After the rumour of it being cancelled back in 2013 due to too many girls watching it (if you can believe such tripe) and the resulting and justified outcry, Young Justice: Outsiders has returned to the DC streaming service for a 3rd Season!
With the original target audience being teenagers, we got a rather dark, gritty and extremely edgy PG13 out of 2 seasons. Now, with the return, that demographic has matured and so too has Young Justice. It’s more violently dark, dealing with the worst side of humanity and you can honestly see why its new home would be a streaming service, otherwise the censorship on this would be a lumberjacks dreamland “chop, chop, chop”.
We arrive two years after the Reach’s defeat, Kaldur is now Aquaman and co-chairs the League with Wonder Woman, Miss Martian leads the Alpha Team and is engaged to Superboy and Artemis is still mourning Wally’s death although now lives with the clone Roy, renamed Will.
The seasons deals with a subject not many would expect to see in an animated series; child trafficking (told you it was darker). Meta-human trafficking of children is now reaching new levels, children being sold on Earth and across the galaxy as weapons by the mysterious “Bedlam” and the substance known as “Tar”, with the Justice League unable to intervene due to U.N. Secretary General Lex Luthor, who is still unfathomably in power.
With things looking ever bleak and the public disapproval of the League at an all time high, Batman, Green Arrow, The Flash and four other heroes, (along with their respective protégés) quit in a pre-planned move to operate as vigilantes again; Outsiders if you will.
Black Lightning also quits, but to recover from an incident on Rann where he unfortunately accidentally killed a child in metahuman form; Plasma, a 14 year old girl named Ana Von Furth who was sold as a weapon and died due to heart failure.
As you can see, Young Justice has followed the age growth from 2013 and continued on, with more trafficking, blood, murder and villains who are not above killing children or at least young adults. It’s a gripping new season that’s also not short on action, drama and twists.
Darkseid is ever present in Outsiders, as Boom-Tubes, Mother Boxes, Paradaemons and the looming threat of Apokolips hang in the title sequence and throughout the first episode titled “Princes All”. Suffice to say, this King of Geeks had the first 3 episodes cued up back to back and now I can’t wait for the next 2 on the 11th.
Since leaving the scene in 2013 Young Justice has gathered a large following which has helped the return of the show, but has it done it any good? Definitely! With the starbucking of many animated series and the likes of She-Ra and Thundercats going the safe route and becoming more child friendly, it’s refreshing to see that geeks and pop-culture enthusiasts have a more adult/real world series to hook our claws into. Honestly it’s the only place I think Marvel could learn a thing or two from DC about their animated series but that’s just one geek’s opinion.
Great writing from the likes of Greg Weisman (who wrote the premiere episode), amazing animation once again from the guys at DC and Warner Bros Animation, you continue to knock it out of the park. If you can’t get hold of the DC streaming service in the UK Rejoice! The animated series is back on Netflix and definitely well worth a watch.
