Friday, May 28, 2021

Young Justice Outsiders Retrospective - Episodes 7-9

We’re back with another run of Young Justice, more episodes done from memory, with a little help from the wiki summaries so again things may be out of order or condensed. Sorry, I only have so much time for these.

Evolution

One of the things I wanted from this season is to get a better sense for what the end goal of the light actually is, and this episode provides. One more recast of note, sadly Miguel Ferrer who originally played Vandal Savage died in 2016, David Kaye has taken over the role.

We open with Vandal’s daughter Cassandra Savage being given a book of Vandal’s history by another of Vandal’s daughters, Olympia. In the present, there is an armada heading towards Earth that Vandal is made aware of.

We hear Cassandra reading from the journal, the excerpts are displayed using limited if any animation, relying mostly on still-frames, this was likely another cost-cutting measure. Vandal, 50000 years ago approaches a strangely growing meteor, but was confronted by a bear, his old nemesis.

In the present, Vandal gets in contact with Luthor, they make small talk as Olympia excitedly asks if Cassandra got to the part about the bear yet. Luthor explains that with the restrictions leading to all the resignation of the league, there aren’t enough heavy hitters on Earth to deal with an invasion of this size. The leaguers in space are busy fighting on Apolaxia, the Green Lantern Corps are split fighting the Reach and the forces of Apokolips and Klarion is busy with Project: Rutabaga.

With those options out, it’s Vandal to protect the Earth using the war-world. We see that in the past Vandal defeated the bear and made it to the meteor, he’s attacked by other homo-sapiens and lies by the meteorite, bleeding. It’s of course this meteor that grants his immortality, effectively becoming the world’s first metahuman.

Dick, Artemis, Brion, Connor, Violet and Forager begin doing team-building exercises on Happy Harbour Beach.

On the War-World, Vandal gives a message to try and force their surrender but it comes up with nothing, the invaders attack as the war world attacks. Olympia is fascinated by Cassandra notices another fleet arriving from the other side of the solar system. He has no choice but to call in help.

After another scene with the guys on the beach, we cut back to the War World, where Savage has contacted Darkseid for help. Michael Leon Woodley provides his voice and whilst he’s no Michael Ironside, I think it’s a decent choice. Darkseid agrees to honour their deal and send help. As we get another chapter from the book.

They took a page out of Justice League’s book and have Apokolips be a force that invaded Earth Millenia ago. Vandal in this era was known as Genghis Khan, and wages his armies, including his two gifted sons against them. Naturally they lost quite spectacularly but Desaad believes that humans may be sturdy stock for the anti-life equation, so Darkseid and Vandal craft a deal. Vandal provides metahuman weapons to Apokolips to help Darkseid conquer the Galaxy, then the two sides will wage a final battle for the universe, winner take all.

In the present, Darkseid sends his fleet led by his son Kalibak, to help Vandal. First thing he does is send out a meta-teen and then up the power on his control chip until he explodes, taking out the fleet. Brion and Violet are presented with Supersuits, Brion’s was created by Fire (who does not appear this season) to not burn up under his powers. He also chooses the name Geo-Force as a superhero code name. Don’t really understand why he needs one when he outed himself pretty much straight away but I digress, they begin team manoeuvres.

Both armies are being annihilated but do not seem to surrender and when a certain sea star is shown controlling an alien body, Vandal realises what has happened and how he can end it. He gives command of the War World to Cassandra as we’re treated to another chapter of his origin.

In the times of Babylon, Vandal was known as the demigod Marduk, he and his 2 children engage in a battle against another alien race controlled by the sea-stars. His son Nabu, who wears a helmet similar to the Helmet of Fate didn’t survive the battle. In the present, Cassandra finds a single ship held back from the attack fleet and Vandal boomtubes aboard. We see flashes of him fighting the sea star in both the past and present and on both occasions, Vandal is victorious. He and his daughter became collectively known as The Light.

Jefferson and Dr Jace had had a dinner date, and it’s clear that Jefferson has feelings for her, as they return to hotel, slightly intoxicated and spend the night together.

He places the remains of it in the War World’s prison cells where we see Mongul but weirdly not Despero, huh. Olympia asks again whether Cassandra has heard the part about the bear but Vandal tells her that his story must never be told as it would disrupt his long-term plans.

He asks why she likes the story of him and the bear and as she explains he snaps her neck, much to Cassandra’s shock. He tells her to arrange a funeral for her and she agrees to do so.

The group on the beach enjoy some camp-food and Halo unveils a new green aura that hollows that allows her to project holograms.

It’s an interesting episode. Highlighting Vandal’s overall plan (though why would Queen Bee describe them as ‘new partners’ when boomtubes first showed up?) and giving us a better insight into his character overall.

