Now that season 3 is on its way it’s the best time to rewatch the show, preferably on the DC Universe streaming service if you’re in America as that helps support the show directly and hopefully get us more than just season 3. This Re(af)Watch series is not quite a review, more of an opinion piece about each episode as I rewatch them. Covering all 46 episodes of the show’s first 2 seasons, and maybe more. Continuing on with season 2 episode 15 War
Written by: Jon Weisman
Directed by: Mel Zwyer
Episode synopsis: While the Justice League are on trial on Rimbor the alien tyrant Mongul hears of the Reach invasion of Earth and decides to take matters into his own hands, by going off to destroy the planet. His War World causes devastation without firing a shot just by being near Earth, but when the shooting starts the League hold off War World’s weaponry while the Team head inside to stop it. The Reach, wanting to protect their “investment” and seeing no other options, send their own fleet to help, revealing them to Earth. The Team stops Mongul, but as they are all celebrating Blue Beetle takes them all down, with the exception of Arsenal who escapes. The War World and the Team becomes property of the Reach.
We finally get to see some of the trial of the League on Rimbor, and that it’s attracted a bit of a crowd. Earth has been drawn into a wider gaze of the universe and if the Reach and the Kroloteans are anything to judge by that’s not a good thing. Especially since it’s coming from Rimbor, the great hive of scum and villainy, so the nice aliens aren’t going to be coming along to say hello. The trial is also implied to be lasting longer than normal just because the League won’t bride the judges, which is how the legal system works on Rimbor. Those with the most money get to escape justice, while the system punishes the poor who can’t afford the bribes. No true justice exists, with the League trapped by their own honor.
John Stewart gives the Green Lantern’s view of the Reach, that they were an unchecked universe conquering power that took the entire might of the Lantern Corp just to force them to the negotiating table and sign a treaty. That treaty stops them laying claim to worlds, unless invited to first. Which is why they are being very secretive and manipulative in their tactics rather than just using the might of their fleet to force the Earth into submission.
Vandal Savage is also watching and manipulating things from the seats. He gets Mongul to attack Earth, all with his own agenda in mind. The hanging question for the season is “what does The Light get out of all of this” as we see them setting up, manipulating things, and helping out both the Kroloteans and the Reach, with no real obvious benefit for them. That does remain unanswered until the end of the season, That’s a surprising amount of time given we keep seeing The Light being involved in everything. It’s also another component in what makes the show more “binge watchable” with it’s longer story arcs and the waits for payoffs.
It’s a little bit funny seeing the Reach bringing in the League to solve their problem for them, almost like The Light does. The League wouldn’t have any of the data or intel required to launch the attack on War World without the Reach’s help. They still would’ve done something against Mongul and the War World, but been far less effective than the surgical strike they managed to do.
The three pronged mission was a very clever distribution of characters for such a large mission and utilising all of them in the space of 20 minutes. This was apparently the very first idea they had for how to do episodes about a big team of heroes, because they all have to do something as they can’t all attack Mongul at once, that’d be too cluttered of an action sequence. Not to mention kind of boring for an entire episode. They couldn’t use the idea until now because they needed to set everything up so War World could show up and do something for the plot. So in a sense the whole show has been building towards this episode, in a very loose sense at least.
The thing that grabbed me about the three missions was that they weren’t all part of one big interconnected plan, that each of them had to be successful or else the entire thing would fall apart. This was a big threat and each mission was a different way to stop that threat, because the chances were that any or all of them could fail. It’s a very pragmatic way to plan the mission, which does fit Nightwing’s character pretty well. In the end it needed both Alpha and Gamma Squads to stop Mongul, which helped cement him as a powerful foe. He couldn’t be stopped by any one plan and wiped the floor with Alpha Squad while his robot forces were stopping the other two squads. It also means that if he ever shows up again he’ll still be a force to be reckoned with as he doesn’t have the vulnerability of being mentally connected to War World anymore. That’s how you make a physically powerful villain and defeat them without taking away the threat of them for the next time they appear.
This episode also concluded a small subplot between Mal and Karen, their struggling relationship. Not really something I felt like talking about since they were pretty small and isolated scenes in the couple of episodes they showed up in. It’s a minor subplot but it does deal with high school relationships and how people grow and change from high school to adulthood, so that relationship struggles or collapses. Karen is going her own way, being a scientist and researching under Dr Ray Palmer, Mal meanwhile is stuck wanting to keep the relationship the same while frustrated that Karen’s career is stymieing that. It’s an issue where Mal needs to adapt to the changes and Karen needs to have time for the relationship if she wants to keep it. And also to talk to each other about it, they literally solved their problems quickly just by talking and listening to each other. Which is certainly a nice change of pace for TV relationship dramas.
