Young Justice: Invasion – "Cornered"

Director: Doug Murphy
Writer: Nicole Dubuc

In Taos on April 1, 17:23 MDT (two days after being rescued from the Reach), Impulse, Blue Beetle, Beast Boy and all the teenagers who were experimented on have been taken to the New Mexico S.T.A.R. Labs. Everyone is waiting for their turn to be interviewed by Black Canary, and Impulse is annoying everybody by nervously tapping his knees at super speed. Blue Beetle stops him, and an embarrassed Impulse stops, but unconsciously begins tapping his foot.

Black Canary finishes her interview with Tye Longshadow, Jaime Reyes' best friend. Jaime excitedly jumps up to greet Tye, only to be reminded by the scarab that Tye doesn't know his secret identity. Jaime awkwardly tries to play this off as a stretch, which causes everyone to stop glaring at Impulse and stare at Blue Beetle.

Later, Impulse finishes his interview, but we didn't see what he said. Blue Beetle pulls Bart around and demands to know what he told Black Canary. Bart says he didn't tell her anything about Blue Beetle betraying mankind and launching a Reach apocalypse because he doesn't know what turned him. Bart reasons that for all they know, the Justice League finding out could be the very thing that makes it happen. So Impulse suggests they say nothing to no one.

The scarab agrees with this plan and recommends that Jaime kill the Impulse before he changes his mind. Jaime angrily tells the scarab to keep quiet, but Bart thinks that comment was for him, and he agrees. He urges Jaime to stick with him, vowing to keep him from feeling the mode. When Jaime in interviewed by Black Canary, he tells her how the scarab was created by the Reach, but they can't currently control it. And he makes sure to leave out the part about Bart's prophecy.

While all this was happening, the villain Despero attacked Captain Marvel and a few other heroes at the Hall of Justice. The next day, once all that is cleared up, Captain Atom and Nightwing meet with Black Canary in S.T.A.R. Labs to catch up on the latest developments. Blue Beetle interrupts their meeting to come clean, but Impulse appears almost immediately by his side to remind him of their pact to keep quiet. The scarab also tells Jaime not to do this, but Jaime insists on revealing Bart's prophecy. He powers down his armor and asks them to take the scarab off his back.




I'm going to assume that Bart hasn't enrolled in school, yet, because he's racking up a lot of unexcused absences. Same with Jaime and all the rest — I mean, being gone for a whole week is a pretty big deal. But here I am, asking for things I'll never get on this show. We'll never see Bart struggle to adapt to school in the past, let alone his home life with the Garricks. But what we did get was pretty intriguing. Bart's reluctance to tell anyone else about future Blue Beetle is perplexing — until you get to the end of the season. For now, we'll just say that Bart's walking a very fine line with Jaime. And when it's all said and done, there'll still be some questions about Bart's actions.

Next time, we'll bounce back to Smallville: Season Eleven. This was an exciting time for our various Bart Allens — each week he made at least two appearances. If only the original Bart was part of this ...