Young Justice 103 Welcome to Happy Harbor Review

Okay, I figured since I covered the Independence Day pilot/movie for Young Justice I might as well continue with the series. It helps that I didn’t get much sleep last night and I wasn’t in the mood to do any reading so I decided to watch this - if I can manage to stay awake I’ll probably do the second episode of Being Human also.

This episode gives us the introduction of Brick and Mister Twister. I’ll start with Brick first, Speedy has been keeping track of Brick and systematically shutting him down. I didn’t really care for Brick but it was an excuse to keep Speedy around and in the show which I like. I like the idea of him trying to remain separate from the team because of how he feels they are treated in general. It’s a nice touch that they started this early when the actual team themselves don’t really now or trust each other that well so I can see them possibly building this into a seasonal arch and perhaps this is a bit of foreshadowing that someone either on Young Justice or The Justice League is actually working with ‘the Light’ and using the younger heroes to further their own needs and once that betrayal is played out Speedy will either be there to fill the gap in the team member (I’m betting it will be Artemis since it’s been stated that she’s not: Arrowette, Mia or the Amazon Artemis but a pre-existing DC Universe character, and that only leaves like 2 ‘Artemis’es left and they’re both villains.) or he will be there once the team sees things his way.

The other character – Mister Twister, is actually the central point of the plot. He’s attacking random locations and Red Tornado sends the team off to check it out. Miss Martian tries to read his mind and finds out that he’s a robot so the team assumes that it is simply Red Tornado testing them. I don’t know what to think about this character, it’s not one that I’m familiar with at all so I have nothing to go off of but his whole purpose seemed to be to be that of a plot device to get the team to trust Miss Martian while showcasing her overall inexperience.

I don’t know what to think of this weird little love triangle between Dick/M’gann/Wally it feels like mostly filler because they’re not doing/can’t for legal reasons do the Tim/Cassie/Kon since they aren’t using Tim and there were legal issues that prevented Wonder Girl from being included at the time. I think the reason why I’m so off put by it is because M’gann feels like she’s nothing more than a  substitute for Secret/Suzie/Greta; when she was first introduced she lived with the team and they had to go through the motions of teaching her what was acceptable behavior. It feels very much like that they’re trying to do with M’gann; she lives at the HQ, she’s learning how to interact with the humans, she’s learning what is okay and not okay to do and while the team really seems to like her they don’t trust her much. These are all things that were staples with Secret’s plots.

Aqualad didn’t really do much this episode and I’m okay with that. After how much they pimped him in the hour long movie it was nice that they scaled him back quite a bit for this episode. It’s going to take a while for me to get used to him so it will be easier if he’s not constantly shoved down my throat. I’m indifferent to the bond that he’s forming with Superboy (again this is a case of me liking the original comic cast much more than the TV incarnation) but I guess it fits because Wally and Dick aren’t in the right places to help Superboy at this point in his life.

Okay, can someone explain to me why the hell they keep pimping Artemis yet she has yet to appear? She was featured in the mid show bumper for the pilot, she’s in the opening credits, she’s featured on the cover of the comic book… yet she hasn’t even had her introduction yet. It seems odd when you think of how Speedy is getting a lot of screen time (especially for a character that isn’t the focal point of the series) and he’s not even a member of the team.

Rating: B