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 6 Bloodlines
Written by: Peter David
Directed by: Mel Zwyer
Episode synopsis: A new character appears! From the future comes Bart Allen, aka Impulse, grandson of Barry and Iris West-Allen. He says he’s a future tourist just popping by to see his grandpaps in his prime, and totally coincidentally there’s a new villain called Neutron calling for Flash’s head. After an all Flash team-up and saving Barry’s life Bart finds out he can’t go home and is stuck in the past. Or maybe this was all intentional and he’s not some airheaded kid but someone trying to stop the future apocalypse.
This episode is one of my top favourites of the season. It’s just a whole lot of Flash fun, with the many generations of Flash showing up, and some time travel goodness thrown in for good measure. And the animation is just fantastic, all the slowdown speedster moments look great and you can tell a lot of work and love went into them. It’s also written by original Young Justice comic co-creator Peter David, which had Impulse as one of its main stars. He also wrote season 1 episode Secrets, another episode about one of the Young Justice stars, Secret. Maybe in season 3 David will do an episode with another comic classic, the villain of Young Justice #1 Mighty Endowed… or maybe not.
Bart is just this ball of energy, just concentrated fun whenever he’s on screen (at least when he’s “in-character”). Believe it or not this is a toned down version of the comics character. He was so manic in the comics his thought bubbles were literally just pictographs. The original Young Justice comic, as well as the Impulse comic, were comedy books and Impulse is a comedy character. So this version is certainly different, especially the revelation at the end, and it does reflect the tone of the show, but it still retains a lot of the spirit of the comic version.
He’s still a joke-a-minute character, but he’s also very clever and Jason Marsden does a great job of balancing that silly character with the one underneath that. The big revelation is not just that he’s come back to stop the apocalypse, but also that he’s “in-character” as Impulse. He’s putting on an act, and all his jokes and antics are part of the act. Now part of that has got to be from his own personality, maybe even just things he’s wanted to cut-loose on, if he had a normal regular childhood. He doesn’t stop acting like Impulse in future episodes so while part of it is an act I don’t think all of it is.
He’s also really bad at being subtle about his future changing shenanigans, at least when it came to saving Barry’s life. Maybe it’s because it was very immediate and didn’t have time to be more subtle. Every time he talked about coming back to see Barry he had to hastily add “… umm when he was in his prime, I mean” so no one would know Barry died. Obviously this is meant to not be so subtle so us viewers will pick up on it, though the characters aren’t going to necessarily pick-up on it, or interpret it as we do. It’s just nice watching it and seeing all of these things Bart does for his hidden agenda. Things you’d pick-up just rewatching the episode, and others you’d get from knowing where the season goes.
We are introduced to some future/alien slang here, specifically “crash” and “mode” that generally collateral to “good” and “bad”, respectively. As well as the phrases “crash the mode” and “feeling the mode” as general “success” and “failure” phrases. Even just calling it “mode” feels like good slang for teenagers to use, as the “mode” implies it’s the status quo and that “crashing it” is good. I just like the invented slang, I think it’s neat. They feel suitably new and alien, yet also easy to understand and pick-up. They fit in well with all the other invented slang the Team has. What is especially good bit of foreshadowing is the aliens using it too, and using them in the opposite way, being “on-mode” is good and “crashing” is bad. It sets up what we will eventually find out about Bart’s future. He also uses the phrase “meat” too, it’s less obvious in this episode but it adds to the foreshadowing.
Now then, time travel. So we see Bart going back in time to save Barry’s life, cure Neutron, and stop the bad future from happening. He sets up his time machine in the ruins of Mount Justice, the Team’s main base, presumably to make it easier to land inside it in 2016. At the end of the episode we see he has changed time a bit, Nathaniel is cured, the ash has stopped raining from the sky, but Mount Justice is still in ruins, and everything else still looks bleak, grey, and apocalyptic. Bart has already changed time, so in the year 2056 everything he has changed this episode, and will change as the season goes on, has already happened. So, we can surmise, Bart has stopped the apocalypse he went back to stop but something else has come along and caused a different apocalypse, because there’s always a different apocalypse on the way. Which means unless another time travel incident happens to change time that new apocalypse is going to happen. What it is and what causes it who knows, though there are a few obvious guesses. But that’s for future seasons to reveal.
Bart also can never return to his time, regardless of whether his time machine still worked. He has altered time and made it so that even if he were to go back to 2056 it wouldn’t be his 2056. He’d be a stranger in his own life. And Bart’s ok with that, as he says “does this look like a future worth returning to?” He doesn’t want to go back to that apocalypse and is fine living 40 years in the past if it means saving his future. Sacrificing his old life, never being able to see his friends and family again, all to save them and the human race, that’s pretty crash.
