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 10 Before The Dawn
Written by: Kevin Hopps
Directed by: Tim Divar
Episode synopsis: With intel gotten from Kaldur gained in the previous episode the Team infiltrate one of Black Manta’s kidnapping shipments to The Light’s Partner in order to rescue their captured friends. Inside Jaime meets the Partner, an alien race called the Reach, who also made the Scarab. The plan goes well, they rescue the captured civilians and their friends, but encounter Black Beetle and barely make it out alive. Bart reveals to Jaime that one of the reasons he went back in time was to stop the Reach getting him On-Mode and becoming a deadly Reach enforcer, like Black Beetle. M’gann also shreds Kaldur’s mind in revenge for killing Artemis, but in doing so she sees that it was all a ruse and Artemis is really Tigress, and she has a breakdown. At the end, just as they are going to expose the Reach to the world the Reach does it first, publicly making first contact and gaining public support.
Wrapping up the last episode’s plot with a bang, and of course setting up the second half of the season with the full introduction to The Light’s new Partner, the Reach. Aliens who created Blue Beetle’s Scarab and they have eyes on Earth’s Meta-Humans, along with Earth in general. They are experimenting with the Meta-Gene, trying to cause it in non-superpowered humans and extract it from the superpowered humans. We see that they are a big threat not only from the likes of Black Beetle, who can trounce all of the Team, even their powerhouses like Wonder Girl and Superboy, but also that they can easily outmanoeuvre the Team by going public before the Team can even sort themselves out.
We get to see some more of Bart’s future and find out the Reach has not only conquered the Earth but turned Blue Beetle back On-Mode and made him their chief enforcer. Given how tough Black Beetle was the On-Mode Blue seems bigger and meaner than even him, which seems like really bad news. So Bart buddying up with Jaime was not accidental but as a way to keep an eye on him to stop him ever coming On-Mode. Now whether that future On-Mode Blue Beetle we see is in fact Jaime or someone else the Reach put the Scarab on, like it was suggested they’d do in this episode, is anyone’s guess. The fact of the matter is that either way they have to keep the Scarab out of the Reach’s hands.
Blue Beetle’s origin also got shown off a bit, as we see the explosion at Kord Industries and the Scarab attach itself to Jaime’s back. It looked quite horrific, with it fusing to him and then overtaking his body. It kind of reminds me of the Manga/Anime series Guyver, where an alien bioarmour weapon fuses with a teenage boy in a horrific manner, and also it lands by the teenager after an explosive battle with people trying to steal it. That stuff was in the original Blue Beetle comic too so I’m not suggesting that it was a deliberate homage by the show, it’s just a funny connection I made. The show already has a few visuals inspired by Anime, for example Mercy’s gun arm looks similar to gun arms used in Ghost in the Shell. Young Justice is not even the first DC show to visually reference Anime, Batman The Animated Series did it too. The two-parter Heart of Steel had robots with movements based on Urotsukidōji Legend of the Overfiend (yes that infamous Anime), Kevin Altieri mentions it as inspiration on the audio commentary for the episode. I’m sure that’s not the only Anime influence either, in that same commentary they mention they are all Anime fans and that it has inspired lots of their work. I think almost all the DC cartoons had some anime influence, and of course Teen Titans wears its Anime inspirations on its sleeve. Just felt like sharing some random Anime trivia.
We get an explanation for the Meta-Gene this episode, after it had been previously mentioned in Bloodlines when the Reach were experimenting on Neutron. It’s the official term for why humans have superpowers, no one has coined the term Meta-Human yet but that can’t be too far away. It’s a general catch-all name for superhumans that makes it sound all official and fancy, but it’s also an easier way of explaining superpowers. The idea is that some people have the Meta-Gene and they live perfectly normal lives until some external event activates the gene which lets the body adapt and survive. A science experiment gone wrong, deadly unknown chemicals, radiation, all the classic superpower origins, they trigger the gene. But if you don’t have the gene then you react like a normal human would, and probably die given some of these origins. Of course just having superpowers doesn’t make someone a Meta-Human, Miss Martian and Superman are just a natural Martian and Kryptonian, Wonder Woman was sculpted out of clay and given life by the gods or just a natural Amazon (depending on whatever origin they use for her in the show). Magic is also not part of the Meta-Gene, as we see when the Reach scientist explains why they are testing La’gaan as his powers are magical and not Meta-Gene related. So the Meta-Gene is not the be all and end all of superpowers. Though the idea of harvesting the Meta-Gene and using it as a weapon is certainly an interesting concept I’m sure will be explored later.
