After a long hiatus we are back! Continuing on with season 2 of Young Justice, and things have changed. I started this Re(af)Watch in order to help spread the word about binge watching the show on Netflix to help get a third season, well the show’s getting a third season! Coming to the DC Universe streaming service in America, and other unannounced places outside of America. There is however a new campaign for more Young Justice content, to bring back to tie-in comic series that was written by series co-creator Greg Weisman and artiest Christopher Jones. The goal is to show DC that fans will buy new Young Justice comics by purchasing the old tie-in comic series on Comixology, the digital comics service, or reading it on the DC Universe App. The comics are all in canon and if in well with what we see in the show. There is a new comic being made exclusive to the DCU App, but it’s just a single issue and not an ongoing series. So if you can do so then buy the comics, but even if you can’t for whatever reason then share this info with others and help get the word out. And now, without further ado, onto season 2 episode 1, Happy New Year.
Written by: Greg Weisman
Directed by: Tim Divar
Episode synopsis: Set five years after the end of last season, there’s a new Team, some old members are missing, and there’s some new menace on the horizon. Alien bounty hunter Lobo comes to collect the Secretary General of the UN, who was secretly an alien known as a Krolotean, this sparks an outrage of anti-alien fearmongering and a hunt for other Krolotean’s in hiding. The Team starts tracking them down and Gamma Squad (consisting of Robin, Blue Beetle, and Lagoon Boy) find one of their secret bases and free their prisoners before it explodes. Meanwhile the Justice League has found out they were branded as space criminals in the missing 16 hours under Vandal Savage’s control and send Miss Martian, Beast Boy, Superboy, and Adam Strange to the alien planet Rann to investigate.
To start off with the series has been retitled Young Justice Invasion and consisted of only 20 episodes instead of the 26 episode count season 1 got. I don’t know exactly why it didn’t get 26 episodes, I do know originally it only got picked up as a 10 episode “mini-series” and then Cartoon Network doubled the episode order. Which is a shame because there were stories planned for those extra 6 episodes that sadly didn’t get made. Co-creator Greg Weisman has said some of the ideas included following up on stories from season 1, including Zatanna trying to get her father back and more of Red Tornado’s plot, but we don’t know exactly how things would’ve played out. Maybe those stories could be told in the tie-in comic if that comes back. *unsubtle hint*
The Invasion title is not only fitting for season arching story but also for what it symbolically represents just as a new title. The show is different now, things have changed, this isn’t the same as season 1 in both big and small ways. There’s been a timeskip of 5 years between the end of season 1 and the start of season 2, with this episode beginning on New Years Day just as season 1 ended at the beginning of New Years Day. I’m not going to go into the minutia of the timeskip here, the usual fandom debate of if it was a good idea or not, why it was done, the problems with it, I just don’t want to bog down this Re(af)Watch too much. The short answer for why it was done is because the show is about growing up and in order to best play with those themes they had all the characters grow up from teenagers into young adulthood.
What has changed, just based on this episode, is that Robin has become Nightwing and there’s a new Robin (Tim Drake), Nightwing, Superboy, and Miss Martian are leading a new Team of heroes and have a larger operation than they did in season 1, they are now in charge of themselves rather than just taking orders from the Justice League (though they are still an arm of the League and coordinate with them), Zatanna and Rocket have recently joined the League proper, Aqualad, Kid Flash, and Artemis are absent so far. Captain Atom is also leading the Justice League now too, though not stated directly it is implicit in his larger role and him being the one taking the lead in the briefings. The League have annual changes in command so it’s not always Superman or Batman in charge all the time, which is prudent given certain developments this season.
The new Team is an interesting mix, Blue Beetle, Lagoon Boy, Wonder Girl, and the new Robin are all fresh faces for the show (though Lagoon Boy had an appearance in season 1 in Downtime in the background). Beast Boy, Batgirl, Bumblebee, and Mal were all introduced as civilians in season 1, even in a minor way like the Barbara Gordon cameo in Homefront and non-speaking roles in Misplaced and Failsafe. They each got some screen time and a small (re)introduction, some more than others for obvious time reasons, and it was a decent way to quickly show off these new heroes. Even trying to work in everyone’s name into the episode for the audience who aren’t familiar with all of them. The Zeta Tube announcements really helped in that regard as it listed off everyone when they come out of it. My only complaint about that is they could’ve had close up shots of each character as their names are read off, to more easily establish them. But given that these are comic book superheroes it’s not hard to tell who each of them are by name, Bumblebee shrinks, has wings, and a yellow costume, Blue Beetle is the only one primarily blue, Beast Boy has animal features, etc. So it’s not a big loss, it just might’ve been nice to see that.
