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 12 True Colors
Written by: Paul Giacoppo
Directed by: Mel Zwyer
Episode synopsis: The Atom and Bumblebee fail to extract Blue Beetle’s Scarab from inside his body. The Reach have partnered with Lexcorp to open a new farm in Smallville to make Reach enhanced produce, so Nightwing sends Alpha Squad to investigate, with Arsenal joining them. They find the Reach putting a special additive into their crops and steal a sample. With things going well on the way out Arsenal plants a bomb to destroy the place, attracting the attention of Black Beetle. The squad are nearly toast until they are saved by Green Beetle, the Blue Beetle of Mars. He claims to have taken control of his Scarab, and offers to do that for Jaime. Meanwhile, Sportsmaster has made his challenge to take Kaldur’s life in recompense for Kaldur killing Artemis without his permission. They decline and call in his replacement, Deathstroke, sending Sportsmaster running. Vandal Savage promises Black Manta they will fix what Miss Martian has done to Kaldur, with Psimon planning on going into his mind and putting it back together one memory at a time.
This was a pretty good covert mission into the Reach farm, a more public venue than usual. We get to see them blend in with the public on the tour and then having to stealthily hide till they had closed up, and quite possibly were hiding in the toilets for hours waiting for that. It was just a little bit different seeing this sort of stealth mission rather than something like going into one of Queen Bee’s bases. Queen Bee doesn’t have guided tours with peppy tour guides for one thing.
Arsenal was the big new element here. He’s gone a bit overprotective of himself with the amount of weaponry he’s carrying, he wants to make sure he is never taken prisoner ever again. I’m surprised he managed to sneak in as many guns and explosives as he did, imagine the things he had to leave behind. His new cybernetic arm certainly came in handy, and it is curious that it happened to have a laser that could hurt Black Beetle on it. Makes me wonder if Lex did that on purpose and if they’ve got more weapons ready made to fight the Reach. Though having seen Bart’s future it’s pretty clear that The Light doesn’t win their battle with the Reach, as I doubt very much that future is what they had planned for their partnership with the Reach.
We meet Green Beetle for the first time here, and I mean the very first time as he’s an original invention of the series. It does make sense that there would be a Scarab on Mars given how the Reach seeded planets with them to give them advanced operatives on worlds they conquer. In the original comics that can’t happen because DC killed off the Martian race long ago, which is a big shame given how interesting this series has made the Martian society look just from the little pieces of it we hear about. It’s such a waste that DC did that, it turns Martian Manhunter into another Superman mourning his lost world, and we lose an entire world and civilization to see used in stories.
Green Beetle is someone we will be seeing more of in the future, and find out If he’s telling the truth or not. One thing I particularly like is the name B’arzz O’oomm, it’s a cute little reference to Barsoom the name of Mars in the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic sci-fi series of books about John Carter of Mars. There’s a few other references to that series in the tie-in comics, to give you more reasons to pick those up if you haven’t already.
The Sportsmaster subplot has returned as he meets with Vandal Savage and Black Manta to make his offer of killing either Kaldur or Manta, while the other Light members watch. Strangely enough Manta and Savage don’t accept his proposal and have already gotten his replacement in place with Deathstroke. It seems both of them had already decided this was going to happen and they were just going through the motions to satisfy their “honour.” Sportsmaster mentions a “code” he at least follows, along with possibly other Light members and supervillains or just mercenaries. Part of it is “an eye for an eye” or “a kid for a kid” as Sportsmaster put it, which means none of them care about the other part of that proverb which says it leads to everyone going blind, or childless in this case. Though it seems part of that code and Sportsmaster’s honor isn’t “be a good husband and father” as he’s neither of those and he certainly seems to care more about his honor than about either of his daughters. Especially as he keeps saying he wouldn’t be doing this if he was asked permission to kill his daughter first. No wonder his ex-wife and two daughters all hate him.
