On the run from the Justice League is no way to live.
What They Say:
Auld Acquaintances
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The revelation of Red Arrow as being the mole, it’s something that definitely changes the view of several things we’ve seen in the series. For the young team, it’s a shock when everything comes out but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. While the Justice League themselves have been taken over as we’ve seen, the young team is just dealing with the revelations. And Batman pushes it a few levels further as he outlines how the Red Arrow they’ve known has for the last three years has been a clone from the Cadmus project. That has them all wanting to do something to find the real one, but with the main team calling the shots, they’re on the outside and unable to do so. Well, at least until some small nudges helps to put things in the right place for them to take the offensive again.
What helps is that Red Tornado was able to take advantage of a bit of confusion and random luck to get the kids out of the base and on the run for the moment sot hey can regroup and figure out what’s going on, including bringing Red Arrow back into the fold. While there’s some quiet time here as things get figured out, it’s pretty welcome once again to have time given over to dialogue and an exploration of the Starro tech they’re being taken advantage of. The most important details comes from Vandal Savage himself though as he’s a classic villain in many ways as he just rambles on about what’s happened in the recent past that reinforces that they’ve een orchestrating this all along.
The show plays it well here in the second half as the youngsters do what they can to change around who it is that’s under control though it has its limitations along the way as well. The ability to defeat the Starro tech is a bit too easy to be sure, but the main idea is watching the team working well together knowing what they know and having good successes overall. On the positive side, as the gang deals with the senior members, it avoids doing a lot of direct confrontations with their particular mentors until towards the end and it doesn’t feel as corny as it should as they play to win against the mind controlled. Bringing a lot of things from the season as a whole here to be dealt with, it does it well while still leaving more than enough open for down the line. The larger threat is far more known now and they’ve proven themselves admirably.
In Summary:
The first season of Young Justice exceeded all my expectations and just did a whole lot right throughout. While there were weak points along the way, Much of the early team building stuff went well, forced as it was at times with some of the relationships, but it grew well over the course of it. With the multiple ongoing storylines, from the mole to the relationships and the agendas so many of them had as well as what the bad guys were after, there’s a huge amount of things going on in this series to keep you interested. And while some things do get revealed and resolved here, there’s still more to be dealt with as well. And as we can see, there’s some missing time to be accounted for and that alone will haunt the elder team. If there was something that hurt the show, it was the awful schedule for much of it as it wasn’t consistent. Thankfully, we got the last run of episodes in good order and the second season kicks off quickly as well.
Grade: B+
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