Young Justice season 3, episode 13 review: True Heroes

The thirteenth episode of Young Justice: Outsiders points directly towards a very popular DC storyline from the comics coming into this animated universe.

On Friday, Young Justice: Outsiders dropped its next batch of episodes (number ten through thirteen) on the “DC Universe” streaming service. Check out my reviews for episodes three, six, nine, and twelve.

This episode of Young Justice, entitled “True Heroes,”  serves as the midseason finale for the show. As reported by ScreenRant, the second half of this season should start sometime in June of 2019. For now, this episode leaves the heroes with a big victory against metahuman trafficking. Plus, there will be a Young Justice spin on a DC storyline from the past.

Victory

This episode of Young Justice begins on Halloween night, as Brion/Geo-Force, Violet/Halo, Fred Bugg/Forager, and Victor Stone/Cyborg plan to go to a high school dance. Dick Grayson/Nightwing interrupts with a new mission, which involves finally retrieving Brion’s younger sister, Tara.

The mission will involve Nightwing, Superboy, Artemis, Black Lightning, Forager, and Geo-Force. Halo is forced to stay behind with Cyborg and Dr. Helga Jace. Halo’s separation from the rest of the team is because of her infusion with “mother box” tech. This infusion is the only thing that can cleanse Cyborg when taken over by his “father box” tech.

Of course, while sitting out the mission, Halo and Cyborg are forced to battle once again. Violet has an emotional response to being separated from Brion, which  causes her to misfire with her powers. But once she uses her emotions in conjunction with her powers, Halo is able to permanently cleanse Cyborg of the “father box” influences – at least Cyborg seems to think so.

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The bigger chunk of the plot is Nightwing’s mission to liberate a metahuman trading post in Bialya. The plot of the previous episode (“Nightmare Monkeys”) plays directly into this mission. Beast Boy discovered that the Goode Goggles were able to send subliminal messages to any person with the meta-gene. Then that person would go to the nearest meta-human trading post.

The Justice League plans to shut down the entire metahuman posts all in one night. But Megan/Miss Martian reserved this particular post in Bialya for Nightwing’s team because of the presence of Tara. The team knows that Tara is on this post because Batman got the information on Santa Prisca (from episode “Exceptional Human Beings”). Young Justice always does a good job of developing the plots over several episodes, and this recent batch of four was all building to this finale.

Nightwing handles the mission pretty well. For the first phase, the team goes undercover as bidders at this meta-human fight club. Cool little DC connection: all of the bidders are wearing “Court of Owls” style masks from a very big Batman comic book storyline. With relative ease, the team is able to retrieve Tara. Brion then removes Tara’s control chip, and the mission is accomplished – at least partially.

The mission moves to its second phase of saving the rest of the metahumans and shutting down the trading post. This part of the mission brings the action, as good battles bad in a big old throw down. Even Tara and Brion end up helping with the final necessary blows, after being told to wait on the bio-ship with Forager.

Familiar TERRAin

Grayson and his team relish their big victory against metahuman trafficking, as the Justice League was successful in shutting down all of the metahuman trading posts in that one night. Nightwing even feels good about Tara (who he now refers to as “Terra”) being part of the team with Geo-Force, Halo, and Forager.

Then, of course, Tara reveals that she is still working with “The Light.” Particularly, she sends a text message to Deathstroke that reads: “I’m in.” This refers to the The New Teen Titans storyline: “The Judas Contract.” In that story, Terra works with Deathstroke and betrays the Teen Titans.

“The Judas Contract” story was already adapted into an animated movie in 2017 (Teen Titans: The Judas Contract), which was quite good. With Young Justice, there will, as always, be a new spin on this story.

But what’s nice is that the Young Justice writers have already established a trust for this version of Terra – rescued by the team, had her control chip removed, and even helped them in their victory. This particular backstory will make the oncoming betrayal harder to see for this group of heroes, especially Tara’s brother, Brion.

Overall, this first half of season three of Young Justice has been just as satisfactory as its first two seasons. It is interesting to make such a long wait for the second half of the season, especially because the show could have released this first half over thirteen weeks – instead of just four weeks.

So, the wait begins. But two and half seasons of Young Justice are available on “DC Universe” – along with 12 “enhanced” episodes with various commentaries from the first two seasons. If you are a fan of the show, the “enhanced” episodes with the writers and producers are especially worth a watch.

Final score – 9/10