The other shoe has dropped on M’gann, who now has felt the full consequences for her actions. She jumped in, no hesitation, and ripped Kaldur’s mind apart. Then learned the truth, that her actions were not just and noble, they destroyed a good man. That fact breaks her. She has become, as Conner said, just like Psimon. If she wouldn’t listen to Conner, if she couldn’t recognize the immorality of what she was doing with her psychic attacks when she tried to tamper with Conner’s mind, then she wasn’t going to stop until she was confronted with the horror of what she was doing. It shouldn’t have had to get this far, but sadly it did. Now she needs to deal with those consequences. Also she should have a serious talk with Beast Boy about it because he’s a bit too overenthusiastic about what she’d done to Kaldur and she needs to explain to him the moral and ethical issues here.
When M’gann was tearing through Kaldur’s memories maybe that would’ve been a nice place to show a death of Tula moment as well as a moment of him finding out Black Manta is his father. Just some quick shots like they did for M’gann in season 1’s Bereft. Even if it’s not that big of a deal now that we know he’s not really a supervillain it still would’ve been nice to see. He might not have become a villain because of Tula’s death but he still took this course because of those events. Those were the big moments that we missed leading up to this point and a couple of still images would’ve helped make it not feel like we missed something.
This episode’s G. Gordon Godfrey comes at the very end as we see he is enthusiastically welcoming the Reach as benevolent alien friends who “got it right” when coming to Earth and making first contact and “not sneaking in the back [door.]” He’s using the “good aliens” to attack any other alien who has resettled on Earth, blatantly ignoring that all of the League aliens are individuals and not ambassadors for an entire race like the Reach. Not to mention that Superman in most stories does the same sort of thing that the Reach did, but since we don’t know what Superman’s first public appearance was like in this universe it’s hard to say. This is the usual rhetoric used to disparage immigrants and asylum seekers saying “they didn’t come here the right way” when in fact they are disparaging the “right way” many other times. Just like Godfrey disparaged the communications satellite with Mars in Depths, that was suddenly the wrong way to do things. The “right way” will suddenly turn into the wrong way whenever it suits his argument because it was never about doing things the “right way” but that he doesn’t want there to be any “way” at all. We’ll see exactly why he’s siding with the Reach in future episodes, spoilers it’s not because they did it “the right way.”
Stephanie Brown is the cameo character in today’s episode. She’s one of the Reach’s kidnap victims and she even gets a line. She will be showing up in season 3 in the superhero identity of Spoiler. Steph has a complicated history. DC editorial killed her off and it was terribly done, fans hated it and fought hard for her till she was eventually brought back to life. But let’s talk about her beginnings, she’s the daughter of a Batman villain called the Cluemaster (a Riddler wannabe) and she took up the identity of Spoiler to stop him, because he was a terrible and abusive father (so she fits right in for this show). She wasn’t the greatest crimefighter, she screwed up, but she always got back up and had a lot of heart. She was a supporting character for Robin (Tim Drake) and struck up an unlikely but endearing and lovable friendship with then Batgirl Cassandra Cain, and she ended up a supporting character in her book too. Steph became Robin for a time when Tim couldn’t be, and was then fired by Batman and later killed (not by Batman) all because editorial wanted to make Batman a dick. A little time after she came back to life she was given the Batgirl title by Cass (who editorial also really screwed over at the time) and she had a really good Batgirl comic series. Then the Nu52 reboot happened and she didn’t show up again till Rebirth, as Spoiler once again, and thankfully they still kept her friendship with Cass. She’s been her own hero, Robin, Batgirl, and back again, so whatever the show ends up doing with her in season 3 I hope she’s still just as lovable.
This episode was a good conclusion to the first half of the season, we got to see who The Light’s new Partner was, get a glimpse into what they want, what they can do, and how dangerous they are. M’gann’s arc has reached a pivotal point, with Artemis left to pick up the pieces. The Reach’s human lab rats are now free, and will return in future episodes. Bart finally spills the beans about his bad future, with Jaime having to deal with that knowledge and what to do with it. And Shimmer finally got superpowers, but as usual things did not go well for her. Shimmer’s one role in this show is to get knocked out it seems, I’d like to think she actually volunteered for the Meta-Gene experiments so she could have powers and stop that from happening. Turns out that only made things worse for her.
Little things I liked: Black Beetle, just everything about him, he’s got the epic voice of Kevin Grevioux, all of his lines are great, and we get to see much more of him in the future. M’gann shrinking in the underwater high pressure, which first happened in the tie-in comic series. Virgil (aka Static) getting some prominence as one of the kidnap victims. Impulse’s high-speed slow down segment. Steph’s cameo. That look Bart gives Jaime after opening his pod, not knowing if he was too late to save his friend from going On-Mode.
Quote of the episode:
“I can put you halfway through the door too, halfway the hard way.” Black Beetle to Wonder Girl
Quote that takes on a new meaning after watching the series:
“I’d rather assess the cause of the crash, Ambassador, to make certain it cannot happen again.” Reach Scientist
Some Scarab foreshadowing.
