Young Justice: Invasion – "Summit"

Director: Tim Divar
Writer: Greg Weisman

In Santa Prisca on June 19, 00:00 ECT (Ecuador Time), members of the Light and the Reach meet in a large cavern for a secret summit, hence the episode title. It's been less than a week since Blue Beetle and Green Beetle went off mode, and the Ambassador demands to know how the Light lost control of the Biaylan temple. Aqualad steps forward to address this question, after Vandal Savage personally vouches for him and says he entrusted him with the security for this summit. Kaldur essentially, but diplomatically, puts the blame on the Reach for not telling them the full history of the scarabs. He argues that if the Light knew the significance of the temple, they would have made protecting it a higher priority.

The Light recounts all the Reach's recent failures, but the Reach insist they'll get things back under control soon. Black Beetle has been removed from his post on Warworld to track down and kill Blue and Green. But first, he has to serve as the Reach's security at this summit, and remind the Light they're just working for the Reach. Black Manta takes issue with the prospect of being a slave, and their arguing quickly breaks out into a fight.

Aqualad is able to stop the fighting, but not before Ra's al Ghul gets a close look at Tigress' glamor charm. As the conversation turns to the Justice League's seemingly unending trial on the planet Rimbor, Ra's rips off Tigress' medallion, exposing her as Artemis. Everyone's able to quickly put together that this means Aqualad is also a traitor, and the Ambassador orders Black Beetle to kill both of them. But before he can, Deathstroke shoots Aqualad and Artemis, saying the Light takes care of its own.

As Kaldur dies in his father's arms, he plays a prerecorded video explaining how the Light had been manipulating the Reach from day one. He walks them through each step of their deception beginning with the Justice League's mind-controlled attack on Rimbor, which served as bait for the Reach, and ending with the Light willingly surrendering control of the temple to remove Blue and Green Beetle from Reach control. When the video ends, Vandal Savage says with his death, Kaldur has done more to damage his plans than any living creature in 50,000 years.

The Ambassador angrily threatens to destroy Earth with the Warworld, but Savage reminds him that the Light has the crystal key. At this, Aqualad stands up, saying that was the last bit of information he needed. Artemis reveals she also faked her death (for the second time this season) and that Deathstroke was actually Miss Martian in disguise. The rest of the Team arrives and some of them, including Impulse, were disguised as the Light's soldiers.

Savage admits the Light has been guilty of underestimating the young heroes, so he summons Klarion the Witch Boy, who promptly teleports himself and Savage away. Ra's al Ghul tries to stop the fighting, but a vengeful Black Beetle stabs him in the back. Al Ghul's faithful bodyguard, Ubu, promptly takes off with his master, saying he'll be resurrected.

For the first time since "Bloodlines," Bart gets to run alongside Wally West, who has once again come out of retirement for this crucial mission. Wally seems to have finally come around to Bart over the past four months, and even says he thinks Bart should change his costume to something with a little more yellow and red. He says both he and Artemis will return to retirement once the invasion is over, and someone needs to carry on the family tradition. Bart says it'd be so crash to be the next Kid Flash and vows to make Wally proud.

At Wally's behest, Bart removes all the weapons from the Brain. But he only has a split second to bask in his accomplishment before Monsieur Mallah throws the gorilla Beast Boy into Bart. Fittingly, Aqualad knocks out Black Manta, and Blue Beetle pins the Ambassador and the Scientist to the wall. The Ambassador orders Black Beetle to rescue them, but the Reach warrior instead declares the Ambassador unfit for office and leaves him behind, escaping with the Scientist.

With all the fighting wrapped up, Aqualad can only focus on all the villains that escaped, but Nightwing calls this mission a success, pointing out the villains they did capture, plus the fact that the whole summit was recorded and can be used to clear the Justice League. Dick even goes so far as to call it the best day they've had since he, Kaldur and Wally first broke into a Cadmus facility five years ago.




Yes, this episode was a lot of standing around and talking about EVERYTHING that happened this season. And it can get a bit tedious to have back-to-back episodes that do this. But we're almost done with the season and, for better and worse, this is how the show runners chose to structure the story. Despite that, we did get some great action here. Impulse didn't have much to do, though. And I don't totally buy Wally's change of heart. It feels like the creators suddenly realized that we're on the penultimate episode of the season, and it's time to start wrapping things up. It really would have gone a long way to have just a couple of scenes of Bart with Wally between this episode and Bart's debut.

I'm also not a fan of Bart eagerly jumping at the chance to be Kid Flash. There's nothing wrong with being Impulse. You can still honor the Flash legacy by being Impulse. And this show never gave us the impression that Bart felt bad about being called Impulse. I place all the blame for this on Geoff Johns. He forced Bart to become Kid Flash and stripped him of all his unique personality quirks. And so the show decided to follow that same boring, sad path. Sigh. At least we got to enjoy a handful of episodes of Impulse.

Next time, we'll return to one version of Bart who remained Impulse into adulthood.