[7.3/10] Yowza! There's a lot going on here. None of it’s bad, but there's so much table-setting and lore-dumping to lay the foundation for future conflicts that the episode starts to feel pretty scattered.
I do like that, for all the rightful focus on the younger heroes in a show called Young Justice, the series manages to smuggle in a legitimate Justice League adventure here. Superman, WOnder Woman, Hawkman and Hawkwoman, and Guy Gardner Green Lantern hunting down the Apokalips satellite in space after a raid is good stuff. The rest of the gcrew getting annoyed at Guy’s ridiculous-yet-entertaining antics, fighting Big Barda and the Furies, and even trying to save their enemies from a terrible fate, is a nice throwback for any DCAU fans like me.
I also appreciate the form that propaganda takes in the show. Our heroes exposing the truth in the first half of the season doesn’t end things, because Granny Goodness cna pin any wrongdoing on a patsy, Lex Luthor can spin things to suggest it’s the Justice League who are in the wrong for addressing the metahuman trafficking problem the way that they did, and a hack like G. Gordon Godrey laundering their views and helping their image.
The Outsiders getting inducted into the Young Justice team is good, albeit a little anticlimactic since they’ve basically been part of the team already. The same goes for Beast Boy, since he already decided to come back in the last episode, so him rejoining is a non-story. That said, I like the idea of Violet exploring her identity, including being unsure of her gender given the inputs for the new being that she is, and the way that both Brion and M’gaan accept that instantly. It’s the sort of thing most shows wouldn’t touch when I was growing up, and I appreciate the series including something that takes the issue seriously, especially for a show aimed at comic book fans who aren’t always accepting of those types of topics. The moment draws a lot of attention to itself, but the intentions are still good.
I’ll say that the one element of this that I’m not fully on board with is Granny Goodness. The idea that she practically has a fetish for discipline, and couches even the likes of torture in the context of justice has a lot of potential. But the actor isn’t great in the role, and can’t quite do the alternating genteel/menacing vibe that’s required. Hopefully it improves as the season goes on.
Otherwise, this plays more like setup for things to come than a lot of major developments in the here and now. Plenty of them are promising, like Dr. Jace trying to help Victor, or Victor having some mental bond with Violet, or Thanagar being skeptical rather than helpful toward humans. But my hope is that the back half of the season only gets more focused from here.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2022-07-10T18:46:04Z
[7.3/10] Yowza! There's a lot going on here. None of it’s bad, but there's so much table-setting and lore-dumping to lay the foundation for future conflicts that the episode starts to feel pretty scattered.
I do like that, for all the rightful focus on the younger heroes in a show called Young Justice, the series manages to smuggle in a legitimate Justice League adventure here. Superman, WOnder Woman, Hawkman and Hawkwoman, and Guy Gardner Green Lantern hunting down the Apokalips satellite in space after a raid is good stuff. The rest of the gcrew getting annoyed at Guy’s ridiculous-yet-entertaining antics, fighting Big Barda and the Furies, and even trying to save their enemies from a terrible fate, is a nice throwback for any DCAU fans like me.
I also appreciate the form that propaganda takes in the show. Our heroes exposing the truth in the first half of the season doesn’t end things, because Granny Goodness cna pin any wrongdoing on a patsy, Lex Luthor can spin things to suggest it’s the Justice League who are in the wrong for addressing the metahuman trafficking problem the way that they did, and a hack like G. Gordon Godrey laundering their views and helping their image.
The Outsiders getting inducted into the Young Justice team is good, albeit a little anticlimactic since they’ve basically been part of the team already. The same goes for Beast Boy, since he already decided to come back in the last episode, so him rejoining is a non-story. That said, I like the idea of Violet exploring her identity, including being unsure of her gender given the inputs for the new being that she is, and the way that both Brion and M’gaan accept that instantly. It’s the sort of thing most shows wouldn’t touch when I was growing up, and I appreciate the series including something that takes the issue seriously, especially for a show aimed at comic book fans who aren’t always accepting of those types of topics. The moment draws a lot of attention to itself, but the intentions are still good.
I’ll say that the one element of this that I’m not fully on board with is Granny Goodness. The idea that she practically has a fetish for discipline, and couches even the likes of torture in the context of justice has a lot of potential. But the actor isn’t great in the role, and can’t quite do the alternating genteel/menacing vibe that’s required. Hopefully it improves as the season goes on.
Otherwise, this plays more like setup for things to come than a lot of major developments in the here and now. Plenty of them are promising, like Dr. Jace trying to help Victor, or Victor having some mental bond with Violet, or Thanagar being skeptical rather than helpful toward humans. But my hope is that the back half of the season only gets more focused from here.