The episode does a lot because it has to introduce new characters, re-establish the old characters, and also the changes that’s happened in those 5 years. So we get quick dialog saying Nightwing used to be the old Robin but has grown-up to become Nightwing; and the writers try their best to make it seem as natural as possible. Though I do remember some complaints that those establishing bits of dialog were stilted and forced. Honestly that’s bound to happen no matter how well you do it because you need to establish character names so the audience can get attached to them, and trying to do that in a natural way with so many characters and only 22 minutes of screen time is not really possible. It’s just something that has to happen to properly establish things. I have seen comic writer Gail Simone called out some recent comics for not saying character names in their first issue, saying how important it is to get those names out there no matter what. Having some stilted dialog is better than having the audience wonder who most of the characters are, because not everyone knows that Robin becomes Nightwing and this could be their first introduction to Nightwing. It’s a necessary evil that pops up in the early episodes of season 2 with the need to re-establish characters and plot points from season 1.
One of them did strike me as a little odd because the beginning of the episode was a clip from the end of season 1, where Batman questions where Vandal Savage sent the League for 16 hours under mind control, but then it’s later re-re-established by Captain Atom halfway through the episode. I’m not sure it needed to be said twice in the same episode. It being said at the beginning at least sets it up as the big story for the season, not the mystery of it but as the fallout from Savage’s actions and what The Light had been setting up at the end of season 1. Because the the question of what happened got solved pretty quickly, as Adam Strange shows the League they’re considered wanted criminals in one part of the galaxy.
Which does beg the question as to why the Green Lanterns didn’t know about it given John Stewart is on one of those wanted posters. We do find out Rimbor, the planet they attacked, is considered a ‘big hive of scum and villainy’ so not exactly the type to go to the Green Lanterns to file a complaint about a Lantern. Another point to consider is that the Lanterns bosses, the Guardians of the Universe, have been known to keep things from the Lanterns. So they could’ve found out about it and that Stewart was under mind control at the time, and decided it was in their best interests to not spread that information. Though this is all speculation on my part. Some fans have also questioned why Batman never thought they’d have been sent into space, which is reasoning from fans that have come to expect Batman to be able to solve anything and everything. There was no evidence they’d been sent to another planet or that The light’s plans went beyond their own planet, even though they know about The Light’s partner with Boom Tubes and New Gods tech they don’t have a way to contact New Genesis to really do much about it. The universe is a very big place and they have very limited resources to search it, even with the Green Lantern Corps help they still had no clue what to look for.
It was however a great reason to have the Team more involved in the situation rather than it just being a League matter that happened off-screen. With the League being considered wanted criminals sending them to investigate would be foolish, but since the Team are separate from the League they are free to go to Rann and find out more. It also plays into their nature as a covert operations arm of the League, going off to investigate while trying not to get noticed. It shows how much growth has occurred for the Team and the League given I doubt they would’ve been allowed to go unsupervised to an unknown alien planet with no backup or communications in season 1. So the Team has gotten more respect and responsibility from the League.
Lobo, the Main Man himself, got a small role to start the episode out, but it was an important one never the less given it set the entire alien plot rolling. Lobo’s take here is a little different than usual since he is more of a comedy character and originally meant to be a parody of dark and gritty characters of the 80s. Here he’s played a little straighter than we’ve seen before but given his appearance was short and he wasn’t the main antagonist of the episode it wasn’t jarring. They did a good job showing him as an unstoppable badass who is a gruff space biker bounty hunter. What helped was Wonder Girl’s general disbelief towards him and the events. There were some jokes there too, including Wonder Girl calling him “Clown Face” and I did get a laugh at some of Lobo’s dialog. It was also nice that we got alien dialog from both him and the Kroloteans and none of it was subtitled. It really helped project their alien otherness to the audience. Also it was superbly done by voice actors, voice directors, and the animators, that the audience could get the gist of what was being said without needing a translation. Even when Lobo did activate his translator there was still certain alien words in there that the audience could work out for themselves based on the acting and the context.
