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Stew’s Young Justice Retrospective: Season 1, Episodes 3 – 4

November 6, 2023 | Posted by Rob Stewart
Young Justice - Welcome to Happy Harbor Image Credit: Warner Bros. Animation

A Pick-Up Artist’s Guide To Teen Dating: A Young Justice Retrospective, S1 E3-4

Hey, we are back, still doing the first watch through of Young Justice! Let’s get into it.

Episode 3

Image Credit: Warner Bros. Animation

We open up with what appears to be some generic ass thieves robbing shipping containers. The former Speedy, who is… just Roy now, I guess?… shows up to defeat them. One of the thugs turns out to be a metahuman, and we see Young Justice is there to assist their buddy.

They fell the villain and give Roy the pitch to join the team, but he simply insults them and leaves. Jerk! I’m glad you are a heroin addict in a different continuity!

At Mount Justice, Red Tornado shows up to meet the kids, who complain they have not had a mission in a week. Aqualad notes that the team is not a social club; they are there to work on becoming better heroes. In the comics, Young Justice basically WAS just a social club. It started because Robin, Bart, and Superboy just wanted to hang out together. So nyah, show. Nyah!

Kid Flash keeps hitting on M’Gann (who tells everyone to just call her Megan). She and Superboy live in Mount Justice since they don’t have, you know, homes.

So where did Megan live before Young Justice was formed? Did J’onn just have her living in this tunneled out mountain by herself? That’s how you get supervillains.

Anyway, as she is showing them around the mountain, Megan realizes she has burned some cookies she was baking, but Kid Flash eats them anyway to impress her. Aqualad and Kid Flash reveal their identities to everyone (this is obviously Wally and not Bart; Aqualad goes by Kaldur). Robin won’t/can’t reveal his identity, which is a real struggle Tim went through in the comics, so maybe this IS Tim? I’m really frustrated here that the show won’t tell us which Robin this is. He acts most like Damien!

Megan talks to the team through telepathy, and Superboy HATES that and screams at her. This iteration of him is insufferable. But at least he’s wearing the black T-shirt and jeans look; the comics have him back in a costume and the leather jacket these days, which feels like a weird regression.

Also, Megan has her own spaceship! So she takes the boys out for a spin. She shows off that she can shapeshift (turning into female versions of Robin and Wally). She notes she CAN’T do intangibility like Martian Manhunter, so Robin jokes that Wally can’t vibrate through matter either, yet. Aw, look! The characters have room to grow!

The ship gets attacked by a whirlwind after Red Tornado calls them in to check out problems at a power plant. It’s a red android named Mr. Twister. Oh, look: Robin still has that weird laugh thing when he is in the shadows. Ugh. Twister finds the children disturbing; Robin wants to just make “turbed”.

This show really thinks prefixes are hilarious, man.

Megan determines that Twister is Red Tornado since he is red, makes tornadoes, and she can’t read his mind because he’s a robot. So the team starts calling his bluff until he goes “LOL no” and wipes the floor with them. Superboy yells at her again, this time for being wrong.

Quit being an asshole, guy. God, you are the worst here.

During round two, Megan figures out a strategy to defeat Twister, so she calls into Red Tornado. Red shows up and sends the kids home, saying this is his fight. Twister and Red battle, and when Twister looks to have the upper hand, Tornado reveals “he” is actually Miss Martian.

Despite the fact that Megan showed earlier that she has a hard time turning into non-females. She does a perfect Red Tornado. Hmmm.

The team jumps Twister and finally win. A dude comes crawling out from inside him, but Megan fucking crushes him with a boulder, haha! The team starts to flip out at her for murdering a guy, but she reveals that he was a robot, too. Through his eyes, we see some science dudes are watching everything. I’m pretty sure I recognize one of them as Dr. T. O. Morrow.

The episode closes out with Superboy apologizing to Megan for his behavior.

