Director: Christopher Berkeley
Writer: Greg Weisman
Our story picks up right where we left off six years ago, at the Watchtower on July 4, 21:16 EDT. This is an exact repeat of the scene of Nightwing surrendering control of the Team to Aqualad, who assigned Kid Flash to join Tigress, Bumblebee and Guardian to investigate LexCorp's plans to release the Reach sports drink under a new name. But we don't know how that mission played out, because we suddenly jump ahead two years later.
We next see Kid Flash back on the Watchtower on July 27, 19:57 EDT. Bart's wearing a new costume, looks a little taller and has a new haircut, but is still voiced by Jason Marsden. He's standing between Blue Beetle and a new girl named Thirteen, as the Team reports to its new leader, Miss Martian. But their debriefing is interrupted by the much more important Justice League meeting being held in the nearby conference room. And the new leader of the Justice League is Kaldur, who now goes by Aquaman. He invites M'gann to observe the meeting, but the rest of the team has to wait outside.
The meeting ends in a rather dramatic fashion, with Batman staging a mass exodus from the Justice League, including some members of the Team — Robin and two new girls, Arrowette and Spoiler. Coincidentally, Black Lightning also chose today to resign from the League in person, but he strongly rejects Batman's offer to join what he dubs "Batman Incorporated." Black Lightning apologizes to Static Shock, advising him to find a new, less damaged mentor, then teleports away. Kid Flash, who was eating a bag of what was undoubtedly Chicken Whizees, is just as shocked as the rest of the heroes left behind. He call out in vain for someone to tell him what's going on. And that's the last we see of Bart this episode.
But as we can see from the screenshot, Artemis, Conner and Dick are still active, even though they're not members of the Team or whatever Batman's calling his new group. Dick's eyes are quite distracting, as he's wearing new contact lenses that make his eyes black, but then turn blue when activated.
Obviously, there's a lot more that happens in this episode, but I'm only going to examine the events of these episodes from Bart's viewpoint. And sadly, Bart has been relegated to a much smaller role on this show. This season is much more ambitious in terms of plot and cast size. Unfortunately, the show is no longer on Cartoon Network and doesn't seem to have the same budget on DC Universe. This is especially apparent with all the nonspeaking characters. Blue Beetle and Static Shock were both unusually silent during the shocking collapse of the League and Team. At least they paid Jason Marsden to spout off three or four lines to almost make things feel natural.
Bart's new outfit is a little strange. But I really like his decision to stop wearing Wally's old suit. This way, he can still honor Wally's legacy by being Kid Flash, while forging his own identity as a hero. It's also kind of ironic that two years after secretly working behind the scenes for months to save Blue Beetle, Bart is now being blindsided by his teammates' secret scheme. Still, though, it would have had a much bigger impact if we actually saw Arrowette and Spoiler in action before their departure. I guess Tim Drake leaving is something, especially since he didn't tell his girlfriend, Wonder Girl, ahead of time.
This show had a very unusual release schedule, dropping three or four episodes a week before taking a break for a few months and then coming back at one or two episodes a week. I wish they would have been disciplined enough to do one episode a week, but that's just me. Anyway, Bart only appeared in one of the three episodes that premiered on January 4, so next time, we'll head to January 9 for the new Young Justice #1.
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