With Lobo saying he’s been contracted to “put on a show” it definitely seems like The Light was involved with this. Them outing the existence of the Kroloteans to the world fits in with their long term plans this season and using another alien to do so gets the world to worry about multiple alien threats. Does make me wonder what they had Lobo do with their Krolotean prisoner, he had to be delivering them somewhere after all. Was Vandal Savage just waiting on another planet for him? And did The Light keep the Krolotean? I’d imagine The Brain would have wanted to as he’d like to dissect as many aliens as he can get his hands on, for the advancement of his twisted science experiments.
Time for the season 2 recurring segment, the G. Gordon Godfrey Hour. I don’t want to get very political on this blog, but if I’m going to talk about season 2 I’d be doing a disservice to you, the show, and this blog by omitting it. G. Gordon is a TV news pundit voiced by the superb Tim Curry, created by Jack Kirby in the 70s and then in the 80s Len Wein and John Ostrander re-purposed him as a powerful public personality that’d sway public opinion against superheroes. He’s always been a political character by his very nature, so it’s unsurprising how well the character adapts to the modern age of TV pundits who stir up public opinion. He’s a loud shouty obnoxious man who rants about aliens coming to do nasty things and the American people should be very afraid of everyone because they could look just like your next door neighbor. The direct parallels are rather obviously Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reilly, but again it should be noted G. Gordon was like that before those parallels existed, even the version on the old Justice League cartoon was like this. So there’s no escaping from it, especially considering the comics story the show is pulling from, to remove G. Gordon would make for a lesser story.
So he’s ranting and raving that the evil aliens are everywhere and no one can be trusted, even the Justice League has aliens in it and maybe even hiding some as well. It is one of those deftly made points to stir doubt and mistrust in others, the public doesn’t know who else in the League is an alien and why would they hide it. Maybe one of them is an alien infiltrator waiting for the invasion fleet to arrive before turning on the League to wipe them out. Maybe crazy talk, maybe not, certainly something that’d run through Jo Public’s mind. Even sprinkled in a little truth when listing possible alien League members, with Hawkman and Icon actually being aliens that haven’t disclosed that fact to the public. What’s funny, in a sad depressing way, is that G. Gordon is kinda tame compared to what we have today, especially from the internet. The tactics are the same, spin anything and everything to fit the narrative and conveniently ignore and omit facts that disprove that narrative, but he seems relatively subdued compared to the likes of all the alt-right youtubers. Which is unsettling given it’s only been 6 years yet the loud shouty men stirring up hate have only gotten worse.
In a subtle little bit when mentioning the name of the League liaison, Catherine Colbert, he really put an emphasis on the French surname. It’s another subtle thing that gets used by these types of people, aggressively reminding his audience that she’s a foreigner without actually saying it. That builds a disconnect between her and G. Gordon’s American audience, pushing her into the ‘other’ and ‘alien’ boxes and by extension the League as well. It’s just a small thing right now, but if he keeps building on that and re-enforcing the idea that the League aren’t good old trustworthy Americans like himself and his audience then he can push the idea that the League don’t have their best interests in mind. Specifically about alien matters, why should they trust that the League will put hard-working Americans before a bunch of aliens when there’s so many aliens in their ranks? We’ll be seeing more of G. Gordon as the series goes on, as well as his anti-alien and anti-Justice League tactics.
On the more controversial side of things, at least to the Young Justice fandom, Lagoon Boy. I don’t believe I’m overstating things when I call him the most hated character in the fandom. He is still hated by some fans, though I think the majority have gotten used to him and their initial complaint against him doesn’t apply anymore. He has an obnoxious personality and, because of the timeskip, just dating M’gann out of the blue. So fans were really annoyed at this guy who seems designed to be hated. He’s the Guy Gardner of the show, and I can’t help but like that he’s here. I do like when we see that being one of the good guys doesn’t mean they’re automatically likeable or not a bit of an ass. There’s a big cast of heroes and it’s nice to see some personality clashes and character conflicts, that’s why Guy Gardner and Booster Gold work so well in these teams. I can certainly understand why he’s so hated, but I see the charm in having a character like this around and how it changes the group dynamic.