Manta on the other hand seems to genuinely care for his son. It’s no act, he’s not doing any of it to trick Kaldur or test him in some way, he does love him. Manta might be a ruthless villain, but he loves his son and he’d seek vengeance even without a code of honor. It’s the first we’ve heard of Vandal being a father, and it’s hard to tell if he’s more the Manta father or the Sportsmaster one, but I’d guess more the latter than the former. This is possibly foreshadowing a future character appearance in season 3 or beyond, but we’ll have to wait and see on that so I won’t mention who that could be. I also get the feeling part of the reason why he’s gotten Psimon to sift through Kaldur’s memories is that he still doesn’t fully trust Kaldur. He trusts Manta, he wouldn’t have him in The Light if he didn’t trust him, but he can see that maybe Manta’s love for his son might be a blindspot for him.
G. Godron Godfrey this time is, after restating all of the Justice League’s “crimes,” urging his followers to “do something” about it. Asking them “how long are you going to stand for this,” this is a call to action. It’s deliberately worded, first listing off all the ‘offences’ his target has ‘committed,’ then telling them to take action against them, but he’s obscuring that part a little bit so he has plausible deniability for all the extreme actions his follows take. He’s saying he’s “asking” them rather than telling them to do anything, he’s framing this as his follows ‘are not doing anything about this’ and and asking ‘when is that going to change’ so that it’s not a direct call to action, and he’s not saying what the “something” they should be doing is. He’s leaving that vague so any action his follows take, no matter how extreme, they feel justified in it because of G. Gordon’s words. Calling them “lawless “heroes”” (he put heroes in airquotes) further villainising them in order to push his followers to believing their actions against his target is just and righteous.
Arsenal is in the character spotlight this time. He’s a bit harder to talk about because the whole clone thing was an invention of the show. He did become Arsenal, it’s just he was also Red Arrow, and also had a daughter with Cheshire. He’s gone through quite a bit of changes over the decades that’s for sure. In the original comics he took the name Arsenal after he’d split with Green Arrow and was working as a government agent where he discovered he was very adept at shooting more than just a bow and arrow. After he left them he adopted a new identity of Arsenal, this was also the time when he became a single parent to Lian. Losing his arm was a fairly recent addition, from 2010 and to give you some perspective on it Lian’s first appearance was in 1986. I’m not sure he had the cybernetic arm for long as I think that got retconned out a year later when DC rebooted into the New 52. Comics everybody.
This was a fine episode, gave us some new mysteries as for what the Reach is up to with the farm and their energy drink, and for what The Light’s real goal is in all of this. I do have to wonder if Lexcorp has a plan for when the Reach are revealed to the world as the bad guys. “The company that sided with the aliens and helped in their agenda” won’t be a good look for them, though Lex probably has several plans in place to keep everything running smoothly, he is very well prepared after all. Arsenal is the big problem for the Team as he is too much of a loose cannon, especially because he’s got a lot more firepower than a cannon. He nearly got the Team killed by Black Beetle when it was smooth sailing all the way and they could’ve left without being spotted. He’s certainly not particularly trusting of anyone, given his reaction to Nightwing telling him he doesn’t have clearance to the Watchtower, and he’s not proving he should be trusted either. So that’s some future conflict in the making.
Little things I liked: The Fantastic Voyage Into The Blue Beetle at the start, very nice seeing Atom and Bumblebee try to remove the Scarab, and showing a good reason why they can’t just pull the thing off. The Stealth Mode confusion with Impulse, that was a funny bit. Robin pulling a Robin and disappearing to get a sample of the Reach additive. Jonathan Kent showing up and we see that Clark has introduced Conner to the Kent’s and he’s now part of the family.
Quote of the episode:
“Now that’s a rutabaga.” Someone on the Reach Farm tour
Quote that takes on a new meaning after watching the series:
“Amazing, how one little bottle contains everything the body needs.” Lex Luthor
“Or more accurately, everything the Reach needs it to need.” Vandal Savage