Rating 8/10

Triptych

Triptych is a word used in art meaning a piece of arc divided into 3 distinct pieces. Nightwing reports to Oracle.

We open with Shade, Mist and Livewire breaking into a Star Labs facility, Livewire knocks out their scientist, Silas Stone and they get to work stealing a large piece of technology. Unfortunately for them, Silas quickly recovers and sounds the alarm as Shade takes a few moments to transport the machine away with his shadow powers. They’re given aid by Cheshire who takes a bullet in the shoulder for her troubles. Even so they escape with the device.

News of the break-in soon reaches the ears of Dick Grayson and his team, which I’m dubbing ‘The Squad’ for the purposes of making this easy. Cheshire may be their means of finding out more information about the League of Shadows.

Cheshire is receiving treatment for her wound at an airfield, her Doctor is obscure Batman villain Doctor Moon, she insists on staying conscious during the surgery as she doesn’t trust him. The squad arrive and fights ensue. Mist takes on Dick Grayson. Halo, Forager and Geo-Force take on Shade whilst Black Lightning takes on Livewire. Dick uses a cryo-genic gadget to take down mist, and Black Lightning’s lightning is able to hurt Livewire. It’s a little more complicated with shade who has a bit more experience and is able to handle himself. He transports Geo-Force into his shadow and Halo unveils a new white aura that is able to burn through his shadow, he brings Geo-Force back and retreats.

Tigress easily knocks out Doctor Moon and interrogates Cheshire about the shadows, she doesn’t know who’s running the shadows, only that it’s being run from Santa Prisca. Artemis then tells her to see her daughter but this is request Cheshire doesn’t want to honour. She’ll always be Cheshire first and doesn’t want to burden Lian with that. Shade arrives and she escapes with him.

Robin reports to Batman. He’d been keeping tabs on Jervis Tetch, the Mad Hatter since his release from prison. One night he brought along his team consisting of Spoiler, Arrowette and Orphan, all 3 of whom wear face coverings so the team don’t have to animate their lips. And because this is only one third of an episode, none of them have much of a chance to leave any impression, which is a pity when it’s their only episode this season. We do see that Tim is a more confident field leader than he was but given the city and criminals he’s up against, he’s more in his element anyway.

They notice that Jervis is drinking a lot of water and Robin takes a look at of the bottles he threw away, finding clay backwash, Orphan cuts ahead of them and reveals ‘Jervis’ to be Clayface. A brief fight ensues but Spoiler uses a clever tactic of saying they know where Jervis is to get Clayface to retreat, she’s tossed a liquid tracker on him so they can follow him.

Jervis is busy implanting control tech into a metahuman prisoner as Clayface arrives. The tech is successful as Robin and co arrive. The team are split. Orphan and Arrowette are to run interference with Clayface, Spoiler goes after Mad Hatter whilst Robin finds out what’s going on. Mad Hatter activates a series of explosives on his way out. Robin observes the tech and soon finds the explosives, ordering his team to evacuate, he asks Clayface to do the same but he doesn’t do so as the place explodes. Clayface survived but Robin surmises he won’t be happy with Jervis Tetch

Aquaman and M’gann report to Wonder Woman. They had received word that a prison transport taking prisoners, the meta from earlier and Brick, from Star City to Belle Reeve was about to be attacked. And so it was, by Sportsmaster and Abra Kadabra. Unbeknownst to these villains, the drivers of this particular job were Captain Marvel and The Flash. Sportsmaster uses a sonic device to knock them both back but they’re re-enforced by Rocket and Aquaman. They manage to capture Abra Kadabra and detain Brick, but Sportsmaster escapes with the other meta.

So how do these 3 stories connect, well the unknown meta from stories 2 and 3 is in fact Shade, [you might have noticed the stories were played in reverse order] and thanks to the intelligence gathered across the 3 stories they’ve shut down Branchwater securities, a metahuman trafficking operation that acquired metas from prison and used them for corporate espionage on behalf of Simon Stagg. The tech they were stealing from Star Labs was a Reach Dev believed to be a metahuman failsafe, they theorise Stagg had grown paranoid and wanted to protect himself from potential meta-attacks against him.

They arrested Stagg for receiving stolen goods and got him locked up for a long time thanks to the evidence gathered throughout the episode. It’s unlikely Cheshire and Sportsmaster knew they were working together but the same can’t be said for the heroes, we see here that all their reports happen in the Batcave. The 7 of them have formed an operation linking their squads in an attempt to beat the Light at their own game.

Robin managed to release Hagan from the mind control using the tech he found raiding the base. Batman then used it to free Livewire and Mist, they’re looking at an alternative to prison for them as they’re minors. As for Shade, Cheshire releases him from external control and he pays Stagg a visit in his prison cell, whether it’s to liberate or kill him is unclear but I suspect the latter.

