[6.2/10] Sigh. If you’ve been kind enough to read my reviews of Justice League, you know that I’ve never been on board with the Green Lantern/Shayera/Vixen love triangle (which, I guess, is now a love quadrangle given the introduction of Hawkman). This episode doesn’t really change anything for me on that front. I don’t need the “Men Writing Women:tm:” scenes between Shayera and Vixen, or the unconvincing romantic dialogue between Vixen and John or the tortured efforts of a jealous Green Lantern to warn Shayera that Hawkman is just a stalker with a crush.
Doing an entire flashback where we see Shayera, Carter Hol, and John in an Ancient Egyption reenactment of The Room does nothing to improve things here. I definitely didn’t need a sequel to Hawkman’s introduction episode, which was already trying, and the contrived effort to retcon it here does very little for me. To be frank, the Egypt interludes feel like scenes from a different show, and not one I’d have much interest in. As I said in the prior episode, I’m sure it connects to some ideas from the original comics, but to the viewer coming to Justice League Unlimited as its own thing, these scenes are all superfluous and unnecessary, having little to do with our modern heroes.
It’s also such a bog standard bit of melodrama. The queen cheating on her husbnad due to a love match with one of his generals is a tired trope, and ancient Hawkman committing suicide after the discovery is a hackneyed trope as well. These scenes don’t have the emotional resonance that the series needs them to in order to make all this work.
The fight with Shadow Thief doesn’t offer much either. Theoretically, his shadow abilities should make him a little more unique in terms of the dust-ups we get to see. But it all becomes pretty standard pretty quickly. (To be frank, I didn’t even remember him at first. I thought he might have been a Justice League makeover version of Ebon from Static Shock.)
The only cool wrinkle to this one is the reveal that Shadow Thief is not, in fact, the mercenary priest who poisoned Ancient Hawkgirl and Green Lantern on Ancient Hawkman’s behalf. He is, instead, a reflection of Hawkman’s dark impulses, the evil things he wants to do but won’t let himself stoop to. That’s an interesting concept, but it goes underexplored here, with Carter Hol just reabsorbing the baddie when it’s convenient. There’s something to the moment where he seems like he might take out John as a rival only to free him, but that’s about it.
The only other interesting moment comes at the very end of the episode, where John tells Shayera about Warhawk, but also expresses that he doesn’t want to be “destiny's puppet.” I really wish they would just resolve this thing already, but at the very least, John telling her about what he knows and declaring that he’s staying with Vixen anyway makes for an important step forward, as does Shayera asking Batman to “tell [her] about [her] son.” I’m way more interested in the aftermath of this episode than in the episode itself.
That’s not a great sign. But hey, the good news is that there’s only two episodes left, so JLU has to put up or shut up on the John/Shayera melodrama soon. Hopefully there’s at least a good end point for all this unnecessary romantic rivalry nonsense.
Shout by D.seLBlockedParent2021-05-22T21:03:55Z
All this love triangle and innuendo garbage shud never have been put in a kids cartoon. But it gets worse in the newer DCU Animated movies.. Bordering on pedo. Disgusting.