This subplot did give some screen time to the two minor characters from season 1 that became main characters in season 2. I think it was a good way to showcase more of the timeskip changes, with not only Mal and Karen being heroes but also the relationship struggling with the growth and change of time. It was also a fun reversal of the standard generic plot, Karen is the one who is a hero and Mal is only there as a tag-along at first before he dons a costume too. Karen got superpowers and became a hero on her own, no plot with her just being a hero because she’s just the girlfriend of “the real hero” which older comics did a fair number of times.
Arsenal’s trauma rears its head at the end when he is facing imminent capture once again, the stress and anxiety of it causes him to blow the airlock as a way to try and stop Blue Beetle; which nearly gets the Team sucked out into space and killed. You can’t really fully blame him for that when he’s obviously still got a lot of trauma he needs to work at, but it does mean he should be in therapy and dealing with it rather than running around with enough weapons and explosives to blow up a spaceship. He’s not someone who should be out there with people relying on him because this is the second time he’s nearly gotten the Team killed. He needs time to heal, not running into situations that’s going to trigger his trauma and make him a danger to himself and others. But knowing the Roys, all of them, they are all too stubborn to get the help that they need unless pushed into it by someone else. Even then it’s likely they’ll push that away too.
Mongul makes a big splash as our new villain for the episode and voiced by the ever magnificent Keith David. Mongul was created in 1980 and has since been known as one of the bigger Superman villains, not as big as the main four but he’s still up there. When created he was thought of as a Thanos knock-off, who himself was thought of as a Darkseid knock-off, talk about recursion, but he’s certainly no pushover. The popular conception of him is as a tyrant of War World which, while still being an artificial satellite planet, was a place for Mongul to hold gladiatorial matches while going from star system to star system enslaving new races and champions for his arena. So this seems like a bit of a change from the comics, but his original story had him deposed as ruler of his homeworld and getting Superman to steal the key to War World so he could rule his homeworld once again. Superman and Supergirl fight him and beat him by overloading his mental connection to the war World. So what seems like a departure was sticking pretty close to his first story. Though I’m pretty sure him getting powered up by Earth’s yellow sun was an invention by the show, but I don’t know for certain. It still was a great and simple way to say how big of a threat he is by that connection to Superman’s powers.
What is interesting in the show is that Mongul was deposed by an even bigger and more powerful tyrant. One so powerful Mongul needs to conquer the galaxy in order to challenge him. Which to me suggests The Light’s other partner, the one who supplies them with New Gods technology, who is “unspeakable.” That would be a good way of showing how dangerous and devastating he is given that Mongul and his War World would not stand up to his might. It’s setting that up subtly, so when they eventually do that story he’s not just some new guy who we’ve never heard of before yet have to treat as a big deal; as we have already seen what a scary big deal he is.
This is another favorite episode of the season. The big episodes that involved the Team and the League taking on a big threat are always well done and this one is no different. Really well staged action sequences that emphasis how huge the threat is, they never feel mundane or routine, they are a special event that doesn’t happen very often. Like Dr Fate showing up to destroy War World’s main weapon cannon, that’s just a cool badass moment. You can’t do an entire series of these episodes, that would make then routine, saving them for once or twice a season helps make them stand out and feel important.
One thing I have just noticed is that it’s a little weird that the show was all about the relationships in season 1 and now it only really has two as smaller subplots. Just Mal and Karen and then M’gann and La’gaan/Superboy. That’s part of the shift from being a character focused show to a story focused one. It’s just different, not inherently good or bad, depending how how well you liked or disliked the relationships on the show. Makes me wonder how season 3 will play things.
Little things I liked: Kroloteans calling the Earthlings savages just because they won’t bribe the judges, says a lot about them. Keith David! Seeing the real world impacts of War World being near Earth, because something of that size and mass would effect the Earth. The Reach Scientist and Black Beetle’s not too happy looks as the Ambassador sacrifices two thirds of their fleet, along with exposing said fleet. Mal’s very passive aggressive comments to Karen, they were just so incredibly passive aggressive. Blue Beetle taking out the larger threats from the Team when he turns on them, showing the Scarab’s more efficient line of thinking. Keith David!
Quote of the episode:
“This is your attack force? I’m insulted.” Mongul
“Learn to cope.” Superboy
Quote that takes on a new meaning after watching the series:
“… exploits or expands [Earth’s] Meta population, does that not have long term implications for who rules the galaxy.” Vandal Savage, maybe giving a hint at The Light’s own goals in this.
“He was ousted by another tyrant.” Green Beetle about Mongul
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