Young Justice: Outsiders – "Illusion of Control"

Director: Christopher Berkeley
Writer: Greg Weisman

One of the things that I think killed the second season of Young Justice was its irregular release schedule. When it moved to DC's own digital platform, I had hoped the show would enjoy something more sensible and predictable — you know, one episode a week, always on the same day and time. Sadly, DC chose not to do this, opting instead to cluster episodes together, sometimes releasing three or four a week. And then they took a massive hiatus from the end of January to the beginning of July. So it's been a while since we've seen this version of Bart Allen.

In the show's time, it's been about two months since we last saw Bart baby-sitting his toddler father and aunt. Apparently Bart has since befriended Eduardo Dorado Jr. — one of the teens the Reach kidnapped in season two and gained the power of teleportation as a result of their experiments. Eduardo is currently working at a Meta-Human Youth Center in Taos, New Mexico, with his dad, and Bart (and most of the Team) has decided to lend a hand to this facility, especially as the teen abductions has not slowed down, despite the departure of the Reach.

Our episode begins in Taos on November 22 at 13:59 MST. The youth center is hosting a harvest festival and Bart is quickly throwing up some last-minute decorations. He zips right past one of the center's workers, Nathaniel Tryon, aka Neutron. He was the person who helped send Bart back to the past, so I'd imagine it would be pretty awkward for Bart to interact with this younger version of the man he once knew. But Bart does give out quick hugs to Jaime, Traci and Virgil, before giving Eduardo a slightly more special hug. He comes up from behind and leans in close — so close and so fast, in fact, that you might think Bart kissed him. But he didn't. (Believe me, I paused it and went frame by frame.)

Before too long, Garfield Logan arrives with his girlfriend, Queen Perdita (Bart dubs them "Gardita"). Jaime officially introduces Traci as his girlfriend, prompting Virgil to complain about being a "seventh wheel" and begin a running gag about how he needs a girlfriend. Virgil's comment makes it sound like Bart and Eduardo are a couple, but at no point in this episode do we see them directly refer to each other as boyfriends or hold hands or anything like that.

We do, however, see Bart and Eduardo share a gigantic bumper hover car, which, Bart naturally feels moves way too slow. He complains that this isn't even "slightly crash," so Eduardo takes the controls and promises to terrorize the other drivers. Bart finds this acceptable and calls Eduardo "amigo."

Later, Eduardo confides to Perdita that he's worried about a meta-teen he's been working with named Wendy. He had tried to teach her to control her wind powers, but after a near-fatal accident, she convinced herself she constantly needs to wear an inhibitor collar, which Eduardo dubs an "illusion of control." Bart then hands Eduardo an empty cotton candy stick — apparently he got too hungry on the way back from the stand and ate both the treats. Eduardo, however, is merely bemused by this.

Garfield asks Eduardo how his work is going, and Eduardo sadly wishes he could do more. Bart points out that he set up this whole festival, but Eduardo is looking for some kind of grand gesture to inspire the teens. Gar understands, saying he's frustrated by the Team's covert nature preventing them from being a source of inspiration. He begins to launch into a monologue about the need for young role models, he suddenly collapses to the ground with a wave of nausea.

Bart also falls to the ground, wondering if he ate too much cotton candy. But soon everyone else is down, and Count Vertigo calmly walks in with a random henchman, who scoops up Perdita and loads her into a helicopter. Appropriately, Bart is first back on his feet and in hot pursuit of the copter (see screenshot). But when he gets too close, he's hit with another wave of nausea from Vertigo and trips in the desert. He uses an earpiece to warn everyone to maintain their distance, and soon the whole gang is in pursuit — Blue Beetle flying with Traci in his arms, Static Shock riding a metal disc and Beast Boy flying as an eagle. Even Eduardo is there, teleporting himself along and communicating with his own earpiece, even though he's not an official member of the Team.

The chase continues until 17:31 MST, until Traci is able to use her powers to pull out the helicopter's fuel line, forcing it to land at a nearby pueblo. Everybody races into the abandoned city and Eduardo does a quick scan, but can't find anything. Bart races all around what he calls "this moded place," but also comes up empty, saying every building looks exactly the same. Jaime tries to fly above the city, but the walls seem to grow with him. Luckily, his scarab points out that he's only hovering a few feet off the ground, despite what he sees with his eyes.

