Post — Aaron Ngo

Major Spoilers are included in this episode review. Please read with caution.

Young Justice is back with its third season! It took six years, but we did it everyone! We saved the show with our constant whines and begging! Yeah, let’s get into this!

The premise of the show is the sidekicks Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad wanting to leave their mentors’ shadows. They end up becoming a covert team under Batman’s leadership to complete missions that the original heroes like Superman can’t do without being recognized by the people. Anyways, the show has stayed more or less on this path with the main heroes being more involved in the action as the series progressed.

The third season picks up two years after season two ended. The Justice League is facing trouble on the meta-human trafficking. The first three episodes managed to explore this problem while giving us a bunch of superheroes to meet. However, this is mostly done with the original characters we’re acquainted with like Dick Grayson, Connor Kent, and Artemis.

The changes to the superhero lineup:

Miss Martian leads the Young Justice Team, Kaldur is now known as Aquaman and rose to become a leader of the Justice League. Dick Grayson (Nightwing) is doing his own missions with an off-screen Oracle to get around the restrictions placed on the League by the Governments of the world. The first episode of the season mainly deals with the Justice League trying to rectify the situation and how the trafficking has expanded past Earth.

After Black Lightning “kills” a 14-year-old (meta-human) girl on a distant planet, he loses his confidence and the use of his powers. This leads him to quit the Justice League alongside Batman and Green Arrow plus their sidekicks. Batman declares the Justice League should disband to get around the government restrictions but knew they wouldn’t and takes matter into his own hands.

Meanwhile, Nightwing recruits Artemis, Superboy, and Black Lightning for a mission to infiltrate Markovia and find evidence of meta-human trafficking. This is where we catch up with our characters like learning Artemis is living with Will, formerly known as clone Roy Harper / Red Arrow and Superboy proposing to Miss Martian.

Episodes two and three are about the covert mission in Markovia. We learn in episode two that Count Vertigo is behind the meta-human experiments in Markovia and how his success there will lead him to ruling Markovia and bringing it under The Light’s territory. Episode three brings the Markovia arc to a satisfying end with Prince Brion becoming a meta-human himself, leading to his exile.

Young Justice is allowed to show blood . They understand the audience watching the show with the gritty violence and intense fight scenes. Halo, the woman Artemis rescued from Vertigo’s men, getting her face burned off was incredibly dark, even for me. The dynamics between Artemis, Superboy, and Nightwing is the same as in the previous seasons but with a lingering secret: What is going on with Oracle? Why isn’t Nightwing sharing with the team?

Overall, I’m happy Young Justice returned with its third season. It’s still as good as ever, if not better with the blood and gruesome assassination of the King and Queen of Markovia. I will continue reviewing the third season in this format because it’s easier than writing three separate posts.

Thanks for reading! See you next week!

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