Stew’s Young Justice Retrospective: Season 2 Episodes 7-8

Launch Party: A Young Justice Retrospective, S2 E7-8

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Episode 7

Image Credit: Warner Bros. Animation

Episode 7 kicks off with our favorite J. Jonah Jameson analogue–who REALLY reads more like a British Tucker Carlson–G. Gordon Godfrey, railing against a satellite shuttle launch to Mars. It’s bad enough aliens are on Earth, he says, now Earth is going off to find more! Pish-posh!

It’s Wally who is watching Godfrey, and he is not best pleased that Artemis is leaving for a mission, having been summoned by Nightwing. We get an ominous “What could go wrong?” before cutting to Nightwing giving a bleeding Artemis CPR then declaring her dead!

Inside Mount Justice ten hours earlier, we get a scene of M’Gann feeding Lagoon Boy crab cakes—which he thinks is amazing, and AT FIRST I was weirded out by, but then I realized we eat cows that live on land with us, so his eating crabs makes sense—and making Superboy annoyed. Super… Supernoy. Ed. Supernoyed.

Artemis tubes in, and everyone is very excited to see her. At the Cape Canaveral launch site, Godfrey interrupts the press conference to bitch about the launch. Superboy and Megan are imitating Superman and Martian Manhunter there so the world doesn’t suspect they are off-Earth. Lagoon Boy is jealous that Megan is with Conner while he is working underwater.

What looks to probably be Black Manta’s forces line up a missile launch on the rocket, unseen by our heroes. Nightwing and Artemis discuss her return for this mission, and she describes the rush that comes with being in the mask. Nightwing knows what she means.

Moving on, we get a heartfelt scene between Conner and Megan! It’s confirmed that he left her because of the methods she started using on the bad guys, leaving them catatonic. Also, she tried to mindwipe him and make him forget he was mad at her! Oh shit! You can’t do that, girl! He also accuses Lagoon Boy of being her rebound boyfriend.

Speaking of! Lagoon Boy discovers Black Manta’s forces underwater. He warns the team, leading to Conner taunting him and LB charging in without backup.

So many action scenes! Megan turns into a mermaid to go help LB. Superboy shoots down land forces from the bio-ship. Lagoon Boy gets taken out by Kaldur, and a missile gets launched at the launchpad! I’m using the word “launch” so much!

Superboy blasts the missile out of the sky, and the fight scene continues! Aqualad takes Lagoon Boy hostage and heads to shore to take control of the ground battle against Nightwing and Artemis, who by this point had turned the tide on his soldiers.

Underwater, M’Gann uses her telekinesis to redirect another missile back into the ship that fired it, thereby presumably killing just so many minions, but this show has always been okay with that. Will Superboy care? No, I’m pretty sure he’s MDK’ed some minions in his day back in season one. But at leas they aren’t catatonic, I suppose?

Anyway, Megan is reeled from the explosion and unable to save Lagoon Boy from being boarded onto Aqualad’s ship.

The satellite is launched early, and Kaldur’s last ditch attempt to shoot it down is thwarted by Artemis. She and Nightwing battle Kaldur, and the former friend stabs Artemis through the chest, leading to the CPR scene we saw earlier. Also, the satellite shuttle just… explodes on its own?

Let’s talk about something that may be my speculating! Artemis isn’t bleeding, then Nightwing puts his hand over her “wound”. We hear a squishy sound, and when he moves his hand, there is blood.

Is… is this all a ploy? And if so, is Kaldur in on it? Did he only pretend to stab her? Hmmmm. I’m sus of all of this.

Aqualad tells his dad that he wasn’t able to stop the launch, but the satellite blew up anyway. Manta is all “LOL yeah, I did that. I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t lie and say you did it”. Haha… what? THAT was your loyalty test, guy? All right.

Oh shit, my prediction is true and revealed way earlier than I expected! Aqualad, Wally, Nightwing, and Artemis all meet up in an underground facility, and we get a different view of the flashback basically showing what I thought actually happened. They are sending Artemis undercover with Aqualad.

