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Stew’s Young Justice Retrospective: Season 2, Episodes 3 – 4
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Animation
Blow: A Young Justice Retrospective, S2 E3-4
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Episode 3
Bumblebee and Blue Beetle show up in Metropolis to Bibbo’s Diner! Hey, it’s Bibbo! Is he still in Superman books? I haven’t thought of Bibbo in ages, man. He was a mainstay around the Death Of Superman era in the 90’s! What has he been up to? Does he still have his dog named Krypto?
Anyway, Bibbo sees them and bolts! What?! I won’t stand for a villainous Bibbo! But as he flees, he comes across the REAL Bibbo, who clocks his lights out. As the heroes catch up, we see a Krolotean crawl out of the mechanized body of the fallen Bibbo. He escapes them in a ship faster than Beetle can track, and he makes it to the safety of Black Manta, who helps him escape.
Back at Star Labs, the heroes from Rann return with Adam Strange hyping the technology to stop the Kroloteans from Zeta Tubing to Earth. Miss Martian shows the Leaguers that the team who went missing for 16 hours went on a rampage on Rimbor and declared the Justice League of Earth was out for the whole galaxy. This is what brought Earth to the Kroloteans’ attention.
So are the Kroloteans misunderstood good guys then? They were just coming to Earth because the League threatened other sentient beings’ lives.
Also, this totally means Batman has killed innocent alien beings.
At the Hall Of Justice, Miss Martian and Superboy see J’onn trying to get info from a captured Krolotean. Batman says he has been at it for hours, but Megan just goes “fuck this noise” under everyone’s nose and mindzaps the Krolotean into a comatose state and pulls the info out of its brain: there is a base on Malina Island.
At the island, we get a surprise reveal: Aqualad is the new Black Manta! Well, he is like Black Manta Jr, I guess. The real BM is his dad, and Kaldur is working for him.
As the team shows up—Batman, Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl, Aquaman, and Lagoon Boy—we get translation of the Kroloteans talking to each other, saying their real nemesis is someone or something called “The Competitor”. Hmmm. The Competitor is the one who hired Lobo to track one of them down.
The fight breaks out between the team (an inconvenient-to-refer-to mix of two Justice Leaguers and a few Young Justice kids) and Kaldur’s forces, and a shadowy figure runs in and presses some buttons, unseen to anyone. Even Batman! Take THAT, World’s Greatest Detective. Killing innocent aliens has robbed you of your edge! The shadowy guy is apparently Kaldur’s partner, and the button he pressed was to arm a bomb.
Superman, Superboy, Wonder Woman, and Wonder Girl show up as backup, and we see Superman and Superboy get along now, which is nice for Conner, though this show REALLY hates showing me the How’s of things happening. I really do like the 5 year mystery gap of this season, but a lot of things feel like Rocket’s joining of the team at the end of season one: just because.
Anyway, Kaldur loses his helmet during the fight, and that makes Aquaman supersad to see that it’s true that he has turned heel. We get some exposition that Kaldur turned after Tula died while Young Justice was on a mission. He fires a missile that Superman stops, but he vanishes in the ensuing explosion.
The team evacuates from the impending bomb, but Superman stays behind to do Superman things. He tries to get the Kroloteans to flee before the bomb kills them, but they don’t believe him, and the explosion goes off, taking them all. And Supes. But you have to assume he is okay, what with being Superman and all.
We get a zoomed out view showing the island and the curvature of the Earth with the bomb blast going off, and that is VERY Dragon Ball Z of this show all of the sudden.
Aquaman rescues a KO’ed Superman, and Batman tells Nightwing it will be up to Young Justice to figure out what’s going on.
The wrap-up sees Black Manta get a call from Vandal Savage welcoming him to The Light; he reports their shadowy partner is the Kroloteans’ competitor. And The Justice League head back to Rimbor to face trial for their actions five years ago…
Episode 4
A derelict looking Red Arrow stops a store robbery, but pockets a wad of the cash before handing the rest back to the store clerk. Oh man, is Roy chasing the dragon already? That’s a bit heavy for this show! YOUR WARD IS A JUNKIE, OLIVER QUEEN.
Speaking of: Green Arrow is spying on Roy from afar and says he is in worse shape than they thought.
At Mount Justice, Adam Strange completes the Zeta Tube blocker, putting the shield up and keeping Earth safe from more Kroloteans beaming in. Conner laments that the shield won’t stop spaceships or Boom Tubes, and–for the first time–we hear The Scarab talk to Jaime Reyes instead of just getting Jaime’s responses to a voice we do not hear.
