Director: Christopher Berkeley
Writers: Jim Krieg and Giancarlo Volpe
It has been a long time since we’ve visited this show! After a lengthy delay between seasons, the fourth season (Phantoms) chose to wait 19 episodes before finally incorporating Bart Allen into the plot. It’s true, we did technically see Bart a couple of times earlier this season, but he wasn’t really there or didn’t actually do anything. The first couple of episodes involved Beast Boy traveling with Miss Martian and Superboy to Mars for their wedding. Gar was feeling a bit homesick during that trip, and couldn’t help but periodically scroll through photos of the team he founded, the Outsiders. These photos sometimes included Kid Flash, but didn’t reveal anything new.
Later in the season, one episode ended with Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy knocking on Bart’s door on May 15. But literally all Bart did was open the door. We didn’t find out what the Legionnaires asked of him until this episode. Turns out the two time-travelers were waiting until Jay Garrick took off to attend a peace summit on New Genesis with Rocket (as seen above). This left Bart in charge of the house for the summer and free to assist in any secret missions affecting the fate of the future.
Our story begins in Central City on August 27, 6:49 Central Daylight Time. The sun is remarkably high in the sky for this early in the morning, and Bart is loading a picnic table of supplies into Miss Martian’s old Bio-Ship. Chameleon Boy marvels at how it took them three and a half months to acquire and assemble the parts they needed, but now it’s only taken Bart 10 minutes to install them. Bart apologizes for his slowness, saying that incorporating the rebuilt components from their destroyed Time-Sphere was a real “time suck.”
Bart’s almost finished making Bio-Ship ready for time travel, but he refuses to finish until the Legionnaires explain everything to him. Chameleon Boy worries about upsetting the timeline, but Bart points out that he’s not even from this timeline, which is why they came to see him in the first place. So Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy agree to Bart’s request, just as a villain named Lor-Zod begins to tell roughly the same story to his henchmen half a universe away.
Bart assembles a large pile of food, including his favorite Chicken Whizees, as Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy begin their story with the Phantom Zone. The Kryptonians used the extra-dimensional space as a prison, but never intended to keep their criminals there permanently. But this unfortunately became the reality after Krypton was destroyed, leaving no one behind to pull the prisoners back into reality. But in the future, the last Phantom Zone projector was discovered on New Genesis, and the United Planets agreed to parole all the imprisoned Kryptonians and end their sentences, which lasted over a thousand years.
The released Kryptonians were settled on the planet Daxam, which orbits a red sun. But 15 years later, General Zod smuggled his followers to a nearby planet with a yellow sun and began to stage a rebellion against the United Planets. He was ultimately defeated by the Legion of Super Heroes. Zod and his followers were once again banished to the Phantom Zone, with one exception. His teenage son, Lor-Zod, was spared that fate due to his age.
Lor-Zod stole the Phantom Zone projector in an attempt to release his parents, forcing the Legion to destroy the projector. So Lor-Zod turned his attention toward destroying the Legion itself. He learned that the team has credited Superboy as their inspiration (for whatever reason), so Lor-Zod stole the last remaining sample of kryptonite and a Time-Sphere to go back in time to kill the man who also happened to be related (in a way) to Jor-El, who initially imprisoned General Zod so long ago.
Saturn Girl, Chameleon Boy and Phantom Girl tried to stop Lor-Zod from traveling back in time, but they were too late, and ended up becoming engulfed in the Time-Sphere’s chroniton radiation. Bart realizes this made them immune to changes Lor made to the timestream, saying the same thing happened to him. Saturn Girl sadly explains that after Lor disappeared, they discovered that the Legion of Super Heroes didn’t exist in their timeline anymore and General Zod now ruled the galaxy, all because Conner Kent had been killed. So the three remaining Legionnaires took the last Time-Sphere on a quest to stop Lor-Zod.