Damn, the reveal of Kaldur still being a hero came way earlier than I would have expected. You would think they might have wanted to keep that going for a bit. Huh.

Episode 8

Image Credit: Warner Bros. Animation

At the local medical facility, the original Roy Harper has woken up from his coma, and is… younger than clone Roy Harper? I guess he wasn’t aging while he was in stasis. Oh, he’s also furious about having missed so much of his life. Obviously. Clone Roy and Ollie Queen are there to try to talk him down.

Real Roy doesn’t blame Clone Roy for his missing eight years, but he sure as hell blames Ollie! He calls his former mentor useless and kicks him out. Clone Roy finds Ollie in the hospital chapel. Queen is giving himself a massive guilt trip, but Clone Roy talks him out of it. When they go back to Real Roy’s room, he has left through the window.

Next up we find out there WAS at some point a Jason Todd! There’s a room full of holograms of heroes killed in action, including a Robin. So I guess that happened within the last 5 years? Shouldn’t Bruce still be really torn up about that? Jaime, Bart, Beast Boy, and Robin are admiring the new Artemis hologram in her honor.

Bart and Jaime head out to hang together and see what all they have in common after Bart hears Jaime lament that he never met Ted Kord.

Cut to Wally and Artemis’ mom at her headstone. A really big headstone! Batman must have paid for that. She unintentionally makes him feel like crap for hiding Artemis’ actually being alive.

Further up the hill, Jade and Sportsmaster are also there in secret. Jade wants to kill Aqualad for what he’s done to her sister. Sportsmaster wants to teach Black Manta he can’t have his kids kill Sportsmaster’s.

HOW REFRESHING!

When Jade and her dad started talking about wanting a reckoning, I thought they would boringly blame Young Justice for Artemis’ death, but NOPE! We’re getting their blaming the actual killers and hopefully giving us some heel-on-heel violence. That’s so much more interesting, and I like that Sportsmaster is being a jerk who sees it as a respect issue.

Roy Of The Singular Arm finds one of Oliver’s hideouts and steals some equipment before Zeta Tubing out and blowing up the tube behind him. Queen and Red Arrow figure out he is going after Lex Luthor.

Speedy, across the street from Lex’s skyscraper, SHOOTS A MISSILE AT LEX LUTHOR.

Superboy is on campus with a girl named Wendy. She reminds him of the birthday parties that Megan used to throw for him, allowing us to cut to Megan and Zatanna, with the former being sad that Conner is having a birthday without her there for him. They head to Bumblebee’s bridal shower, and as they toast to Artemis, we pan up and see Captain Cold looking to be planning a bank heist.

Man, this show is NOT kind to Snart, is it? He’s about to rob a bank in front of a whole slew of heroines.

Also, this show’s iteration of Snart is a FAT little dude. Was Cold ever portrayed as chubby aside from here? Where did they get this idea of him?

Lex and Mercy survived the missile strike thanks to his REINFORCED DESK. He grabs a briefcase and the two of them walk calmly out of the explosion. He gets a call from someone he refers to as Otis! I love Easter Eggs!

Lexcorp security goes after Speedy, but he’s gone. He shows up in Luthor’s parking garage and blows up Lex’s car, but Mercy pretty quickly gets the upper hand on him.

Back at the bridal shower, Cold freezes an armored truck. He is then IMMEDIATELY taken down by the girls. Every episode of YJ is pretty much 21:41 on the nose, and I am convinced they threw this scene in just to hit that target.

Back at Lexcorp, Lex gives Speedy his eventual new name by pointing out the Arsenal that Roy has brought to their encounter. Meanwhile, Speedy gives Mercy a hell of a fight! He defeats her and is about to take off Lex’s arm in return for what Lex did to him when security shows up.

Lex shows Speedy what’s in the briefcase—we don’t get to see it yet, but I figured it was… his arm?—and that seems to shock the young hero.

Clone Roy and Oliver finally show up, and Speedy shows them what’s in the case: an advanced model weapon arm that I’m absolutely certain Luthor doesn’t have booby-trapped or anything. Young Roy then says Speedy is gone, and he likes Arsenal as his new name.