Post — Aaron Ngo

Major Spoilers are included in these episode reviews. Please read with caution.

The latest patches of episodes are setting up the New Team and introducing / getting reacquainted with more characters. However, these episodes together didn’t sync up as well compared to the first three episodes last week. My episode reviews on the season three premiere is here. Episode 4 was mostly everyone dealing with Halo and Brion except Dick. Where’s Dick? He’s hanging out with Roy Harper(s).

Will Harper / Red Arrow, Jim Harper / Guardian, and OG Roy Harper / Arsenal are brought together by Dick for a mission. I don’t know why Dick thought it was a good idea putting them together on one team. While the new animation is getting used to, at least the show made it easy to identify which Roy Harper was which. Red Arrow had a beard, Guardian was muscular and clean-shaved, Arsenal was smaller than his clones because he didn’t age in the pod.

Dick recruited them for a mission involving the ongoing meta-human trafficking, but we end up seeing the side job mission instead. Will owns a private security firm called Bowhunter Security and only agreed to help if Dick and the other Harpers help him out. The standalone adventure was a great way to develop the characters and to see how the time jump affected each of them.

The show had become self-aware and the dramatic shift in tones threw me off. I was expecting more gore and violence like last week’s episodes but got a fun opening while also filling in the gaps for why Halo lives with Artemis and Will, while Brion went off to Superboy and Miss Martian. Brion had been exiled from the country and must live in America for his protection while Halo has trouble remembering her past… or so she claims.

Episode four also touched on the Zatanna and Zatara / Doctor Fate storyline. I’m glad the third season paid tribute to this, with it having been ongoing in the first two seasons. Hopefully, the third season will continue to address Zatanna and the guilt she carries for her father’s sacrifice. The friendship between Artemis and Zatanna was a nice touch to add to this scene.

Episode five starts with Dick back with his friends and helping Brion and Halo control their powers. It also sets them up to become the presumed “Outsiders” of the team. The show also gives the main spotlight over to Miss Martian, who had been largely absent in the first three episodes. She had grown to become the leader of The Team, consisting of Wonder Girl, Static Shock, Kid Flash (Bart Allen), Blue Beetle, and new member, Thirteen.

The focus of episode 5 was Miss Martian helping out on New Genesis with the Team. She confronts Orion, who is trying to get the Bugs and New Genesis to fight each other. Turns out, Miss Martian knows he was not the real Orion and reverts to her White Martian form. Then “Orion” drops the act and reveals himself to be M’Gann’s brother, M’Commm. Thanks for this storyline, writers. Miss Martian is coming back with her complex feelings of being a White Martian.

M’Commm escapes, unwilling to change his ways. He is an official enemy of Miss Martian and the team. The result of this betrayal forces a Bug out of the Hive for helping the Team, Forager. Miss Martian takes Forager to Earth for his own safety, making him the third member of the Outsiders.

Episode 6 establishes character motives for The Outsiders and the roles they’ll play moving forward. Brion wants to find his sister, Halo wants to forget her past but cannot escape it, and Forager wishes to help his friends out, declaring them his “hive”. It also fleshes out Superboy, Artemis, and Nightwing as they reflect on how they used to be like them. Nightwing hates being an adult, and Superboy has matured more than I have ever realized.

Tara may be the secret assassin employed by The League of Shadows, but that’s not the only twist we get after it’s all said and done. Ra’s Al Ghul is no longer leader of the League of Shadows, Jason Todd is alive again, and Talia has a secret baby (Damien Wayne?). The fate of Barbara Gordon was also revealed in the episode: Barbara is crippled and has a romance going on with Dick, but he is keeping it a secret from everyone for some reason.

Overall, episodes 4-6 are not as dark as the first three episodes, but it showed that the writers have also improved the other aspects of the show like humor and character development. I like to think the first three episodes focused on the story and then these episodes focused on the characters. A wise method to ease us back into the Young Justice world.

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