1x19 A Knight of Shadows (2)

[8.6/10] This episode feels like an installment from The Twilight Zone, and I mean that as a compliment. The reveal that Ray, the superheroic sidekick kid who cheers on the Justice Guild, is actually a psychically gifted boy holding the whole town hostage is a dark one, but also a gripping one. It puts this whole episode into context.

Because it works at a sheer plot level. The show definitely still has fun with watching the Guild/League members band together to stop the villainous quartet, but it also shows GL and Hawkgirl investigating just what’s going on in this idyllic but very strange town. Ice cream truck drivers who never sell any ice cream, blank library books, problems that always seem to spring up when someone’s getting close to the truth -- these eerie details make the reveal all that more impactful.

That reveal is the fact that this world succumbed to nuclear destruction forty years ago, where all of the heroes of this world died too. J’onn managing to point the finger at Ray, introducing the “It’s a Good Life” from The Twilight Zone-style twist, is a strong one that leads to another epic battle and a confrontation of what’s really going on. The heroes win; thanks to GL’s knowledge they’re able to get back to their dimension, and the survivors break free of Ray’s cure.

But it also strikes me on a much more thematic level. Ray represents the dark side of fandom, people who are unwilling to let go of their favorite worlds and characters from the past (like, say, thirty-somethings reviewing superhero cartoons they watched as a child), and imposing that on everyone, refusing to move on. It speaks to people dissatisfied with the world we’ve all created in the years since those idealistic 1940s/50s superhero stories emerged. It’s no coincidence that the in-universe destruction of the Justice Guild’s dimension and the end of the prime-universe comic books occurred in the tumultuous 1960s, when social changes and movements exposed fissures in society that had always been there, but which had long been muffled and squelched. Ray is trying to hold onto what that supposedly idyllic, pre-tumult time meant to him, no matter how unrealistic or empty the fantasy is.

And yet, the most heartening thing about this episode is that even though they know it means their own deaths, the Justice Guild still joins together to stop Ray, because it’s the right thing to do. It speaks to the way in which the ideals of those stories, what they represent, can live on and be molded to new situations and societies that still need something to believe in. John Stewart struggles with the loss of his childhood heroes, but Shayera recognizes their sacrifice, and the inspiration and meaning in it.

The creators of the original Justice League (nee Justice Society) of America characters were not perfect, and their stories weren’t perfect, but at a high level, they stood for virtues like truth and justice and living up to America’s greatest ideals that still mean a hell of a lot today. Those same truths inspire the survivors to rebuild the world whose destruction they allowed to happen, giving them the chance to build something better, just as we keep retelling these stories and channeling that inspiration to move forward in our world.

That’s what puts this one over the top for me. It works as a fun tribute to the superhero stories of old. It works as a crazy sci-fi/horror story with shocks and twists. But most of all it works as a mission statement for the dark and the light of classic superheroes and their modern incarnation, warning us against blind devotion, but lionizing the notion of carrying on their legacies, and their spirit.