YJ episode 16 thoughts
Okay, so episode 16 of Young Justice came out today. (It's on youtube now, too.)
And yeah.
...Wow.
So, if you've read the little summary blurb that was on wikipedia for the past couple of weeks, you know that all it said was: During an alien invasion, the team is forced to replace the Justice League.
Now, throughout the entire episode, there were hints that something was off. The entire Justice League died. All of it. Batman, the Flash, Superman, Black Canary, Red Tornado, etc. But the kids are calm, collected, and ready to scout the Frozen North. (No, not Minnesota. Even more north and frozen.)
Heck, the kids are colder than the ice they're fighting on... until Artemis dies. Then Miss Martian and Kid Flash start to get a little distraught (with extra dis).
Things start to get worse after that, resulting in the deaths of the entire team. There is angst along the way, of course.
Then they all wake up. (Yes, it's a cliche. Bear with me.)
The actual event was a telepathy-based training simulation. It was also intended to fail from the beginning, and constantly get worse. They knew at the start it was a sim, which is why they weren't upset about the League deaths.
Then telepathy shenanigans, Martian subconscious and the shock of Artemis' "death" worked together and made the kids forget it was a simulation. It was so convincing, when Artemis (and subsequent others) "died," they were so sure they were, in fact, dead, that they stayed in comas, until the Martian Manhunter managed to wake M'gann up.
This episode, as it turns out, was a twist-ending story done right. (Seriously, in my creative writing class today, we talked about "it was all a dream" type endings. The discussion pretty much amounted to: don't do them. But here, it worked.)
So, why did it work?
1. There were hints all throughout that something was wrong. The team's lack of reaction at the beginning, the lack of being able to see the alien invaders, the ever-changing scenario (the beams kill people! Wait, no they don't! Wait, yeah they do!), and the Martian Manhunter's sudden appearance and missing memories. There were details all along that made it seem wrong, so that the end reveal put the crooked bits back in place.
2. The reason for the caught-in-dream event made sense. Training exercise that got highjacked by strong emotions from the team's resident telepath.
3. It also did give us some development, rather than being a "this episode will have no effect on later episodes" type of thing. (At least, if they do it right, it will affect later events.) First of all, although all the deaths were fake, the team still experienced the grief of losing each other. If the ending is anything to go by, they're going to be dealing with the emotional fallout of this for a while. Second, the reason it happened is that Miss Martian (as it turns out) is an insanely strong telepath, compared to her uncle. This is not information that had come up before, and I feel like it will be relevant later.
4. It was a good technique for addressing some darker issues in ways that they probably couldn't have otherwise. (Despite the good reason for it, I'm still really disappointed by the lack of reaction the the mentor "deaths," but it was still pretty dark. Also, Never Say Die was averted, and averted hard.)
So, negative points (because it has them, and I'm too tired to fit them seamlessly into my previous chunk o' text):
Mainly, the narm. Sooo much narm. I understand, it's teenagers dealing with Very Serious Business, but still... *sigh*
Rolly was notably absent as well, as he has been since Homefront.