The Injustice League is making some curious moves which puts Artemis into a very bad position.
What They Say:
Insecurity – Artemis’ confidence is shaken by Red Arrow’s return; the team tries to track down Sportsmaster.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With Young Justice working a larger overalls toryline for the season, it’s definitely welcome to get call backs to villains that appeared earlier in the series and have some underlying storylines going on with it. The Green Arrow side of things as it deals with Artemis, Sportsmaster and Red Arrow definitely has some magic about it to work. Artemis has definitely been working hard to be a key part of the Young Justice team but she’s also struggling with trying to be the right kind of partner to Green Arrow after what happened with Red Arrow. And unfortunately for her, her confidence is easily when Red Arrow makes a return appearance on the scenes since she can only view herself as easily replaced. Her insecurities, which of course is the name of the episode, is key here and quite understandable.
And those insecurities are making things really worse for her since Red Arrow is on the team now after getting the right kind of praise from Green Arrow and the reminder that he needs to be on this path in order to get into the Justice League. What complicates things even more for Artemis though is that a team is being sent to go after Sportsmaster when he’s located and she insists on going with them to New Orleans. Oliver is at least wary of this considering the relationship that she has with Sportsmaster, but it’s not something that he can really push back against. Red Arrow for his part is no help either as he’s really continuing on with his own mission to find out who the mole on the team is, something that he’s convinced is Artemis. And as we’ve seen for awhile, little is going to dissuade him from that belief at this point until the evidence points completely in the other direction.
With the larger storyline working through what Klarion is orchestrating, which is what Sportsmaster is doing in acquiring what’s needed for the villains that Klarion has pulled together, it has a raelly good air of mystery about it and it uses some rather intriguing characters along the way, from Dr. Hugo Strange to T.O. Morrow being kept in a coma for quite a long time. Add in Cheshire making a new appearance as well and that throws a few kinks into the mix as well, especially when it comes to Red Arrow. The main storyline is one that definitely has a lot of intrigue to it rather than full on answers for most of it, but it’s definitely one that keeps you following it.
The subplot for the episode is a lot of fun as well and I wish it made more time as it involved Megan, Zatanna and Superboy investigating Red Tornado’s room in Mount Justice which has its share of revelations as well. Red Tornado has a lot of mystery about him, especially after what we learned about him in the past when it comes to his “family”, this one helps to humanize him more while still throwing some unusual angles into the show. It also shows what boredom does for teenage superheroes and how they’ll continually just get themselves into trouble no matter where they are.
In Summary:
Young Justice doesn’t have a big episode here when you get down to it but it moves a lot of things forward overall. Artemis’ position on the team continues to be tenuous because of the things that she’s dealing with but it’s Red Arrow that you really want to smack around. The team has gone through a lot of very good team building exercises over its run but Red Arrow is what will truly break it if he’s allowed to run as he is. Aqualad really needs to take a proper leadership position here, but it feels like Batman and the others may be trying to stir things up in this way to find out what’s really going on, even if it means screwing with Artemis as bad as they are. You can sense a bigger game being played here, but at the same time it feels like you as the viewer may be getting played instead.
Grade: B
