Young-Justice-True-Colors Television 

Five Thoughts on Young Justice‘s “True Colors”

By | August 15th, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

Welcome back to more Young Justice coverage as part of our Summer TV Binge! We inch closer and closer to the end of the season with the arrival of The Reach and most of the cards on the table. This week we get more Reach and Light intel, Beetle nonsense, and more! Let’s dive in!

1. Yeah that thing’s not coming off

We begin this week following up on the cliffhanger of last week: Blue Beetle needs to get his scarab removed so as to not become a future evil Reach dictator. Simple enough. Except not really. The Atom and Bumblebee go in and try to get it removed, and as the pint-size team attempts to laser the scarab out of Jaime’s spinal cord the antibodies attack! They barely make it out in time as the scarab chases them off and repairs itself and we learn that thing is definitely not coming off (at least in conventional scientific ways).

The episode continues to play on Blue Beetle mythos. Previous Blue Beetles got their powers from fancy vitamins to Egyptian magic, to Jaime’s alien powered scarab. We see weird vitamins and enhancing things this episode, and it’s hinted at the end that Green Beetle will introduce us to magic. If true science can’t get rid of the thing where else do you turn? On this rewatch of the series it’s so cool to see how inspired by “Blue Beetle” comics the writers had been, outside of merely including The Reach. There’s fun hints and jabs all over.

2. Brain Force Plus, trademark of LexCorp

Looking back at our illustrious G. Gordon Godfrey, voiced by the eccentric Tim Curry, you can’t help but notice the InfoWars comparisons. Godfrey is a rightwing nut hawking The Reach and their fancy vitamin products and organic weird vegetables and it’s really great. The cutaways to Godfrey every episode are things I look forward to. I love seeing how perhaps millions of people are reflecting on what the Justice League are and their purpose. I think Godfrey brings up good points this episode, namely why the JL doesn’t try to solve “real” problems like world hunger and instead seemingly create more problems. In many ways, he isn’t wrong, and while these stories always end with the benevolent benefactors being the true enemies, the contrast is nice. Plus this scene has an homage to the old Justice League title logo from the Timmverse animated series and that’s always welcome.

3. Arsenal?!?! WTF??

So Nightwing puts Tim Drake in charge of leading a squad to infiltrate Lex’s Vitamex compound in Smallville and get the full scoop and lowdown and the newly resurrected Roy Harper gets put in the Alpha Squad. They’re about to make it completely successfully, no problems, but Arsenal triggers an explosion basically to screw with Lex cause why not. What the hell duded? What the actual hell? Clone Roy is arrogant and self-deprecating. You’re just angry and into blowing crap up. Roy’s an idiot and I’m surprised Nightwing put him on the squad for this one as there are definitely others he could have called in. None of the women on the Team would’ve been so dumb. Where were they?

4. B’arzz O’oomm

So after Arsenal’s royal screw up, the enforcer Black Beetle is called down and the Team is almost royally effed. There’s not really anything they can do to stop Black Beetle and Jaime is too scared to let the scarab take over else he might become the Beetle of Bart’s future, so thank God a new challenger arrived! That’s right, there’s Beetles for every Skittles color at this point as a Green Beetle comes out of the depth to take on Black Beetle. A Green Beetle from Mars. A man named B’arzz O’oomm.

B’arzz and Alpha Squad take on Black and incapacitate him before retreating to the Kent Farm to question him and his response is, “I showed up cause The Reach showed up.” Sketchy and abrupt, especially mixed with him telling Jaime he could get the scarab off, but alright. What’s cool about this, is that this might be the first time the show has created their own character that does not have any basis in the comics. Green Beetle is not a thing and is a complete original of the writers of the show. While appearing out of nowhere as a plot contrivance in this episode, it’s clear there’s more to come for this man from Mars.

Continued below

5. A matter of honor

Sideplot of the episode dealt with Sportsmaster finally trying to get back at Black Manta for Aqualad “killing” Artemis. We got a good look at some of The Light’s politics and got a great view of ponytail Deathstroke. Ah that ponytail. It’s all about honor as Sportsmaster clearly doesn’t care about Artemis’ death, but only wants to protect his reputation. It’s interesting to see how Black Manta handles this with Kaldur currently catatonic, although Psimon could change that and uncover all the double crossing. While this certainly moves the Kaldur and Light stuff along some, this really seems extraneous and only works to allow Lex and Vandal Savage’s appearance at the end to not seem weird and forced as they reveal their pumping out weird Reach juice and forming a Team of their own. All in all, good for the Light, seemingly unimportant for Sportsmaster.

That’s all for this week folks so sound off in the comments below! We return next week as the secrets start to come undone!


//TAGS | 2018 Summer TV Binge | Young Justice

Kevin Gregory

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