Welcome back folks to more of our coverage of Young Justice as we chug along with the last few episodes at the close of the Multiversity Summer Binge! Today, we have more magic as Klarion and The Light establish two different Earths, one with adults and one with kids, continuing with a format that this show does really well of highlighting the mystical side of the DCU. Let’s dive in!
1. Pentagram fun time
This episode opens with Klarion and a cavalcade of other DC mystical baddies, Wotan, Blackbriar Thorn, Felix Faust, and Wizard drawing up a pentagram to split the earths and create a world of adults and a world of children and teenagers. It’s a really cool scene and really just continues to highlight that this show is good at the mystical and magical. There hasn’t been another DC animated property that has tapped into that part of the DCU, not even Justice League Dark in my opinion, better than this show has. Between the magic villains, which besides Klarion are just figures which is a little problematic but it’s cool they’re name dropped, Zatanna and Zatara, Captain Marvel, and Doctor Fate, this episode has a lot to offer. And the whole two separate Earths is a cool concept.
2. It’s up to Billy Batson!
It might just be me, but I’ve never read a lot of stories with Billy. Some with Captain Marvel/Shazam, but not so much with Billy. This version of Billy is really cool though, playing the superhero himself in a lot of ways and thinking through everything going on. It’s always felt like to me that Billy and Captain Marvel were two separate entities or personalities, but this episode treats them as the same. It’s cool to see Billy as Billy and then to be the medium between the adult world and the kid world and it’s really a development that works. It’s funny the Justice League didn’t know he was a child though and I wonder what the fallout, if any, there will be?
3. “How desperate are we?”
The matching scenes between the team and Batman and Zatara eyeing The Helm of Fate are really cool parallels and it’s been interesting to explore the fallout of Fate wanting to break free and find a new host after Kent Nelson has kept him hidden for so long. When both The team and the League have to look at each other and question the possibility of using this tool you know it’s deep. I’ve really loved the development with the helm, even though in some ways after the second use it was almost a deus ex machina that needed to kind of be put to bed as an option. And that happens and it’s really sad…
4. A Light sideplot
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before but this is not my first time viewing this season of Young Justice. I remembered this episode but completely forgot about its larger place in the narrative of the whole season with The Light, and so to see Sportsmaster and the Riddler show up in one like 30 second scene was really interesting. Especially since what they steal from STAR Labs really sets up the plot for the rest of the season. The whole Crisis on Multiple Created Earths thing is a diversion then that the Light sets up gives Klarion motive other than just being an asshole.
Also, this scene really highlights that the kid earth seems mostly fine and the adults are rioting in the streets. Maybe the kids really are alright?
5. The new Doctor Fate
What a cruel twist of Fate. Zatanna dons the helm to save the team and she does and then Nabu decides he’s had enough of being dormant and wants to keep her. Zatara, of course, can’t handle this so he pleas to Nabu to switch with her to which he accepts, and then he’s gone, overwritten by Nabu, the new Doctor Fate. I really feel like the show has done the most with Zatara’s character outside of any other representation of him. In the comics he’s basically always been dead and seen in flashbacks. This show made him a fully fleshed out character. It felt weighty when he put the helm on knowing that was the last time he would be truly Zatara.
That’s all for this week folks, sound off in the comments and tune in next week as Wally gets his own mission racing the cold!