Episode 4

Image Credit: Warner Bros. Animation

Episode four opens NOT with our titular heroic team, but rather, with Bane of all people. He and some minions are being held prisoner, but he is given a chance to fight for his freedom. The people holding him give him his venom, and Bane gets all cocky with it, so OF COURSE the kid he is fighting turns into a giant monster and beats the holy hell out of him. The leader of the gang holding Bane prisoner is Kobra.

After the theme song, we se the kids flying to Santa Prisca, then we immediately get a flashback to Batman giving them the mission to find out why the venom distribution has been interrupted. It’s a recon mission only, he says! The kids ask who is their field leader, and he tells them to sort that out. Robin clearly expects it to be him.

Back in he present time, the team activates their “stealth look”, which are black versions of their costumes so the show could sell more toys. Megan suddenly and clearly has a crush on Superboy, which, after last episode, proves negging is totally a workable strategy. UGH. I hate it!

The kids land, and Robin just straight up vanishes on the team. Superboy has no heat vision, but he’s got all of the other visions (like X-Ray and stuff). Bane and some gangsters attack, and despite working horribly together, the heroes win and subdue them all.

Robin refuses to leave and report back to Batman yet, causing a fight with Wally over who is team leader… and Wally notes Robin is THIRTEEN. Which, okay, at points Robins have been even younger in the comics, but that’s still, like, REALLY young to be acting without an adult, Bruce! What are you doing?!

Bane offers to assist the heroes at getting into Kobra’s lair. They agree because they are stupid children.

Bane gets them in, and Robin and Wally find out the Kobra is mixing venom and the Blockbuster compound from episode one to make Cobra Venom! It’s a pretty good name, I mean. Points for that, I suppose!

A ship lands, and JASON VOORHEES steps out, but no, the show quickly tells me it is SportsMaster. How rad would it have been if the kids had to fight Jason?! Instead, they get “What If A Weaker Captain America Threw Basketballs At You?”.

It turns out SportsMaster’s people are the buyers for Cobra Venom. Bane causes a ruckus to get the kids fighting Kobra’s forces, then he slinks off.

During the fracas, Aqualad is clearly the closest thing to a leader that Young Justice has. He’s the most mature and commanding. After they escape, he points out Robin is too used to working with the Bat, and their relationship is intuitive. So he just expects the team to know what he’s going to do. The team is Robin’s to lead… when he’s ready. But everyone agrees Aqualad should be the boss until then. Robin happily gives him the position. So definitely not Damien then!

Bane turns on them oh no who could ever have seen this coming. He threatens to blow up something, but Kid Flash takes the detonator away from him in the first actually effective use of his speed in the whole series so far. Mostly he just runs at people and gets punched anyway, but finally he moves too fast for someone to see. Superboy then KO’s Bane.

Bane is having a ROUGH episode, y’all. He is 0-3 already. He needs more darkness to be his ally.

We get a final fight, with Megan blowing up SportsMaster’s ship, destroying the Cobra Venom. The team works together and takes out the monster that Kobra made with it. Kobra fights Robin for a while, then fades into the jungle to vanish.

Back home, Batman pulls the whole “YOU DISOBEYED ME AND RUINED EVERYTHING but by the way, good job” trope. He’s proud they chose the right leader. Then we cut to SportsMaster calling in to The Light, and they speculate on being able to reverse-engineer the one vial of Cobra Venom he saved.

Four episodes in! This show has some solid direction, with the kids being mostly really bad at their job and struggling against minor threats. I’m wondering if they are going to have one huge level up, or if it will be a slow progression over the season.

Even individually… Superboy can’t fly or use heat vision. Wally can’t phase; neither can Megan. Also, Wally has only done one thing of note, and that was just swipe a detonator. Robin is still a kid. Only Aqualad really seems put together; I’m surprised he’s okay with hanging out with these losers.

So there is development to come all across the board!

article topics :

Young Justice, Rob Stewart