Welcome to Boomb Tube, where we recap all your favorite weekly animated series! This week, Larfleeze makes his animated debut and The Runaways return to Young Justice!
On Green Lantern: The Animated Series, Hal and the Interceptor Crew decide that they need some additional firepower in the war against Aya-Monitor. Razer tells the rest of the crew about the Orange Lantern Corps and how they once used their power to fight Atrocitus to a standstill. Everyone forgets how fighting Atrocitus to a stand still, or even defeating him sometimes, is what they do every day and go find the ring in hopes that it will help defeat Aya. Arriving on the Orange Lantern homeworld, Hal and the rest of the crew find the Orange Lantern Battery surrounding by thousands of discarded Orange Lantern rings. What follows is probably the character’s scariest moment, as Larfleeze, the sole member of the Orange Lantern Corps hides in the shadows and attacks Hal and the Gang with his constructs. Eventually, Hal is able to seize the Battery but becomes corrupted by it so Razer and Kilowogg team up with Larfleeze to snap him out of it. They do so and everyone leaves Larfleeze alone. Yes, this episode did feel a bit like filler; everyone is searching for this Orange Battery ring while Aya is off destroying entire star systems, but gosh darnit if Larfleeze isn’t the best in everything. In the beginning he’s almost terrifying, hiding in the shadows and screaming like a genuine psychopath. But then once he gets his battery stole? He softens up a bit and just becomes adorable. And that last scene where he offers to give the crew a goodbye gift before looking at his treasure, back at them, and then deciding not to give them anything completely adorable.
8/10 – A little filler, but certainly some great filler.
Over on Young Justice, The Runaways, a team of teenagers with no homes who were genetically experimented on by The Reach, continue their efforts to sabotage The Reach invasion by… blowing up soda machines? Ok all they’re doing is basic vandalism but they all have skateboards so I guess that’s how we know they’re still good guys. Lex Luthor, their benefactor, sends them a Boom Tube and orders them to go to Warworld to rescue the members of The Team who were kidnapped by the corrupted Blue Beetle two episodes ago. They reach Warworld (with their skateboards) and fight The Reach until they find the kids who they free by setting a recently liberated Mongul on Black Beetle. During all of this, Nightwing, Miss Martian, and a paranoid-as-Hunter-S.-Thompson-in-a-government-facility Arsenal also attempt to rescue the kid but they become sidetracked by Arsenal screaming and shooting everything. Nightwing and the rest of The Team meet up with The Runaways and rescued Team members and offers them a spot on The Team. The Runaways decline because they aren’t anyone’s to control and they have better boards to skate. Arsenal leaves with them out of teenage rebellion and gives them the skinny on Lex Luthor’s manipulative ways and how he kind of cost Roy his arm. The kids decide to kick flip away from the establishment and the final shot of this episode is Roy watching as The Runaways skateboard off into the distance. Truly beautiful.
Review Score: 8.5/10 – Skateboard
