Young Justice: Outsiders – "Nevermore"

Director: Mel Zwyer
Writers: Jim Krieg & Jeremy Adams

It's been a couple of weeks since the defeat of Granny Goodness, but there are still a few loose ends to wrap up for this season. So we check in on Oracle (above) in Gotham City on February 15, 18:31 EST. She's updating Black Lightning on the tenuous situation in Markovia and the coordinated response between the Outsiders, the Team and Batman's personal squad, which Black Lightning has dubbed "Batman, Inc." As Oracle speaks, members of the Outsiders (including Kid Flash) and Team are flying the Bio-Ship into Markovburg on February 16, 1:33 EET (Eastern European Time). Their mission simply is to prevent Dr. Ecks from killing the people who are loyal to King Gregor (Geo-Force's twin brother).

There are two other squads with much flashier missions, which actually get screen time. Kid Flash's group easily defeats Dr. Ecks (a man who can duplicate himself) and rescue his hostages offscreen. The other squads don't fare as well, though. They do technically stop Prince Brion's uncle from staging a coup, but they stand by helplessly as Brion murders his uncle and insanely seizes the crown for himself. Granted, a psychic named Zviad Baazovi was influencing things, but it still is rather inexcusable for all these heroes to let this happen.

We next see Kid Flash a week later on the Watchtower on February 24, 19:00 EST. He's attending a massive meeting that includes almost every conceivable hero on the show (many of whom participated via video call). Nightwing conducts the meeting, opening with an admission that he, Aquaman, Miss Martian and Batman have been running a secret task force over the past six months, coordinating missions with the League, Team and Outsiders. They all step down from their leadership positions and pick Black Lightning to be the new leader of the Justice League. Everybody is happy with this, but I can't help notice how little detail Dick, Kaldur and M'gann provided. If the Outsiders truly knew how much they had been deceived, I don't think they would have been all smiles and cheers at this meeting.

Our last glimpse of Kid Flash is in Taos on February 26, 13:13 MST. He, Eduardo and Gar are present when one of the center's meta-teens, Wendy Jones, finally agrees to remove her inhibitor collar after months of self doubt and anxiety.




And that's it. Bart didn't say a single word in this episode. In fact, he hardly moved at all. This episode was especially guilty of using still images instead of animating the sequences. I think it's alright to do that every now and then, but when it's overdone like this, it feels lazy. And rushed. This season had 26 episodes, but it really needed 52. The show runners bit off more than they could chew, probably a side effect of having spent so much down time between seasons two and three. There is word for a fourth season, but we still don't have a release date for that, even though it's almost been a year since season three ended.

I'm just really sad that Bart was relegated to a background character after having such a large impact on season two as Impulse. He got a new outfit (which is kind of dumb), became good friends with Eduardo (but maybe not in a romantic way?) and was a founding member of the Outsiders. But beyond that, he really didn't do anything. One of his guardians, Joan Garrick, did pass away, but that happened offscreen. The only bit of Bart's home life we saw was him babysitting his toddler father and aunt that one time. I just wanted more. But as an Impulse fan, I'm used to being shortchanged.

Next time, we'll return to the Young Justice comic series, which had issue #8 delayed by a month.