Now that season 3 is on it’s way its 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 3 Alienated.
Written by: Kevin Hopps
Directed by: Mel Zwyer
Episode synopsis: The Team and the League are hunting down the rest of the Krolotean imposters, with scanners now to detect them all. Though they manage to get away with some help from Black Manta, where they are taken to an island base to build a new ship in order to escape the planet. The League find them and clash with Black Manta’s new second in command, his son Kaldur’am, thte former Aqualad. A bomb planted by The Light’s new Partner goes off and destroys the base, killing all the Kroloteans. In the end some of the League go into outer space to face trail for the crimes they committed under Vandal Savage’s control, leaving the sidekicks to face the future on their own.
This episode closes out the opening arc of the season, the Kroloteans have been dealt with, and the mystery of the missing 16 hours is no longer a mystery. It is practically a 3-parter, but in nice episodic chunks. We’ve introduced the new characters, seen some of the new character conflicts, and now we get the set-up for the rest of the season. With ten Leaguers out in space, some of their heavy hitters no less, the Team’s going to have their work cut out for them.
The missing 16 hours wasn’t really a mystery so much as a story hook, something that leads to a larger story, and in this case the next part in The Light’s plans. In those 16 hours the 6 Leaguers attacked Rimbor, a “hive of scum and villainy” to quote a Jedi, declaring that they “are the Justice League and Earth is off limits.” Which brought them to the attention of the Kroloteans, who spent 5 years getting the resources together to invade Earth. I believe some fans did question why it took 5 years for this to happen, but given that space is big and that the Kroloteans had to get together enough resources for 2 motherships, not to mention finding out information about Earth since the League didn’t leave a map or a link to the Wiki page, it would take some time to do so. Their invasion was likely expedited by stealing the Rannian Zeta Beam tech, without that it might have taken longer. We are so used to TV time just being instantaneous, things move at the speed of plot, where someone can fly to the other side of the world in the space of a jump cut regardless of how much real world time it would’ve taken. It’s one of those funny odd complaints, it bothers some people but not others.
Speaking of complaints the early part of the season had numerous complaints about its exposition dumps about both what we missed in those 5 years and things we did see in earlier episodes. The phrase “as you know” got used in this episode and it’s a common trope of explaining something the characters know to the audience, and not something you should generally do in writing. It’s not particularly great here, and if you’re watching all the episodes together on DVD or a streaming website then it’s entirely unnecessary, but that was not the case when this aired. The Cartoon Network airing schedule for Young Justice was chaotic, with sometimes 6 months between new episodes airing, and season 1 had so many hiatuses that the week after season 1 finished season 2 began airing. So in that chaos and with such a story heavy show I can’t fault the producers for wanting some catchup for the audience, some of which could’ve missed an episode or two, especially when the creators didn’t know how far apart the episodes were going to air (in this case, ironically enough, was one week after another). It’s not great and I wish it could’ve been done better, but I understand why it was done.
We got a little more of Miss Martian’s arc, in this episode just like the last one she invades a Krolotean’s mind so furiously that the Krolotean becomes completely unresponsive and drooling. She hasn’t permanently injured any of them, even if it doesn’t look like that when she does it on-screen. We see the League taking the Krolotean prisoner with them to Rimbor at the end and everything seems fine with them. If she had permanently injured them both J’onn and Batman would’ve done something about it. As it stands J’onn certainly noticed it, and possibly Batman, and if they had stayed on Earth I imagine they would’ve kept a close eye what she was doing, but they got put on a shuttle to Rimbor pretty quick. Superboy gives another, and bigger, look of disapproval and anger at her actions. It’s more than just her doing it, it’s how quick she is to do it and how much it doesn’t seem to concern her. She went into several people’s brains so hard that it broke them, and she’s so callous about it. Honestly it’s disturbing.
Now the big shocker for the episode came from the revelation of where Aqualad has been, and if you weren’t tuned in to the fandom then I assume this was a surprise. Now Kaldur being Black Manta’s son was revealed well before the series started, back when they were promoting it and talked about the new Aqualad they were doing. But I’m sure plenty of the audience were not keyed into that stuff and so were shocked by this episode. Kaldur has become a villain and joined his father because his beloved Tula has died and his king and mentor Aquaman betrayed by keeping the secret of who his father really was.
I think out of everything that the timeskip skipped over this was the one that needed to be on screen. Now they did turn this story into a video game years after the fact, but this is not the sort of thing that should get consigned to tie-in media that not all, or even the majority, of the audience will see. This is an inciting incident, it sets a lot of balls in motion for this season, and it all happened off-screen and we just get told a little about it. Even small flashbacks would’ve been nice to get a sense of what happened. We couldn’t get Tula dying on-screen, that’d never get past Broadcast Standards & Practices, but maybe seeing some of the other important moments could have happened. It’s just disappointing that this got sacrificed for the timeskip.
