Last week’s episode of Young Justice was an episode that’s quality seemed comparatively dubious. Can the show overcome this small hiccup and get back to the winning ways of its predecessors? Well, in short, the answer is yes. However, the reason why the show is back to winning ways may not be what your average viewer would expect.
The show sticks to its normal conformity of having two different, yet connecting, stories lines throughout the three acts. Batman and company are still absent, and it appears that the much more serious and somber Nightwing has taken up the mantle of liaison for the Young Justice group and the Justice League, giving them their orders and debriefing.
The primary storyline and this episode beings in the future, forty years to be exact, where two mysterious people are working on a machine that we later find out takes one of them back to the past. The secondary story line of the episode is between Cheshire Cat and Roy Harper’s search for the “real Roy Harper,” a topic that is becoming agitating to Cheshire.
Back in the past, Home is infiltrated with this mysterious person, who we find out is Impulse. After a brief run about, Impulse is captured and interrogated. He tells his company he is nothing more than a tourist coming back from the future to see the original Flash in action, without worry of breaking him.
Back to action, Nightwing gave Impulse a tracker in his complimentary glass of water, knowing that he could escape too easily. When he does escape it becomes abundantly clear he is making a B-line for Central City, the home of Flash if you did not know.
Well, to SPOIL the entire episode (Impulse humorously says the word “spoilers” throughout), I will just say a battle ensues. The good guys win.
Now, let’s get to talking points of the good and the bad. Whenever you throw time & space manipulation into the fray there are a ton of extraneous variables you have to deal with, many writers act as if they are not there. This episodes does a good job at picking up on some of those forgotten variables.
If you were to teleport yourself back to 1776, the year the USA declared its independence for those not in the USA, you would immediately notice something, other than the fancy get-up everyone is not wearing. You would notice that everyone talks lets say funny… Here, Impulse, being 40 years from the future, does carry a futuristic language with him. Words seem to hold different value and meanings to him, such as “crash,” meaning good, and “the mode,” meaning bad. I do not know what value they will hold in future episodes, but since the aliens that we also see in the episode also use the language, they have to hold some significance.
Another strong part of this episode was the continuation of the abducted children. We see the first experimental example of what the children are being used for. Neutron, who serves as the primary antagonist, is nothing more than a child who clearly has memory gaps. He is being controlled by our mysterious invaders and when he does come around he is nothing more than a scared child. I found this to be wonderful. Normally, amnesia is nothing more than a beaten horse. But, the amnesia that we see in this episode works extremely well, mostly because the idea of a scared child that had not intent to harm will pull at almost any viewers heart strings.
This episode was filled with humor. Between Impulse’s banter and Kid Flash’s reactions to being called Speedy & being lapped by both Flash and Impulse, this episode was generally funny. Which is very nice to have moments where you smile, in a dreary episode. Oh, and the comment about “half the meat at Comic-Con being from the future” had me laughing out loud!
Now for the bad. The last time I checked, the people of Young Justice were extremely intelligent. Intelligent to the point that even Wikipedia has stated their intelligence is “genius level intellect.” With that said, why are the people confused on what a “meta-gene” could be? Especially with them known as meta-humans. Even Miss Martian, who is absent in this episode for the first time since she came onto the show, has brutally telepathically interrogated two Kroloteans, who called them all meta-humans. So why the confusion?
Also, the primary storyline bodes well in this episode, while the secondary storyline feels rushed. It has only been approximately six episodes that Speedy recognized he is a clone and began his search, noting that it has been over five years the writers could have shown the viewers more of a search for Harper, but choose not to. I can only hope that there is a method of this madness because Harper’s secondary storyline has become something of a favorite to me, wrapping it up so early would feel as if it was a waste to even bother with it.
Overall, with last week’s hiccup, Young Justice continues to soar. The show is obviously ramping up to something huge. With the spine of the Justice League off in space attempting to clear their names, our young heroes are going to be all that is really left to fight off this invasion. Which is appropriate since the show is called Young Justice.
Whatever is the case, it seems that the Kroloteans were only the beginning of the Invasion!