Young Justice: Outsiders

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains information that may be considered SPOILERS for ‘Young Justice’ Season Three a.k.a. ‘Young Justice: Outsiders’, so proceed with caution.

The first new episode of ‘Young Justice’ in five years, entitled “Princes All,” kicks off the highly anticipated third series, entitled ‘Young Justice: Outsiders’.  As fans of the first two seasons know, there was a huge time jump between those installments– five years, to be exact.  A lot happened during that time, including Robin graduating to Nightwing, Zatanna and Rocket joining the Justice League proper, and the introduction of several new young heroes including Wonder Girl, Batgirl, and Blue Beetle.

It should come as no surprise that ‘Outsiders’ also includes a similar leap forward, although “Princes All” actually begins immediately after the events of Season Two, which is probably helpful to viewers as the last episode aired so long ago.  But very quickly the series leaps two years forward and, just like with Season Two, quite a few things have changed.

This time, however, a supplemental comic book has been provided that helps fill in the gaps during that time, which, like ‘Young Justice’ itself, is available on DC Universe.  Is it required reading to understand the new episodes?  The producers say no, but that it is there for super fans if they want to know more.

According to art director Phil Bourassa:

“We’re also careful though that if we’re in essence, using the time skip as an ellipsis, that if we got, you know if we explain as much as we need to. So if you got a fan who wants to go and do the research, that’s great but if you got a fan who doesn’t, they’ve got all they need to know in order to precede and, the flip side of this is also that because our version of the DC Universe is slightly different in places similar in other places. You can never be a hundred percent sure that even if you’ve done the research that that’s exactly how things went down in our version of it.”

Even for deep cut DC readers, ‘Young Justice’ keeps viewers on their toes by twisting events and characters so that they may resemble the contents of existing DC Comics, but are given a fresh and modern reinterpretation.  (Genius move of the new season: establishing that Black Lightning’s ex-wife Lynn Stewart is the sister of Green Lantern, John Stewart!  How has no one ever thought to do that before?!)

Perhaps because ‘Young Justice’ episodes are only 30 minutes long, unlike with ‘Titans’, DC Universe has released three new episodes to kick off this season.  That allows fans to really get a feel for the overall “metahuman trafficking” storyline and get accustomed to the new players.

As for that Season Two cliffhanger, involving Darkseid and Apokolips… it’s clear that these threads will be picked up, just not immediately.

Have you watched the first new episodes of ‘Young Justice: Outsiders’?  Has the series aged well?

New episodes of ‘Young Justice: Outsiders’ will be released via DC Universe each Friday.

Source: Heroic Hollywood