Review: Young Justice:Outsiders Episodes 7-9

Suit up.

SPOILERS!

THE PLOT:

This week brings us a look into life and times of Vandal Savage, the architect behind the entire series’ main villain group, the Light in “Evolution”. While it mostly revolves around his daughter Cassandra’s recounting of his comics-accurate origin of being a caveman blessed/cursed with immortality by a glowing meteorite before going onto conquering the planet for centuries, the episode counterbalances this with his current duties of protecting the Earth from alien invasion with the War World craft he secured at the end of last season. While he’s been given Saturday Morning Cartoon villain moments throughout the series before, including his own monologue, Savage has never been much of a mustache-twirling (or mutton-chop twirling) baddie. As we see here, he is simply a man who has had more time than anyone to map out his plans for the world, though what those plans are is still a mystery.

Next, “Triptych” sees Batman Inc., the Justice League, and Dick’s team working together to stop a plot by recurring villain Cheshire involving mind-controlling nanotech to victimize other, unwilling, villains to keep committing crimes. While it is nice to see Batman Inc. in action (more on that in a bit) alongside the other teams, it did get a bit harder to follow near the end when flashbacks got involved with nothing to tell them apart except the dates. Usually those are pretty neat to see and help establish a clear timeline for the show, but this was the first time they actually got confusing.

Lastly, “Home Fires” sees the soon-to-be-so-called-Outsiders facing an attack from the main man Lobo, while Ocean Master, the disgraced former member of The Light, plots to attack the League and Team’s spouses and children before The Light’s new enforcer, Lady Shiva, intervenes and kills him. The Ocean Master stuff is really where the meat is in this episode, as his displacement from the group is only ever explained in supplementary material, so it’s good to see some closure to his story. Plus, his observation of his targets is some seriously serial killer shit. Really creepy stuff.

CHECK IN WITH THE MAIN TEAM:

Brion, Halo, Forager, and the rest are all very much present in these three episodes, but it’s clear that the show is giving them time to breathe in terms of development. They’re very much the B-Plot of the first two, and while they are parts of the main fight in the third, it’s really not what the bigger moments are about. So, unfortunately, there’s not a ton of significant things to say about their progress this week, aside from Halo learning about some new color powers. As next week will be the end of this season’s first half an arc, I expect there to be plenty to talk about then, but right now they’re basically on the sidelines.

OLD FACES, NEW FACES:

This week brought many returns to key players from seasons past, such as Artemis’ crime-addicted sister and father, Cheshire and Sportsmaster. They weren’t huge parts of the episode they were in, but Cheshire does seem to have resigned herself to a life in the shadows (though not with the group “The Shadows”, oddly enough) instead of raising her daughter Lian with Will. In the meantime, it looks like other mothers at the get-together are eyeing Artemis to end up with Will in her place, which I am honestly hoping they don’t even consider. I guess the dad hooking up with his ex’s sister isn’t THAT weird if said ex is keeping her distance, but Lian having an Aunt-stepmom in Artemis is a level of awkward I’d rather this show not poke into.

There’s also the proper debuts of Stephanie Brown as Spoiler, Cassie King as Arrowette, and Cassandra Cain as…Orphan?

Okay, shut it down, SHUT IT ALL DOWN. Are you serious? Barbara Gordon’s already Oracle, so it’s not like we’re saving the Batgirl space for someone else. Why are you making Cassandra Cain, one of my favorite members of the Bat-family, have her animated debut as the worst superhero name EVER?

*SIGH* I mean, look, I know that when any given person gets a chance at their version of this universe, some characters are going to get more focus and favoritism than others. I’m sure Joker fans weren’t thrilled that he was relegated to a bit role in this show’s first season only to never show up again, and I myself was a bit miffed that Stephanie/Spoiler is being left to the same, but I also know it would be putting the cart before the horse to prioritize minor characters just for the die-hards instead of where the story needs to go for its already sizable cast.

But really, “Orphan”? That seems more likely to make bad guys feel sorry for her than intimidated.

VANDAL’S SCANDALS:

As mentioned, Vandal Savage returns to the story this week, now voiced by David Kaye (Megatron in Beast Wars, Professor X in X-Men Evolution), who does a surprisingly good job mimicking the performance of the later Miguel Ferrer, who died in early 2017, and who the episode “Evolution” was dedicated to. It’s about now that we’re finally getting some insight on the bigger picture and motivations behind Vandal’s plans and outlook on life, the universe, and everything. Having grown up in caveman times, he’s seen the world go through many stages of evolution, both physical and cultural, and so has his own millennia-long goals to keep track of it all. To do this, he gained the aid of Darkseid back when he was known as Genghis Kahn, having put his plans in the motion since then.

He’s also had many children over those many centuries, some decades apart like Olympia and Cassandra (unrelated to the other two Cassandras in this show). My sister and I are ten years apart and that already feels weird, but I can’t imagine how weird it must be to be at least 50 years like those two. Savage also has no qualms about killing one who is no longer useful to what he has in store, as he does with Olympia once it’s clear her mind has deteriorated too much. All of his spawn must serve his goals or die…and then die later while serving his goals, as his son Nabu (AKA the being controlling the helmet of Doctor Fate, but who knows how that works now) died long ago before The Light was established.

And speaking of The Light, we also get a good look at their current roster, containing old favorites like Klarion, Queen Bee, and Luthor (confirming his hampering of the League’s work was indeed to help The Light), but new additions such as the Ultra-Humanite (voiced by creator Greg Weissman!), Slade Wilson AKA Deathstroke (who’s been promoted from just being their enforcer), and Granny Goodness. That last one points to the Goode Goggles we’ve been seeing around the story as something bad that’s about to pay off soon, though technology sold as a toy that is really a mind control device is a pretty big cliché at this point, so hopefully it’s something more interesting.

OVERALL
YJO continues full steam ahead as we are just about to close out the first half of the season. Next week gives us four episodes instead of the usual three before the show goes on break until June, but it’s more than made up for the wait with it hitting every angle for hungry fans. This batch was mainly about set up for greater threats ahead, which we’ll likely see paid off for the mid-season finale, but they were still solid and strong stories in their own rights.