The latter was more fun.
Superboy hears that Nightwing is taking the night off, so instead of being around Megan and Lagoon Boy, he grabs Jaime and says he wants to take the night off, too.
We see Roy stumble off a zip line and fall at Green Arrow’s feet. Along with Ollie are Black Canary, Nightwing, Wally, and… some other redhead I don’t recognize. Maybe it is Guardian, so the voice actor can literally talk to himself?? I do not know. Ollie calls Roy out on the stolen cash, and Roy says he needs the money to find the real Speedy.
Superboy tells Blue Beetle they are investigating the source of the bomb that blew up the island full of Kroloteans since it was alien in origin. They are tracking some Intergang leaders to see if they had anything to do with smuggling a weapon like that to Earth through Boom Tubes.
Jaime explains The Scarab to Superboy, and we find out that sometime in the last 5 years, The Light killed the original Ted Kord. Whisper and Bruno of Intergang are taking a briefcase to the Hall Of Justice, but it’s empty at this time of day.
Derelict Roy says he is in the best shape of his life, so Black Canary whips his ass to prove he is lying. Roy mopes that his body is just a clone, so who cares how he treats it? LIKE WITH HEROIN, RIGHT?
Bruno Manheim uses a transmitter device from the briefcase to activate four statues in the Hall Of Justice, who then Voltron themselves together into a threat to fight Superboy. Blue Beetle, meanwhile, starts flipping out at the signal from the transmitter.
Superboy and Wolf fight the monstrosity, and the Super-Cycle negates the Apokoliptan signal from the device, allowing Jaime to get into the fight. He isn’t in it for long before the beast turns Beetle’s blaster against the heroes, and–while they are down–Bruno and Whisper fly away with him. Or it. Whatever the creature is.
Guardian (it IS Guardian! Huzzah!) tries to get through to Roy about being a clone. He notes everyone has tried to find the original Roy Harper, but he is certainly dead. Cadmus did not keep source material alive, apparently.
Superboy schools Beetle on the elemental monster they just fought and how its crystal components can redirect sonic attacks. When they track Intergang down, the Super-Cycle jams their signal again, causing the beast to go nuts. It smacks around the Intergang bosses, leaves the heroes in a heap, and heads towards a nearby nuclear power plant. Only Homer Simpson can stop it now!
At the plant, we see the shadowy figure from last episode (or an entirely different shadowy figure because, you know, I can’t see who it is!) and Sportsmaster watching the goings-on.
Real weird that someone who just spends all of his time hiding in shadows is part of The Light, right?
Homer Simpson be damned, our heroes get back up and get back into the fight! But they continue to be ineffective.
We cut back to mopey Roy! He notes that Wally has retired from superheroics, but more importantly, he tells the team to blow him as he leaves. I rewound three times to make sure I heard what he heard. “Write me off. Or don’t. Either way: blow”. CLASSY, derelict Roy. Classy. I hope they sold Shitbagged Roy action figures from this season so I could tell the rest of my toys to suck it.
You know who isn’t blowing? Superboy, Blue Beetle, Wolf, and the Super-Cycle. Beetle starts communicating with the big beastie through sonics and finds out it just wants to die because its existence is pain. Superboy promises to help it, but from behind them, the shadow figure launches a Blue Beetle-like attack that destroys it. Then they go back to Whisper and Manheim and find them in some kind of vegetative state. Sportsmaster reports back to the shadow figure (who I assume now is an evil Scarab) that he was responsible for that.
We see Wally head home–where he has made a life for himself with Artemis, who greets him wearing nothing but a football jersey. That is one (1) more article of clothing than she refers to as “fun”, remember? This children’s cartoon is very sexy!
Roy also returns home, and we discover in the intervening 5 years he married Cheshire, and that she left him… to go have their child! Oh man! She left because Roy was obsessed with finding Speedy, so she called in all of her favors and got them one last lead to put his quest to bed forever so he can be the man their baby needs…
Okay, this five year jump is really working out. I have so many questions! And I like where this season is going. If there is a problem, it’s that there are too many Young Justice members and core characters now, so folks like Beast Boy and Wonder Girl and Batgirl and Robin feel like they are going to be in the background all season while we focus on the original gang getting Kaldur back, Roy’s quest, and Blue Beetle fighting another, eviler Beetle.