Bart slaps his forehead with a "hello, Megan!" realizing that he was just running in circles the whole time. Static astutely points out that Vertigo doesn't have illusion powers, but in the meantime, Beast Boy turns into a bear to try to find his girlfriend with his nose. Almost immediately, our heroes encounter Vertigo's henchman, who actually turns out to be a lot tougher than he appears. Bart punches him a bunch of times, but only succeeds in hurting his hands. He asks what this guy is made of, to which he oddly replies, "Sugar and spice and everything nice," before knocking Bart down with a single blow.

Meanwhile, Perdita finds an opportunity to fight back and kicks Vertigo in the crotch. The illusion over the count fades away, revealing him to actually be Psimon and the henchman his girlfriend, the nearly indestructible Devastation. With Psimon injured, Devastation abandons the battle, rushes to her boyfriend's aid, and leaps away with him. Beast Boy realizes that Psimon and Devastation belong to a team called Onslaught under Queen Bee — meaning Count Vertigo was never involved and Perdita was never the target. Eduardo puts together the fact that many of the teens at the youth center were rescued from Onslaught, so the rest of that team is most likely rounding up the now defenseless metahumans.

Sure enough, our heroes' hunches were right. Bart is first on the scene, followed closely by Eduardo. They find everyone at the carnival has been knocked out with a gas, enabling the rest of Onslaught to easily load them up in large shipping crates. Bart and Eduardo rescue a couple of teens from Holocaust and Icicle. Bart gives a cheesy, heroic one-liner, which Eduardo completes, telling the villains to put themselves in the box. (Don't worry, there's nothing romantic about this instance of  people completing each other's sentences. That's just an annoying trope Greg Weisman relies on way too much.)

Holocaust can't hit Bart or Eduardo with his fire blasts, and neither can Icicle catch them with his ice. But Bart and Eduardo are easily able to direct their enemies' blows at each other, causing Holocaust to be frozen and Icicle to be burned. The Terror Twins then arrive, and Tuppence uses a fatherbox to open a boom tube beneath Bart and Eduardo. Luckily, Eduardo teleports to safety and Bart is impressively able to run free of the tube's pull.

Tuppence creates another boom tube, but Static pulls the fatherbox away from her and tosses it into the tube. Eduardo then teleports on her back and places an inhibitor collar around her neck. Static quickly gets another collar around Tommy Terror, and all the villains are rendered unconscious. The gas starts to wear off and Eduardo notes that there's no way they can keep the press away from this. Static suggests they leave to maintain the covert nature of the Team, but Beast Boy has a different idea.

He, Blue Beetle and Kid Flash (Bart quickly threw his uniform on) stay behind and address the media directly. Beast Boy says this isn't about the limelight, and Kid Flash jokes that he's more about the "lemon light." As Beast Boy explains that he wants to show the world what meta-teens can choose to do with their powers, the rest of our heroes stay back on the sidelines. Virgil worries about breaking the rules like this, but Eduardo seems to approve of this bold, new choice.




It's about time Bart got to do something on this show. And he spent most of the time in his civilian clothes, which is great for me, since I'm not too crazy about his Kid Flash uniform. Anyway, the main plot of trying to recapture a handful of meta-teens was nowhere near as significant as Beast Boy's decision to go public about their superhero work. Sixteen episodes into this season and we finally (almost) have the beginning of the Outsiders.

But most importantly is Bart's supposedly budding romance with Eduardo. It almost seems impossible to argue that the two aren't dating, although they apparently are still in the early stages of their relationship. I was pretty surprised to see how Bart interacted with Eduardo in this episode, mainly because we've never even seen them talk to each other before. As for the prospect of making Bart gay? I'm fine with it. Fans long suspected that Bart had a crush on Jaime in season two. And in the comics world, Bart's sexuality was very rarely an important aspect of his character. Yeah, he's officially had two different girlfriends, but for the most part, he was too young or distracted to care about girls. So I guess what I'm saying is it doesn't feel like a betrayal of the core elements of Bart Allen to suddenly give him a boyfriend — if that's what this show is doing. This season will end without giving us a clear indication one way or the other on the Bart/Eduardo relationship.

Next time, we'll continue Young Justice: Outsiders with an episode called "First Impression."