And we’re back for the halfway point of our binge of Young Justice season 2. Here is the dawn, the infiltration, the rescue, the…oh bad stuff still happens this episode. Let’s dive in!
1. “We call ourselves The Reach”
We get more information in about the first sixty seconds of this episode about the continuation of the plot for the rest of the season than we have in most episodes. We open to Jaime’s origin as a Kord building in El Paso blows and he gets the scarab before moving to his current captivity where The Reach are revealed as well as…a Black Beetle? There’s a corps of Beetles? Ho boi.
The Reach are a pretty obscure DC alien race, no where near as famous as the Rannians, Thanagarians, or Tamaranians. They are also fairly new, having been around only about 11 years at this point. Created as part of Jaime Reyes’ origin in 2007, The Reach are a race of insect conquerors. To read the Wikipedia synopsis would be to mostly spoil the rest of the season, as it is mostly by the books from their comic book counterparts minus some detours. But, suffice to say, they spell bad juju for Blue, which we see in this episode. They also show why we’ve been so fascinated by Blue Beetle up until now. He’s connected to the main antagonists for the season.
2. Stay whelmed
I’m all about Nightwing’s very whelming dialogue. Tim, Babs and Karen all feign capture and get abducted and moved to The Reach mothership (along with a cameo from Stephanie Brown, aka Spoiler). Shenanigans ensue as M’gann rescues Beast Boy and Impulse, who takes off, and Superboy gets to the rest of the abductees. For a supposed black ops team, the squad makes a lot of noise in getting their people out as they have to fight not only The Reach, but also Aqualad and Tigress. Groups are separated, and Black Beetle very clearly has a better on his powers than Blue and just wrecks most of the time. Babs is basically in charge, as she again, tells Dick exactly what to do which he does. Nice to see she still has pull over him in this world. They all get out with the kids, but not before…
3. YOU
Remember how Miss M vegetabled those Kroloteans earlier in the season? Well foreshadowing is a lovely tool as that’s exactly what she does to Aqualad. That’s gonna hurt. She learns though all about his and Nightwing’s plans though as she sucks all the information out of his head which devastates her. This whole op seems to be falling apart real quick. We get it, you’re angry Miss M, you’re friend died and they stole your boyfriend, but you gotta stop killing people it’s not a great look. This edgy turn M’gann takes is not my favorite for the character, especially after she was the heart and soul of the Team for 26 episodes. Of course this gets her closer to her comic book version, but isn’t the League and Team supposed to not kill? Luckily Aqualad has main character mojo, so he should be fine. Right?
4. Moded
Impulse runs off immediately after Blue as soon as he’s free, revealing to us that the future he comes from was conquered by The Reach with Blue Beetle as their muscle and he’s here to stop that from happening. This explains the crappy 90’s or Bostonian, I can’t really tell, lingo that he uses. It’s the same that The Reach use talking to Jaime saying he’s “off-moded” because his scarab was damaged and is disconnected from their control. It’s been “crashed” so to speak.
This is definitely a departure from the comics, but it is a welcome advancement I think. Impulse appeared out of nowhere to save the future and we know he was really unsuccessful. To know what he saved the future from and that his saving Barry Allen is somehow tied to his larger goal of saving Blue Beetle makes this all the more intriguing. It’s also good to see a somewhat serious Bart within the goof that has been absorbed into the Team so quickly. It also makes you wonder what the future of their relationship will look like as it appears Bart needed to make friends to save him. All the plots are aligning! It seems much to early for this compared to last season.
Continued below5. Make aliens great again
So Nightwing and the others exposed The Reach, blew up a ship, discovered The Light’s partner, and stopped another alien invasion? Right? This should be causes for celebration, Earth is safe once again, now all that’s left is to out the aliens to the public. But…The Reach beat them to it and endear themselves to the public. Good ‘ol Tim Curry, I mean G. Gordon Godfrey, declares these are the bestest aliens ever since they were so polite coming to Earth. They aren’t, you know, illegal aliens trespassing over the border wall or something. Ho boi. Little suspect that the Alex Jones-archetype suddenly is praising the blue insect people.
Anyway, how do you fight the nice aliens with the bad aliens when you’re the nice aliens trying to fight the bad aliens? Guess we’ll find out. Or we won’t since next week we have a somewhat-related, Despero-induced interlude. Sound off in the comments below and we’ll see you then!