They tracked Lor-Zod to a significant moment in Superboy’s history — the speech he made at the United Nations a year ago, in which he revealed his existence to the world. The Legionnaires were able to stop Lor from killing Conner that day without anyone noticing, but, as Bart points out, that action wasn’t enough to revert the timeline. Bart sadly adds that he has also experienced that exact same phenomenon. To make matters worse, Saturn Girl continues, was that Lor escaped, leaving the Legionnaires without any idea of when, where, or how he would kill Superboy. So they resolved to covertly track Conner and wait for Lor’s attack.
Using their convenient powers of telepathy, shapeshifting and intangibility, Saturn Girl, Chameleon Boy and Phantom Girl were able to remain virtually invisible for an entire year, even following Conner to his wedding on Mars. Lor-Zod also went to Mars, keeping his Time-Sphere out of sync with the timestream to avoid detection. He destroyed the Justice League’s Zeta-Tube and a communications satellite to cut off any support from Earth. Lor then separated the Legion from Superboy by creating a cave-in, which gave him enough time to add the kryptonite to a bomb set up by Miss Martian’s evil brother. The Legionnaires split up to find Superboy and Phantom Girl was the lucky one to arrive right when he took the bomb into a pit of lava to save the population of Mars. Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy both believe Superboy and Phantom Girl were killed in the blast.
Chameleon Boy says that Lor-Zod also destroyed the Legionnaires’ Time-Sphere, stranding them in the past, another thing Bart says he can relate to. But Saturn Girl says they found a lucky break with Miss Martian’s old Bio-Ship, which was scheduled to retire on Mars. Since there was no historical record of the ship beyond this point, Saturn Girl felt confident they could use her without altering the timeline. So the Legionnaires journeyed back to Earth and reached out to the one hero capable of replacing Superboy in their timeline. Bart thinks they were referring to him, but Chameleon Boy impatiently says they went to Superman, telling him as little as possible, but hoping they gave him enough information to become the inspiration for the Legion.
After their meeting with Superman, Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy visited Bart, dubbing him the “only true space-time expert in this era on this planet.” Which finally brings us to the present and the Legion’s desperate need for Bart’s help. After one final plea for his aid, Bart instantly throws on his Kid Flash uniform and puts the finishing touches on the Bio-Ship’s Cosmic Treadmill.
There’s a scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones sits around a table and literally opens up a book to explain the plot to the audience. George Lucas called this scene a necessary evil — and I agree. Every story occasionally needs to sit down and explain things. And that’s exactly what this episode did. Unfortunately, it wasn’t able to keep the explanation as concise as Lucas did in Raiders. Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy had way too much stuff to explain to Bart — including a lot of stuff that I would have loved to have seen actually play out in real time. But this isn’t a new problem for this show. Ever since it went to HBO Max, it has been burdened with too much plot, too many characters and not a large enough budget for animation or voice actors to tell the story properly. Lots of episodes have extended explanation scenes like this, with a voiceover accompanied by a series of still images. And that’s a shame because the story is almost always compelling.
Jason Marsden returned once again to voice Bart, and even seemed to make Bart sound a little older. He looks almost exactly the same as he did last season, but maybe just a smidge more mature. He still is rather short, as Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy both dwarf him. We’ve never really known how old Bart is supposed to be, but he is apparently old enough to watch over Jay’s house by himself for four months. (Jay, by the way, celebrated his 102nd birthday on August 27.) Sadly, we don’t know anything else about Bart right now. We have seen Eduardo and Jaime this season, but never with Bart.
I was most intrigued by Bart’s little asides during this episode. They seem to fit into my theory that this version of Bart is a lot smarter than he lets on. And Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy seemed to acknowledge this, as well. I don’t think they called him a true space-time expert just because he happened to use a time machine one time. It seems like Bart not only knew exactly what he was doing with his initial journey to the past, but he somehow was able to confirm what the end of the “Bloodlines” episode hinted at — which was all of Bart’s efforts to change the future failed. This, of course, raises more questions than answers, but I don’t expect the show to address them this season. This isn’t Bart’s story — he’s just a vehicle (or rather an engine, literally) to help move the plot along. It’s great having some form of Bart to review, but as a diehard fan of this character, I’m left wanting more. As usual.
Next time, we’ll see what Bart and the Legionnaires decide to do with the time-traveling Bio-Ship.
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