2x25 Starcrossed (2)

[7.7/10] Here’s a fun game you can play for any media released between 2002 and 2014 or so. Ask yourself, “Is this about the War on Terror?” You’ll get hits as often as you get misses. I’m not knocking that! Art is one of the ways that we as a society process collective trauma, and it’s hard to think of events more traumatic in recent history than the September 11th attacks and the wars that followed. Some attempts to grapple with that are better than others, but shows as varied as Battlestar Galactica and Arrested Development produced some great, cathartic material about that time in American life.

The catch is that I’m not sure if “Starcrossed pt. 2” is necessarily going for the same idea or not. There’s certainly elements here that suggest that. It’s not hard to read Patriot Act allegories into the Thanagarians claiming the need to protect humanity while stepping on civil liberties and heightening monitoring. It’s not too tricky to read our heroes surviving by blending in with the local population to reflect the American military dealing with the same difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s even a Middle Eastern man who effectively hides Batman and Wonder Woman, a choice that works out of convenience when the winged authorities are looking for “a man and a woman with dark hair,” but which also seems a little more pointed.

I could totally be grasping at straws here. It would be pretty bold, especially in 2004, to frame the bad guys as the American government and military forces and cast our heroes as members of an insurgency. This is also part and parcel with familiar tropes about fascist takeovers that have their roots in real history, but which long predate the War on Terror. Hell, for all I know, this is a straight adaptation of a hoary comic book story.

Either way, it’s interesting to see our heroes imprisoned, breaking out, and having to operate in the underground to try to free Earth from the grasped talons of the now explicitly authoritarian Thanagarians. It works in tandem with the prior episode as a story about Hawkgirl, who realizes that her countrymen intend to destroy Earth to save themselves, rather than to protect humanity albeit at the cost of curtailing their freedom. It’s inevitable, in storytelling terms, that Hawkgirl’s turn wouldn’t last very long, but it’s still a strong choice to show her disgusted by her fellow Thanagarians’ plan to destroy her adoptive home in the name of destroying their enemies.

What’s interesting is that the show is sympathetic, or at least explanatory, over Ro Talon’s motives. It shows that he was a POW of the Gardanians, that he sees this mission as one to stop an existential threat to his fellow Hawk-people, and that sacrificing the Earthlings is a difficult but necessary choice to save his own. I am, not shockingly, inclined to agree with Hawkgirl that need doesn’t give the Thanagarians the right, but it complicates the villain of the piece’s motives in a canny way.

It’s also just cool to see the good guys have to adopt their civilian guises to get by. I love love love the moment where Flash is reluctant about revealing secret identities only for Batman to blurt them out on the spot, including his own. The crew having to get by without using their superpowers or otherwise arousing suspicion or attention makes for a unique challenge that’s more interesting than the hundredth skirmish.

Amidst the other romantic storylines in the episode, we also get an invocation of the “let’s smooch so the baddies don’t suspect us” trope with Batman and Wonder Woman that’s as cute as it is cliché. “Starcrossed pt. 2” also features more of one of my favorite elements of B:TAS -- Alfred’s sarcastic wit! I nearly died laughing when Flash goes “Look, a giant dinosaur!” and Alfred responds, “And I thought Batman was the detective.” Plus, Superman saving the day by acting as Clark Kent the reporter is a superb little moment, picking up an element of S:TAS that’s been all but left behind in Justice League.

Of course, the key moment to all of this is the step it takes toward Hawkgirl’s redemption, to the group and to Green Lantern in particular. As to the latter, she gives him his ring back, a gesture that doesn’t make up for the personal betrayal, but is meant to convey that she’s still on his side. On a bigger level, she reveals that Thanagarians’ true motives to her justifiably aggrieved former friends, and hands over their plans, something meant to convey the same type of broader loyalty, to the League and to humanity.

There’s part of me that thinks that’s meant as a statement from the show’s writers as a critique of the War on Terror, that knowing the true motives makes a noble person like Shayera change her tune. Part of me thinks it’s just classical storytelling tropes in action, particularly when it’s preceded by a du jure but still kickass sequence of the League breaking out of an alien prison by using the bad guys’ weapons against them. Either way, it makes for a good episode, and ultimately, that’s what really matters.