Wonder Woman expresses her discomfort in this affair but Batman argues that with the others not knowing, should they worse come they have full deniability, only the assembled heroes would need to lie under Oath and since Wonder Woman has diplomatic standing, she might be able to avoid the stand at all. Still, it doesn’t make Wonder Woman happy

This episode covers a lot of ground quickly as such is quite busy, but it’s backed by a nice, if somewhat predictable twist

Rating 8/10

Home Fires

We open with a meeting of the Light in Greater Bialya. We only see Vandal Savage and Queen Bee, making her first and only appearance this season. There are 2 ongoing situations, she’s confident their newest hire can handle the first, and asks Vandal about their choice of hire for the second. Vandal is confident. Who is this hire, it’s Lobo, who we see accepting the contract from a robot on Rimbor.

In Central City Iris is watching TV, Cat Grant is covering the opening of the Star Labs Metahuman Youth Centre. Mist and Livewire will be among the first to be helped there. Metahumans there will gain help controlling their new abilities and adjusting to the worst with any physical and mental therapy that may require. Iris is jealous that Cat’s covering it and not her.

Bart is with her, helping her with the twins as the doorbell rings. It’s Mera and her son Artur. Guess running the kingdom is a busy job for Orin suddenly. Meanwhile a figure across the street is watching them

We then cut to the G Gordon Godfrey show where G Gordon is interviewing Gretchen Goode. He starts by deriding the goggles, saying it’s turning folk’s brains to mush which given the evidence we’ve seen isn’t entirely inaccurate. But that’s not what Gretchen is here for. She’s hear to talk about her partnership with the Wayne foundation to make charitable donations to causes such as the youth centre. G Gordon wonders why Bruce Wayne wouldn’t appear on the show.

Miss M wonders how Superboy can watch the show with the amount of bile and hate he spews and Superboy admits he finds him fascinating, plus it can be useful to see what the other side thinks. Miss M heads off with Snapper Carr as they both work at Happy Harbour High School. Superboy and Brion have their own appointment to meeting to make.

Back at the playdate, Will has arrived with Lian and Racquel with her son Amistad. Racquel answers the door to a very pregnant Karen.

Superboy, Geo-Force and Forrager arrive at a Quarry for them to train. Jefferson, Tigress, Halo and Dr Jace, are there already and exchange pleasantries before they’re fired at. Nightwing is on the edge of the quarry, testing them with rubber bullets. Halo and Forager adapt quickly, Geo-Force not so much.

Back at the playdate, John Smith arrives at the house with his daughter, Traya, that he created, somehow. We see that Linda Stewart has arrived with her children also, there are only 2 more to arrive.

Geo-Force complains about the training but as Nightwing is about to tell him about preparing for surprise attacks, they get a surprise attack by Lobo. His contract is to kill Forager. They attack him to protect Forager but Lobo is a tough customer. Halo is tasked with flying Forager away but Lobo is having none of it and fires a chain gun which impales Halo.

Halo activates his healing aura to help herself as the others keep Lobo distracted

Back at the playdate the last arrivals are Lois Lane and her son Jonathan. God what I’d give for a super-sons tribute. Anyway, it’s revealed that the guy across the street watching them is Orm, the Ocean Master, he’s about to act but he’s confronted by Lady Shiva, the Light’s hire. She congratulates him on his hard work, a plan the Light have referred to as the Nuclear Option, but the thing about going Nuclear is that you’re pretty much guaranteed retaliation and neutral annihilation. Shiva was sent to stop that and does so be decapitating him. Must be a special sword that pierces Atlantean skin. She cleans up the operation soon after so no-one would ever know.

Back at the quarry, Halo uses her holograms to try and keep Lobo off but it only works for so long, she then uses her yellow aura to blast Lobo, successfully chopping off his finger. Forrager seems to attack from behind and Lobo crushes his shell, he leaves, considering his job completed but it seems that Forrager was able to shed his exo-shell to fool Lobo.

Back in Greater Bialya, turns out that Lobo’s attack was a means of confirming Vertigo’s testimony of what happened at Bedlam. I have a lot of questions as to the logistics but I’m gonna run with it. So, we know 4 members of the Light [Vandal Savage, Lex Luthor, Klarion and Queen Bee] who are the other 3? Well replacing Ra’s al Ghul is Deathstroke, now sans pony tail, replacing the Brain is the Ultra Humanite and finally we have Gretchen Goode. Who promises that a plan is in motion to deal with the Squad.

There are a few issues with how this played out and it takes a while to get going but overall I enjoyed this episode

Rating 7.5/10

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