Animation,  Television

Recap: YOUNG JUSTICE: OUTSIDERS Episodes 7-9

We will be reviewing Young Justice Outsiders Episodes 7-9: Evolution, Triptych, and Home Fires. This is your spoiler warning. If you need to get caught up on all of our Young Justice coverage click here.

Young Justice: Outsiders expanded on its lore this week, and it’s phenomenal. The first episode of the set was Evolution, which serves as a Vandal Savage origin story. Throughout the first two seasons, Savage has been portrayed as a genius tactician and leader of the Light. Here we see his beginnings. We have flashbacks of his life. He has been around for quite a while. Fifty thousand years to be precise. We see his come in contact with a meteor; giving him immortality.

We then learn from Nightwing that Humans eventually wiped out the Neanderthals. Now, will metas do the same to the humans? Interesting tidbit of DC history here. Another interesting bit? Savage has gone by multiple names throughout history. Such as Genghis Khan. In the 13th century, he made a partnership with Darkseid. Something that is still in effect to this day. Savage also protected Babylon from Starro with the help of his son, Nabu (Doctor Fate!), and daughter Olympia.

We see this story unfold while Savage once again takes on an entire fleet of Starro ships headed to earth. See, the Green Lantern Corps and Justice League are too busy fighting the Light, Reach, and Apokolips that they never even notice the attack. Making Savage earth’s only hope. All of this happens while Forager, Halo, and Geo-Force (Brion) train and pick their codenames. Vandal’s origin is one of the highlights of the season.

Triptych brings the focus back to the Outsiders. Myst, Livewire, Shade, and Cheshire are after Reach tech that’s currently located in Stagg Industries. Nightwing goes after them in hopes that Cheshire can tell them who’s running the League of Shadows. Artemis gets her to spill, but Cheshire doesn’t know who is running them, just their location. They are currently based in Santa Prisca, possibly Bane?

We then jump to Robin’s squad. Yes, Tim has a team that consists of Spoiler, Arrowette, and Orphan (Cassandra Cane?). They are after the Mad Hatter who has teamed up with Clayface. This entire sequence was a blast! The group worked well together and showed that they could carry their own.

We then again split off to follow Billy Batson and Barry Allen; who are working undercover. They are transporting Shade and Brick to another prison, only for Sportsmaster to try and break them out. Rocket and Aquaman (Kaldur) provide backup and stop Brick. Sportsmaster and Shade get away.

All of these short stories come together and start to make sense. We learn that Batman Inc., The Outsiders, Robin’s squad, the Justice League, and the Team are secretly working together to try and expose the Light. Hatter was using his nanotech to control Clayface. Sportsmaster was freeing Metas from prison so that Hatter could control them, and Stagg was connected to the Metahuman trafficking. There are two big takeaways from this. The first being that this show loves its secrets. Not sure why Batman insists on keeping the rest of the team in the dark. The second is that Diana said they had six teams working together, but we only know of five. Is Oracle running the Birds of Prey and we not know it?

Lastly, we have Home Fires. This episode was this week’s filler. Lobo is hired by the Light to kill Forager. Halo keeps discovering new abilities, and Dr. Jace continues not to serve a purpose. This episode doesn’t offer much, but we do see a bunch of super babies. The secondary story is Orm wanting to kill the families of the Justice League. The Light doesn’t want this to happen, so Lady Shiva kills him.

The overarching theme here is that the Justice League is always one step behind Vandal Savage and the Light. The world is threatened and they never know. Their families are threatened and they never know. Savage is always one, two, three steps ahead and it’s interesting to see how they counteract that. Even Bruce Wayne is getting played by partnering with Granny Goodness. We also get a few nods to Victor and Silas Stone, maybe Cyborg is in this show’s future? Outsiders continue to keep the level of mystery from Young Justice: Invasion. It balances fun, drama, and action in the best way we’ve seen from DC in a long time.

Follow me on
Latest posts by Michael Thomas (see all)