Blue Beetle was another new recruit that’ll be getting more of a spotlight as the season goes on. It’s a little interesting seeing how coy the show is with him at first. He’s talking to himself a lot and it comes off as a little odd, which is the intent. They don’t say what’s going on with him till the forth episode, so if you didn’t know about him before this show no doubt he came off as an odd one. Putting the audience in the same position as the rest of the Team, no one knows exactly what this guy’s deal is or how to react to him being like that. Now this is minimised by the Batman the Brave and the Bold cartoon, which had just finished airing about five months before Young Justice season 2 started, and Blue Beetle was a big recurring guest star on that show. So it’s not a big stretch to say there might be some crossover between the audiences for two shows. Now not everyone in the audience would’ve watched Brave and the Bold, but there’s less of a risk of alienating the audience with his unexplained character quirks so the show can let it simmer a little while before going into it in detail. Plus given the overstuffed nature of this episode not shoving in an explanation for why he talks to himself is a good thing. Might even build a little mystery and intrigue for the audience.
The other thing I suppose I should mention is that Jaime is Hispanic, and one of his linguistic quirks is saying Spanish words and phrases. As with most of the linguistic quirks of the show some fans did complain about it, much like Lagoon Boy saying “Neptune’s Beard” or M’gann’s “Hello Megan” or even Robin’s word of the day stuff. Some fans thought it was stereotyping, others said they know people that do talk exactly like Jaime, and I can’t really judge it. I’m a white guy from the UK who has never met any El Paso teenagers so I can’t weigh in on if this is realistic or not. I will say while it was noticeable it didn’t annoy me, and I am willing to give people the benefit of the doubt when they say they know people who talk exactly like Jaime. I know some fans like to pick the show up on the non-English speaking parts of the show, but I am happy that the show tries to present a more global feel rather than just having everyone and everything in the world/universe be in American English. It might not be perfect but I believe the creators tried their best.
I’m a big fan of Jaime Reyes from the initial John Rogers, Keith Giffen, and Cully Hammer, run on the character, and this show pulls a lot from that run. Though I do think the comics did things better, and it is sad that none of his great supporting cast got a chance to show up, but it can’t be helped. The comics had the advantage of focusing solely on him so they could go deeper into the character, the supporting cast, and show off how amazing he is. The show however is a big ensemble piece, he’s a bigger cog in this story than some other characters but it should be about the Team as a whole not just one single character. All I can say is to read those comics if you liked Blue Beetle here because you’ll love those comics.
This was a good start to the season that has to do some heavy lifting by re-establishing so many things and setting up so much more. While it was kind of self contained it was also not in the way season 1 was. It had a conclusion, with a mirror of the ending of the season 1 opening episode, and some resolution but it was one mission out of a larger investigation. So instead of just ending on Gamma Team’s victory the final scene was Superboy, Miss Martian, and Beast Boy arriving on Rann, directly setting up the next episode. Giving the impression that while it’s still the same show they’re doing things differently now. This season is more story focused while season 1 was more character focused, not to say this season lacks character focus because that’s still there too just that the story is given more emphasis. Whether that’s good or bad comes down to personal opinion, I liked how they changed things up structurally because it adds to the sense of change from the timeskip.
Little things I liked: the opening fight with Clayface, just a good way to introduce the new Team and also have a fake-out of it being the old Team. That also has a reference to the tie-in comic with Clayface saying “you always fall for this gag.” I liked that Clayface has adapted to the method they used to incapacitate him in season 1, but we also see that the Team has adapted too. Wonder Girl’s epic Lobo punch, so powerful it sent shockwaves breaking all the nearby windows. Wonder Girl being visibly muscular was great, getting some diverse body types for the women, and it makes sense that out of all the women on the Team she’s the most buff. Batgirl was pretty awesome too, wish we could’ve had more of her. The very creepy Krolotean reveal music sting was very effective. When G. Gordon had video footage of the Krolotean it was new animation and they didn’t just reuse the earlier sequence. That’s just a pet peeve of mine when TV shows and movies do that, live action as well as animation. I just start thinking about how they got that camera angle, especially when it would be impossible to have a camera there.
Little thing I didn’t like: I miss the title sequence. I know not having a title sequence is the modern thing to do, but I still miss TV shows having good title sequences and theme music. At least it’s sort of come back with streaming shows and I hope Young Justice season 3 has a title sequence again.
Quote of the episode:
“Stay liquid Minos.” La’gaan
“Your world’s your world.” Lobo
These two just tickle me. They feel like alien phrases but ones you can immediately grasp and recognize.
Quote that takes on new meaning:
“Just don’t die” Nightwing to Robin
This one’s more dependant on if you know about the Jason Todd Robin when first seeing the episode. If you don’t know then you find out in a future episode, but if you do know then you already got the meaning when you first saw it.
