like that that kept the show unique and refreshing, even if it had so many new takes they overwhelmed and some of them drowned.
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| This... this is too much. |
And, a moment of silence for all of the characters sidelined in the show, and all the plot details that happened off-screen between seasons:
- Guardian was a clone? Since when?
- The death of Jason Todd
- Beast Boy's powers
- Dick's transition to Nightwing
- Barbara's paralyzation
- Superman bonding with Connor
- The following MAIN characters who were sidelined:
- Lagoon Boy, Jay Garrick, Black Canary, Red Tornado, Batgirl, Cheshire, Green Arrow, Oracle, Tim Drake, Captain Marvel, Stargirl, Geo-Force, Halo, Cyborg, Blue Beetle, El Dorado, Bart Allen, Klarion, Doctor Fate, Red Arrow, Rocket, Bumblebee, Static, Superman, Batman, Zatanna, SUPERBOY? ROBIN? ALL OF THEM? WHO AM I SUPPOSED TO CARE ABOUT?
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| I'm excited to see where they take season five. |
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