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 9 Darkest
Written by: Jon Weisman
Directed by: Mel Zwyer
Episode synopsis: Despite Kaldur’s successful mission in capturing Lagoon Boy and killing Artemis The Light still doesn’t trust him, and so they send him on one more mission to prove himself. He leads a team of Tigress (Artemis in disguise), Icicle Jr, and the Terror Twins, to capture Blue Beetle for The Light’s Partner. Along the way they gain access to Mount Justice and capture Impulse, Beast Boy, and Blue Beetle, they destroy Mount Justice as one final bit of proof Kaldur has turned to The Light. No one died, and Kaldur did pass on intel to Nightwing during the raid, but Wally is worried that Artemis might die for real and that they don’t know for sure Kaldur hasn’t gone to the darkside for real and isn’t playing them.
The first of an informal two-parter, each episode stands on its own but they’re called “Darkest” and “Before The Dawn” so yeah it’s a two-parter. We see more villain Kaldur, which he’s great at, and we get to see what Artemis was up to when joining him on his mission. She’s now Kaldur’s villainous second-in-command named Tigress, which was her supervillain identity back in the original comics. She’s also pretty good at the villain thing too, being able to put the Terror Twins in line when they are disrespecting their leader, Kaldur. She knows Kaldur can’t rise to the bait so she has to be the one to step in to shut them up.
Icicle Jr is still a giant creep. From his last appearance of “ha, it’s funny he’s still obsessed with M’gann after all these years” to this one of “oh god, he’s really still obsessed with M’gann after all these years.” I bet he has 50 Twitter accounts all of which are for complaining about women and how he’s “such a nice guy.” The way he’s invading Tuppence’s personal space and completely ignoring her discomfort and disdain for him, those are giant red flags. He’s acting like M’gann broke his heart all because she looked in his general direction 5 years ago, he’s just a grade A creep. Here’s hoping Tuppence breaks a few things next time he tries something, preferably some bones.
Poor La’gaan, poor, poor, La’gaan. He’s M’gann’s rebound boyfriend, he can read between the lines and see Conner and M’gann are moving back towards each other, and now he’s been captured by Aquaman’s greatest enemy. Imprisoned, tortured, and facing his former idol turned enemy, Kaldur. It’s certainly been a rough couple of days for him, and the worst is yet to come with him being transported to The Light’s new Partner along with whoever else they’ve kidnapped now. Sometimes a fishboy just can’t catch a break. He just needs to meet a nice girl who can’t speak to rescue him from his prison.
Wally’s not too happy with Nightwing, and you can’t blame him. This was a big lose for them, the Team’s lost their base of operations, as well as the home for some of its members, people were very nearly killed, three of the Team were kidnapped, and Artemis is in the middle of all of this where she could be killed if something goes wrong. So far their little undercover operation hasn’t shown signs of one positive outcome. He suggests Kaldur is a triple agent more from being scared and angry than anything else. All they can do is sit and wait for Kaldur to give them something and hope for the best. If they do anything to tip their hand that they’ve got agents inside The Light then both Kaldur and Artemis could wind up dead. It’s not an easy call to make, everything here is based on trust for someone who’s entire mission is about being a good deceiver. So knowing what’s true and what isn’t becomes a lot harder to tell.
Blue Beetle and Impulse continue their growing bromance, with Impulse taking him out to have a little fun and showing off their superpowers. Bart still acting in his own way to prevent his future from happening. They do have a good chemistry together and while it’s an unusual pair it does work well. One of the best things about the Blue Beetle comics were the supporting cast, especially as Jaime revealed to his family right away he was the Blue Beetle (which seems commonplace nowadays but it was pretty novel back then) and they became an important part of him figuring out the Scarab and everything else. Whereas this show don’t have any of his family or supporting cast in it, because it’s a Young Justice ensemble show not a Blue Beetle solo series. But as a fan of the comics it’s disappointing to see Jaime showing up in all these shows without any sign of his cast. So the Impulse/Beetle duo certainly helps mitigate some of that. Not all of it, but some.
The biggest Blue Beetle advancement of his arc was not from Jaime but the Scarab. They had finally had enough of Jaime not listening to them and their suggestions of kill everything because it’s easier and more efficient and they decided to take control. Something Jaime had no idea could happen, and will be a scary thought in the back of his mind now as this killing machine attached to his spine could take over at any time. It did not go well for the Scarab either, as it’s all well and good being a backseat driver for superheroics but doing it is another matter. Hopefully the Scarab learned that maybe their methods aren’t that effective, and maybe take some of Jaime’s ideas more seriously in this partnership of theirs.
Thinking about it a little, perhaps the Jaime’s plan of “wait for an opportunity as Kaldur holds all the cards right now” would have been a lot better. The Scarab rushed in impulsively, giving an opening for Kaldur and Tigress to knock them out, so now he’s completely out of the fight. But if they had just waited and attacked later, perhaps disabled the other collars like they did with their own, then they could have stood a better chance. It might not have gone any better for them, Kaldur is very good at his job after all, but it certainly shows jumping in overconfident in your own abilities isn’t a winning strategy.
The Terror Twins are our character spotlight this episode. With such a rich comic history of appearing in… this series. Yes they were created for Young Justice and first appeared in the very first issue of the tie-in comic. Not much is known about them other than they are super strong, a little invulnerable, and can leap tall builds in a single bound. It also seems puberty hit them hard during the timeskip as they both got pretty buff. Conner certainly can’t pass for Tommy anymore. They had some good banter here and certainly weren’t afraid to challenge Kaldur’s position of authority, though they don’t do it during battle which is still nice to see. I’ve certainly had my fill of bickering villains whose plans fail just because they fight themselves. Though I don’t think the Twins will be another Harley Quinn or Mercy Graves, but the series has Kaldur for that, maybe with Aquaman getting a big blockbuster movie Kaldur will get some more of the limelight.
This episode lived up to it’s title as it is certainly a dark moment for the Team, even if things did work out as Kaldur had planned Dick, Conner, Wolf, and Sphere, are only alive due to pure luck that Mal was close enough to save them. The Light’s new Partner has Blue Beetle for their nefarious purposes and more test subjects for their Meta-Gene experiments. Things are looking pretty grim for the Team indeed. Kaldur and Artemis are also facing what they will have to sacrifice in order to complete their mission, seeing how far they need to go and hope that it was all worth it.
Little things I liked: More supportive dad Black Manta, he’s just the best. Kaldur’s getting in some Light puns, because that seems like a perquisite for joining them. Impulse being smart enough to take the tracker, but Kaldur being smarter and planning for that. Dr Ray Palmer (the Atom) and Karen working with dwarf star matter, which is what makes Atom shrink in the comics. Gar watching Hello Megan, and his room in general. Getting to see Tigress turn back into Artemis before she destroys Mount Justice, that was a nice touch. Bart getting to see his bad future happening before his eyes.
Quote of the episode:
“Oh, man. I spent 1.6 seconds on that self-portrait. It was my masterpiece.” Impulse
Quote that takes on a new meaning after watching the series:
“It seems Beetle is indeed vulnerable to mystic energy.” Kaldur
Which is something that will come into play later on in the season, but also shows that The Light already were working on how to defeat Beetle’s tech.