3x26 Nevermore

[6.8/10] I don’t know how I feel about this finale. It seems like Young Justice wants this to be their “Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader” moment for Geo-Force. But like Revenge of the Sith his turn to the darkside feels very sudden and undermotivated. Brion has always been a hothead, but this whole thing was about him learning patience and working with a team and support system.

To have him just instantly revert to being an angry bad guy and fall so deep into villainy so quickly undermines everything that happened over the past season. It’s not like the ingredients weren’t there, but I feel like we needed more hints, a more gradual suggestion that he’d be inclined to take the crown, kill his enemies, and welcome Dr. Jace back into the fold, than what we got.

Now I can buy that he would be rocked by the fact that Terra was working for the enemy this whole time. I can also buy that he would feel betrayed when the rest of his allies look at him in shock for killing Baron Bedlam. I can also buy that he’d feel that much more betrayed when he found out that Artemis knew the real deal about Terra and didn’t tell anyone. It’s a lot to take, and could certainly provoke a change. But rather than exploring that change, it’s as though someone simply flipped Brion’s switch to evil.

The other explanation is that he’s merely being manipulated by Ziviad, this tertiary character who’s suddenly the key to this whole thing with his psychic powers. But that’s a cheap out that takes away Brion’s agency and renders the character choices here moot. The only thing worse than Brion suddenly deciding to be a villain based on what’s happened is the whole character change being meaningless since it’s the product of some outside influence and not his own choices.

I also wish the heroes had more empathy for Brion. Yes, they have a no-kill policy (though I didn’t realize that applied beyond Batman’s crew). But even if you can ignore the times the rest of the team used lethal force on enemies (even if we didn’t see any on-screen deaths) Brion didn’t just wantonly kill a random foe. He took out his traitorous uncle, who had tried to kill him, orchestrated the deaths of his parents and disappearance of his sister, taken over the country, and was responsible for the deaths of dozens (hundreds?) of kids. Yes, it wasn’t a noble choice, but the elder team members especially could have been more “We understand why you felt that anger, Brion, but this was the wrong choice” rather than “How dare you!”

Terra’s turn to the light side seems just as rushed. Her mission to kill Garfield at Deathstroke’s behest is a good choice to test her loyalties, and if she’d steadily continued growing closer to the Outsiders, I could buy it. But just a few episodes ago, she already played this game and concluded that the good guys were just as much betrayers and backstabbers at the bad guys. What changed? Artemis telling her she knew the whole time is a weird thing to provoke becoming a good guy. You can chalk it up to Artemis granting her the agency Slade wouldn’t, or seeing the team bond and reconcile after taking down Granny. But best case scenario, it’s still super rushed.

Plus what the hell? They knew Terra was working for The Light, or at least Deathstroke, and still brought her on dangerous and sensitive missions? Set aside the fact that being able to tell someone’s lying through “microexpressions” is junk science. Letting a metahuman bad guy infiltrate your group and be in a position to hurt or even kill your allies is superheroic malpractice. Frankly, Brion’s right to be upset, as should everyone else who was sent on those missions without being told they had a traitor in their midst.

I don’t mind the rest of the developments in particular, but I have the same problem I have with everything else here. It all just happens way too fast, without enough time to develop the characters’ choices or make them meaningful.

One minute, Luthor is crowing about how the events in Markovia ruined the heroes’ rep, boosted Infinity Inc.’s profile, and laid the groundwork for his hero registration act. The next, all it takes is one good set of true but unproven allegations from Lightning and Superboy, and it’s all ruined. One minute, Conner and M’gann are struggling with their relationship given the lies involved, and the next, they’re all apologies and reconciliations. One minute, Darkseid and Vandal Savage are at odds, and the next, they’ve worked everything out and The Light and Apokalips are back in business together. One minute, the broader Justice League and associates is doing the Anti-Light covert ops game and debating its morality, and the next, they’re all in total agreement that it’s a bad idea and humble enough to make Jefferson their leader because he’s pure enough to keep them on the straight and narrow.

None of these things are bad destinations in and of themselves. I particularly like Conner making good on his promise to the Genomorphs to step into the sunlight and identify as who and what he is without shame. But by god, we need more connective tissue between serious problem and happy resolution. Everything seems to get wrapped up by fiat, rather than by a comprehensible, natural progression of choices and consequences.

I’ll also confess that I find parts of the Justice League and Young Justice team and Outsiders’ conclusions to be a little too pollyanna for my tastes. There’s something to be said for not resorting to an “ends justify the means” philosophy and resorting to the same tactics as your enemies. And I can deal with a superhero show focusing on the noble and aspirational. But Jefferson basically declaring that they’ll never work in the shadows again, outside of a convenient exception to train young heroes, despite the fact that they’re subject to the whims of duplicitous players like Lex Luthor pulling the strings, seems almost hopelessly naive. I don’t mind a show landing on optimism, but I wish the show took more time to engage with the shades of gray in its resolution.

Again, I don’t mind the “He who fights monsters becomes a monster” message when it comes to Geo-Force or Vandal Savage or even the Justice League trying to avoid that fate with Jefferson’s moral guidance. You just have to do the work to get there, and Young Justice is content to simply leap to the end.

On the whole, I have real mixed feelings about season 3. It’s ambitious, which I always admire. The first half of it takes a little bit to warm up, but is ultimately quite good, focusing on a core group of Brion, Violet, Forager, and Victor being mentored by the formerly Young, now more mature Justice team. But as the season’s ambit got wider, encompassing Beast Boy’s crusade and the crop of young heroes from Season 2 and the Anti-Light scheme and the Justice League in space, and all the other telescoping conflicts and issues, it became ungainly and unsatisfying in trying to cover everything at once. (A problem that befell Greg Weisman’s Gargoyles on more than one occasion.)

There’s still some outstanding individual episodes, and some memorable new characters, but this year of episodes could have used more focus and more time to develop its stories and timely themes than just cramming as much as humanly possible into twenty-six installments.

(Though hey, I did get a kick out of Lobo’s thumb growing into an ugly-cute li’l Lobo that the bad guy promptly smashes. It’s a solid punchline and firmly Lobo-esque ending to that running gag in the credits. Though I have to admit, I thought something bad was going to happen to Wolf given him slowing down and how many times we saw him sleeping in the credits!)