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Slick’s Nit-Picks: Young Justice Invasion, Episode 214 – “Runaways”

Next time, on Disney XD, oh wait…

When the team was first brought together, they would score victory after victory but The Light was always still one step ahead of them in the shadows. Now The Reach has entered the picture as The Light’s partner so somehow I doubt things are all sunshine and rainbows for our young Jaime Reyes. Like I said in the review for the last episode, Green Beetle should not be able to do what a Reach scientist could not. That is, unless she figured a way to fix the scarab without killing Jaime and taught it to B’arzz O’oomm. I stand by the belief that M’gann’s mind link was B’arzz just feeding her what he wanted her to see because there is really no way that he would have just happened to be at that Reach farm at the exact time that Alpha Squad needed him to defeat Black Beetle. The team just does not have luck like that and I do not know how Nightwing and Robin do not see that.

I know he touched some children, but it's Lex Luthor… LEX LUTHOR!

SUMIMASEN? Neutron and the teens that were rescued from The Reach are all at Star Labs in Taos, NM. The scientists there are trying to help them control their new powers. Unfortunately, the kids feel that they are captive and that things are not much better when they were alien abductees. Virgil decides that he is getting out of the facility and convinces all but Nathaniel to join. He does not want to leave because he believes that after he almost killed Flash and destroyed Central City that they all should stay for their own good and that of others. As a result, he triggers the alarm. The four teens manage to knock out the guards but still cannot escape the building until the alarm mysteriously deactivates and the locks release. They head for the nearest bus station, where the Star Labs security team tries to reacquire them. This becomes difficult when Tye’s power activates and his astral form takes the roof of the bus depot off. Blue Beetle’s arrival comes at the wrong time as Tye perceives him as a threat and puts him down. The then grabs the other three teens and runs off. When he stops, the others wake him and Blue Beetle is there immediately. Virgil acknowledges that he helped them escape The Reach but they still do not want to go back to Star Labs; Tye says that Beetle does not understand their plight. Blue then reveals himself to be Jaime and Tye and the others start to listen to him. Unfortunately, at the same time, Red Volcano is attacking Star Labs and Blue has to stop him. The teens hear the call from Nightwing and they go to help as well. Blue Beetle’s assault on Red Volcano becomes increasingly more violent and he begins to neglect the safety of the Star Labs people and his new friends. After he destroys Volcano, he angrily commands the teens to come with him until the press arrives and the distraction allows them to escape. They go back to the bus depot, thinking no one would look again for them there. They are mistaken and Lex Luthor is waiting for them with kind words and empty promises, which the teens eat up, not knowing him better. The episode ends with Blue Beetle talking with Green Beetle, blaming himself for the loss of the teens. Green lets him know that trying to gain their trust was the right thing to do. . . and then Black Beetle assures his two “little brothers” that all the “meat” will be eating out of their hands should they want anything to eat at all.

Always remember, I have the biggest antennae!

WORST FEARS From the moment Impulse rescued Jaime from The Reach and told him of his future role as their servant, Jaime has been willing to do anything to prevent that future. He tried to have the Scarab removed, he has refused to let it take control of his body (which kind of solves the problem, duh) and he went so far as to let someone he just met tinker with the Scarab. We see now that Green Beetle was not who he claimed to be and that he is an agent of The Reach. Whatever he did when Impulse found them, he somehow allowed the Reach to reestablish their link with the Blue Scarab, making Jaime the unwilling pawn he never wanted to be. He is probably in the same position now that the Scarab used to be: fully conscious of what is happening but unable to act. The Beetles seem to have the same or at least very similar offensive and defensive capabilities. Consider these two facts:

  • Black Beetle wiped the floor with the heaviest hitters of the team, Superboy and Wonder Girl.
  • Blue, by himself, did what the original team was only able to do with the help of three other androids – destroy Red Volcano.

The team can barely take down one beetle, and it has always taken at least one of the other two beetles to stop Black. Now they have to contend with all three of them. I believe that Impulse would say “the team is starting to feel the mode.”

“We grillin' t'night…meat bags!”

SWISS CHEESE The sudden cancellation of the show has caught us all off guard, and as good as the episodes continue to be, the writing is starting to suffer. I know five years have passed and that androids especially can be rebuilt, but the last time we saw Red Volcano he was melting with his siblings. Granted, of all four of the Morrow androids, he would be the one expected to survive a volcano. On top of that, we saw him start to melt, but there was no definitive proof that he was destroyed. It is just that usually when something like that happens, there is at least some explanation as to how the character is back. Especially when in this case there were a number of easy possibilities. The inclusion of Red Volcano in this episode was just lazy writing.

You possess the power of the glow!

RETURN OF THE SUPERFRIENDS Well, the return of the Superfriends plus Static. Some people say that Virgil was meant to represent the old SF character Black Vulcan. I dispute that, because Static was a DC character only through the deal Milestone Media had with the larger publisher (DC). Also, Static and Black Vulcan’s powers are dissimilar enough to distinguish the two. Also, if Black Vulcan were being represented in this show, it would be with the character Black Lightning, who has actually been around longer than the other two. Eduardo and his abilities are based off of the character El Dorado, who kind of looked like a South American wrestling champion and had teleportation abilities. Tye, as I stated in the review for Beneath, is based off of the Native American character, Apache Chief. They changed his ability slightly because a giant astral form makes way more sense than a boy growing to giant proportions and his clothes growing and shrinking with him. Asami is the weirdest of the bunch, because she is based off of a male Japanese character named Samurai that had wind manipulation abilities. He could fly, control air, turn invisible and I think he had some other powers. Asami is still learning to control her abilities, but she only seems to be able to propel herself forward. That could be useful, if her powers develop like Marvel’s X-Men character, Cannonball. If she does not develop some kind of shield around her body like he has, throwing herself against characters like Red Volcano will only get progressively more painful.

Blue Beetle went Galvatron on that azz!

This was another love/hate moment I have with the series. Just like the last episode, the cancellation of the series is hurting the writing. This episode was good, but had the potential to be so much better. I feel the writers are rushing to the finish and that a lot is going to fall by the wayside. An example are these four kids. Lex Luthor has them now and normally, that would mean that at some point the team is going to have to fight them. That is never going to happen with the time the series has left and that is a shame. Blue Beetle being evil is not going to be handled as well as it should. On top of that, the fate of the seven Justice League members has yet to be decided. This trial has been going on for about four months in show time and it is time we learned their fate. I really fear for the quality of the show’s end as the amount of episodes left are not going to allow for proper closure.

  • Slick's Nit-Picks: Young Justice Invasion, Episode 211 – “Cornered”
  • Slick's Nit-Picks: Young Justice Invasion, Episode 212 – “True Colors”
  • Slick's Nit-Picks: Young Justice Invasion, Episode 213 – “The Fix”