This episode has brought up the issue of Wally’s speed and it being notably slower than the Flash. The show’s already mentioned it a little bit, and the tie-in comic did as well, but here it’s shown off in comparison to Flash and Impulse. The reason he’s slower is revealed in the tie-in comic, and it’s that he got his powers from trying to recreate Barry’s experiment that gave him his Flash powers, but he didn’t do it quite right. So because of that his powers aren’t as good as Barry’s, nor anyone who inherits his powers like his grandson, which has rubbed some fans the wrong way. In the original comics Wally was slower than Barry, but when Barry died in Crisis on Infinite Earths and Wally took over the mantle he worked through that and became even faster than Barry. Some fans feel Wally’s being crapped on by the show because of his speed, and also being retired this season and not being in a lot of episodes adds to that, as well as some other future stuff. I certainly don’t think that’s the case, the show is making Wally distinct from Barry and the other speedsters while paying homage to his pre-crisis roots. He doesn’t need to be as fast as Barry to be his own interesting character, nor does that diminish him, just like Superboy not being as strong as Superman or being able to fly diminish him as a character.
Our redesigned character this time is Neutron. Sporting a very Samus Aran from Metroid inspired look in the show. He was a Superman villain made in the 80s, he has the powers of a living bomb and was made from a nuclear disaster, the type of villain you’d expect to be made in the 80s. He was on a team to try and kill Clark Kent, twice, and it doesn’t look like he’s done much else of note. He was a straight up bad guy, though. No sympathetic backstory with him being mind-controlled into being a villain’s test subject. What is interesting is that in the series’ original timeline (with Bart’s bad future) Neutron was a villain for years after this, yet when the aliens lost control of him he reverted back to normal. So what happened to Neutron in the original timeline? Did he get recaptured by The Light after he killed the Flash? Was he mind-controlled or coerced back into being Neutron for them? Who can really say for sure.
(Funny side-note I just thought of, in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon the bad alternate timeline in that show started with the Flash dying, and in this show the bad future alternate timeline starts with a Flash dying. Wally in JLU and Barry in YJ. Just a neat little confluence of events I noticed.)
Meanwhile Cheshire and Red Arrow are having a fun family adventure fighting assassins in order to find “the real Roy.” Roy’s looking a lot better than the last time we saw him, he’s handling his depression better, put some weight back on, and Jade’s trying very hard to get it through his stubborn head that he’s just as real as the other Roy. Jade managing to get this new lead on the other Roy when the Justice League, and the all seeing all knowing Batman, couldn’t is not that surprising. Despite how powerful the League is, and that Batman is a pretty good detective, The Light is even better at staying hidden, the League only partially know who’s in charge of The Light because they took direct action against the League and beat them all in a single stroke. Jade however is inside it, she has contacts, she knows things and can find out things that the League can not. They can’t compete with that inside intel. Though Jade and Roy certainly have gotten parenting tips from Batman, just taking their daughter into an assassins den instead of getting a babysitter is a Batman move. The punchline to the silent infiltration was worth it though.
This episode is just a fun Flash family adventure, even if it has a more serious undercurrent to it. It certainly has one of the bleakest openings to an episode, which is then followed by 20 minutes of letting you forget about it till the very end where they explain it. There might be bleaker openings, I haven’t checked, if there are I’m sure to get to them eventually.
Little things I liked: The future slang, all the future slang, it’s so crash. Nightwing knows how to stop a speedster, being best friends with Wally has its benefits. Bart cringing and asking if Barry says “back in a flash” often, and all of Barry’s family groaning and saying “too often.” Flash having a more “hero voice” when talking to civilians. Bart saying “I gotta run” as he’s leaving and while Wally and Jay cringe at it Barry beams with pride. Seeing Jade and Roy having just beaten up all of the assassins, quite literally all of them.
Quote(s) of the episode:
“Your name’s Tim? And yours is dick?” Beast Boy
“Should I be concerned over the obvious delight our daughter takes in the ultraviolence?” Red Arrow
Quote that takes on a new meaning after watching the series:
There’s quite a lot to pick from this episode but here’s two favourites:
“Blue Beetle’s two words. Hey is he here too?” Impulse almost immediately asking about Blue Beetle as he pops out of his time machine.
“Revealing too much could crash the whole timestream.” Wally
“Crash it, if only.” Impulse
Just neatly saying Impulse’s mission statement.