2. Young Justice
It’s hard to imagine a time when Young Justice was just a brilliant two-season show that was cancelled far too soon. However, such a time did exist and it dragged on for six years, as fans of the show battled endlessly to get it revived. And by the time that 2017 rolled around, those fans had achieved their goal.
Like with Titans, the DC Universe is defined by Young Justice as the show’s revival accompanied the initial announcement of the DC streaming service and, in a way, was used as a selling point. From that very moment, the success of the service lay in the hands of Young Justice Season 3 – and the hopes that it would deliver.
The show had gone down in history for being one of the best written, storylined and developed animated shows of all time (which is what made its cancellation all the more appalling), and it’s safe to say that after Young Justice: Outsiders, those are achievements it will continue to boast.
The new season maintained all of the elements that made the original show so compelling, jumping back and forth between episodic character-driven storytelling and the wider season-long arcs and, for the most part, it managed to balance everything really well.
Though a little overreliance on the new characters resulted in some of the veterans receiving less screen-time, it’s hard to count that as a negative when the likes of Brion, Tara, Violet, Forager and Victor were characterized so darn well. And it was their collective arc as the Outsiders that proved to be one of the show’s most engaging narratives.
A resounding success on all fronts, Young Justice: Outsiders took both the show and the DC Universe to greater heights than ever before, and its fourth season on Max did exactly the same. It’s so unfortunate that the streamer opted not to bring it back for a fifth season. However, this show is known for defying the odds, so maybe one day, we’ll see it return once again.