Besides that I’ve got to say Kaldur makes for a good fun villain. He’s got the banter down, he has that air of confidence and superiority that he’s totally in control of the situation that great supervillains have. I think it especially shows when he, Nightwing, and Superboy, are talking and he’s like “you could take me in, but then who would stop this bomb. You’ve only got time for one.” It’s such a classic villain move and he plays it so well. And as soon as the Team infiltrate the base he’s clocked two of the three teams (the third being Miss Martian and Martian Manhunter disguised as Kroloteans). So he’s already displaying how clever and dangerous a foe he is.
On the other villain side of things, Black Manta is just having a very sophisticated fancy dinner when Kaldur walks in. He just has a cool/supportive dad vibe about him in his interactions with his son. He’s also been promoted to a full member of The Light, taking poor disgraced Oceanmaster’s place. We don’t see what happened to him and I think the bigger shame is that we never got to see him in action at all. His season 1 episode didn’t get approved and so they replaced it with Downtime and did the story in the tie-in comic. Which isn’t great since he didn’t get to do anything for the other 25 episodes of season 1 either.
Metaphorically speaking Oceanmaster being replaced does a good thing for The Light story wise, it makes them not look invincible and unstoppable. Even though we got to see The Light’s vulnerable side in season 1 here we see some real tangible evidence of it. One of them has gone, how many more could go, how many could be replaced? It’s not something the episode brings up, but their untouchable image has certainly been tarnished.
The Space trail is an interesting idea, with the League wanting to clear their names and also Earth’s name in the process. Justice is there in the name, after all. It raises the stakes for the rest of the season too, as now some of the big heavy hitters of the League are gone. Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Hawkwoman, Hawkman, Martian Manhunter, Icon, and the three Green Lanterns John, Guy, and Hal. Any big threats and the Team and the remaining League will have to figure things out without them. Icon being familiar with intergalactic trial law is referencing the original comics where he was a space lawyer, which is nice that he’s being used in this show. Even if him and Rocket aren’t used much it’s still good to see them and that they are useful to the story rather than just being background characters in fight scenes.
This episode’s glorious G. Gordon Godfrey moment severed an extra purpose of delivering the exposition that the League has developed scanners to detect Kroloteans. His rant was short but also perfect, as he complained that the League took so long in making these scanners and how terrible they are for that, then in the same sentence said how suspicious it is that they made them so quickly. It just encapsulates the no-win argument real life shouty loud-mouth right-wing “news”/youtubers make, any answer you give means you’re wrong and they are right. It’s not about how factually correct their arguments are just that they get to get across ‘thing they hate is bad and you should hate it too.’ It doesn’t matter that both of G. Gordon’s statements are contradictory, just that his audience believes one or both of them and either start hating the League or stopping people from supporting the League “because he made some good points.”
This episode’s redesigned character already appeared in season 1, but I want to talk about him anyway, Bibbo! Bo “Bibbo” Bibbowski, Superman’s pal, and “a tough guy that’s just a big softy.” He’s just great. In the show he owns a diner called Bibbo’s, rather than the bar he had in the comics called the Ace O’ Clubs, and has popped up a few times in the show and the tie-in comics. He gets to punch out his Kroloteans duplicate in this episode rather satisfyingly for any Bibbo fans, and if you want to know why a diner owner has a Kroloteans duplicate check out the tie-in comics. My favorite Bibbo moment from the comics is after the Death of Superman story and he sees a guy on the street selling tacky “Superman’s dead” merchandise. He at first wants to flatten the guy but then the guy tells him that his family is homeless after Superman saved them from a fire, so he’s just selling this stuff to make sure they can eat. Bibbo, being Bibbo, immediately buys all of his stock and gives him a job at his bar. Because Bibbo is a class act and follows the mantra “what would Superman do?”
This episode is a 10/10 for Bibbo, the rest is pretty good too. It’s a good close to the opening arc that sets the stage for what’s to come. Aqualad’s turn to the darkside was a twist no one saw coming, and certainly gets fans to start buzzing with speculation. The Kroloteans weren’t especially deep villains, but their job was to lay the ground work for the season and what’s better than a nice straightforward villain for that. So now we have the new status quo set up, seen the new cast, got some revelations about what happened during the timeskip, and some got some character and story arcs set up. Now the season can really begin.
Little things I liked: The mission at the end had all the hero-families. Bat-family, Aqua-family, Martian-family, and just when you think that’s it in comes the Super-family and Wonder-family. Superman and Superboy’s much improved relationship, with fighting manoeuvres and Conner gets a Kryptonian name of Kon El. Wonder Girl being the newbie hero who needs a bit more training and experience. The Kroloteans referring to Lobo as The Main Man. The Hall of Justice scene that was half easter eggs and half future set up for later episodes. The music at the end, with the League going off into space, is really good, possibly one of the best in the series so far. Bibbo punch!
Quote of the episode:
“Little less fangirl, little more Wonder Girl.” Wonder Woman to Wonder Girl
Quote that takes on a new meaning after watching the series:
“Just you and me, old friend?” Kaldur to Nightwing. This one’s certainly one of my favourites as it looks innocuous at first till you watch the series through again.
