Review: Young Justice Phantoms “Encounter Upon the Razor’s Edge!”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Rocket misses one conference while another goes poorly.

Our Take:

This week’s episode continues the misadventures of Rocket and her allies on New Genesis. This time, the focus is shifted to the members of the Green Lantern Corps: Tomar-Re (Jeff Bennett) and Kilowog (Kevin Michael Richardson). They are en route to New Genesis until they rescue Blue Lantern Razer (Jason Spisak), who’s stranded in space. While the Corps members discuss New Genesis’s intervention with Rocket and the others, Razer’s quest to retrieve the red ring unexpectedly puts the planet and Forager’s lover in danger.

This episode is truly the one to remember for the fans who grew up watching DC Nation a decade ago. The storyline in “Encounter Upon the Razor’s Edge” ties in with the final season of Green Lantern: The Animated Series, with Razer searching for hope within himself, thanks to the power of the blue ring. More importantly, he’s continuing his mission to find his love, Aya, the Interceptor’s AI that disappeared after being wiped out by a virus. After a brief encounter with Metron, Razer learns to channel the powers of the red and blue rings, resembling him controlling both hope and rage within himself.  

I remembered liking Green Lantern: The Animated Series when it first aired alongside Young Justice, so seeing the former being canon with the show is like revisiting some old friends who were gone way too soon, and boy, was this reunion something else. The episode offers an excellent service to the fans of two DC Nation shows by providing a solid continuation of Razer’s redemption arc after his days as a Red Lantern. Additionally, Spisak still did a splendid job capturing the hopelessness and rage of Razer throughout the episode.

There’s also a subplot that continues the Legion of Superheroes’ time-traveling mission to save their existence. Here, the Legion explains to Impulse (Jason Marsden) the events that led them to the past and how they’re constantly protecting Superboy from getting killed by Lor-Zod. It also shows Lor-Zod explaining the same events from his perspective to Ma’alefa’ak and Mantis, revealing that he’s responsible for the bomb on Mars, which sends Superboy and Phantom Girl into the Phantom Zone. Man, Miss Martian’s going to be pissed when she finds out about that. These segments were a lot for me to take in due to time travel. However, they offer just enough to flesh out the characters’ motives, mainly Lor-Zod.

Overall, “Encounter Upon the Razor’s Edge” regains some interest in Rocket’s story arc by not focusing mainly on Rocket. On a serious note, this is a great episode that celebrates the 10th anniversary of the DC Nation programming block by placing the characters from two stellar superhero shows in one package. While it’s been a long time since I watched the Green Lantern animated series, I’m still happy that the writers were allowed to continue where the canceled series left off with this episode of “Phantoms”.