The final four episodes making up the first half of Young Justice: Outsiders resolved a number of the series' subplots, while still leaving ample avenues for exploration the when season continues in June. The secret of Halo's powers was resolved and Prince Brion's missing sister was finally located. The quartet of new episodes also presented a cliffhanger ending which suggests a classic comic book storyline will form the basis of the plot of the third season's second half.
The tenth episode, "Exceptional Human Beings," largely focused on Batman and his team as they investigated a League of Shadows base in Santa Prisca. The episode also introduced the character of Victor Stone, who had been referenced in a sports report earlier in the season. The eleventh episode, "Another Freak," saw Victor transformed forever, after an accident at his father's lab led to a horrific situation that will be well familiar to fans of the character. The episode also saw Halo and Forager starting their first day of school at Happy Harbor High.
Related: When Young Justice: Outsiders Returns (& What To Expect)
The twelfth episode, "Nightmare Monkeys," largely focused on Beast Boy, as he discovered the sinister secret of the popular Goode Goggles and wound up engaged in a psychic battle for his life. This episode also saw the Outsiders considering the ramifications of Halo's first day of school and the new powers that she manifested. The mid-season finale, "True Heroes," came full circle as the Outsiders ended the season as they began it, trying to take down another metahuman trafficking operation in a hostile nation. Here are all the questions we have now that the first half of Young Justice: Outsiders has come to its conclusion.
- This Page: League of Shadows Leaders, Metamorpho, the Fatherbox, and Halo's Powers
- Page 2: Harper Rowe, School, Mount Justice, Beast Boy, and Wally West
- Page 3: Mister Bliss, Masked People, Judas Contract, and More Titans
15. What Is The New Structure of The League Of Shadows?
One question that has persisted throughout the early episodes of Young Justice: Outsiders is who is now running the League of Shadows. An answer was finally provided in the tenth episode "Exceptional Human Beings." Batman's raid on the island nation of Santa Prisca determined that Slade Wilson (aka Deathstroke) had taken over leadership of the infamous group of assassins, with Lady Shiva acting as the group's combat trainer. Additionally, Slade Wilson has taken on a command position as one of the seven leaders of The Light, while Lady Shiva is acting as that villainous union's chief enforcer.
14. Who Is Metamorpho?
Accompanying Batman and Katana on their mission into Santa Prisca was the hero Metamorpho. This episode marked the hero's first appearance on Young Justice, although he was featured on the first poster promoting the third season. Despite having been a DC Comics mainstay since 1965, Metamorpho is still a surprisingly obscure character, not well-known to casual fans of comic books and superheroes.
First appearing in The Brave and The Bold #57, Rex Mason was a soldier of fortune employed by Stagg Industries for a variety of odd jobs. When his boss, Simon Stagg, discovered that Mason had begun dating his beloved daughter, Sapphire, Stagg plotted to have Mason killed while on a mission to retrieve an artifact known as the Orb of Ra. Ambushed and exposed to the power of the Orb, Mason's body was transformed into an inhuman shape, granting him the power to change his body into any element or chemical compound. Both men were later surprised that Sapphire still loved Mason for the good man that he was, despite his freakish new appearance, though Mason still couldn't convince her to abandon her villainous father, despite Stagg's continual interference in their lives.
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13. What Is A Fatherbox?
Young Justice: Outsiders episode 10 sees Dr. Silas Stone at STAR Labs Detroit charged with investigating the mysteries of the Fatherbox - a piece of alien technology capable of tremendous things. Dr. Henry Irons (aka Steel) warns Dr. Stone that the Fatherbox possesses an intelligence that is "pretty much pure evil." Dr. Stone dismisses this warning, however, believing technology to be neither good nor evil. Sadly, the events of the following episodes prove him wrong, as his son falls victim to the Fatherbox's power.
The Apokoliptian equivalent of the Motherboxes of New Genesis, Fatherboxes are, as Steel said, sentient computers with evil personalities. Capable of repairing the advanced technology of the New Gods and healing the wounded, the Fatherboxes can also open Boom Tubes across time and space, act as telepathic translators and provide their handlers with a limited ability to manipulate matter, forces and energy around them. In the comics, one Fatherbox was specifically programmed to attempt to take over the body of the New God Orion and overwrite his mind and body, transforming him into a genetic and psychic clone of Darkseid.
12. What New Powers Did Halo Display?
The rainbow of Halo's power collection was completed in the episode "Another Freak." It was here that Halo manifested an indigo aura and created a Boom Tube that took her to STAR Labs Detroit. It was here that she stopped the Fatherbox-possessed Victor Stone from killing his father. Instinctively, Halo was able to bathe Victor in some kind of light which seemed to shut down the Fatherbox's personality.
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The true nature of Halo's powers was later revealed in the episode "Nightmare Monkeys." It was here that Superboy theorized, after Forager's offhand comment about Halo opening a Boom Tube "as if Violet Harper was a Motherbox," that Halo's powers came from the soul of the disassembled Motherbox that he found in Bedlam's lab in Markovia. This explained why Halo had knowledge about New Genesis that she should not have had access to in "Rescue Op" and why Dr. Fate sensed that Halo was "an old soul in a very young body" in the episode "Private Security." It also explained Halo's unique rapport with Sphere and why she was able to counter the Fatherbox's possession of Victor Stone. In essence, Halo is a living Motherbox possessing a human body, rather than a true metahuman.
Page 2: Harper Rowe, School, Mount Justice, Beast Boy, and Wally West
11. Who Is Harper Row?
When Halo and Forager start school in "Another Freak," they have an incredibly rough first day. The only classmate who makes any effort to befriend them is a young woman named Harper Row. With blue-dyed hair in a skater-cut and multiple piercings, Harper sticks out just as much as Halo and Forager. The difference is that Harper sticks out because she wants to and she encourages the two new students to revel in their status as freaks who aren't like everyone else.
Comic readers will recognize Harper Row from Scott Snyder's run on the Batman comic. Harper was originally introduced as an emancipated minor who worked for the city as an electrical engineer. It was in this role that she discovered the "Bat Boxes" which Bruce Wayne used to disable the city's CCTV Network to mask his comings and goings as Batman. Rather than disable them, Harper improved upon the design, making it more efficient and less noticeable. She would later take up the codename of Bluebird and fight crime alongside Batman in the Batman Eternal series.
10. Why Weren't Halo And Forager Better Prepared For Starting School?
While Halo and Forager's difficulties in blending in at Happy Harbor High School are largely played for laughs, they do speak to a serious issue with the Outsiders allowing their most innocent members to play at being ordinary teenagers. Ignoring Forager's inability to use personal pronouns and continually attracting attention to himself by referring to himself as "Fred Bugg with two Gs," he's still woefully ignorant of what life on Earth among ordinary humans is like. Worse yet, it seems like the team didn't discuss their plans to keep Forager's identity a secret with him until the morning of his first day at school.
Halo is not much better as Violet Harper, being just as socially awkward and ignorant of what a normal life is like. She also has the additional issue of keeping her powers under control, accidentally flying whenever she is in a good mood. One might think that M'gann and Conner threw the whole school plan together just so they could get some time alone without half the team being underfoot at their house - a problem which M'gann does point out to Conner in Young Justice: Outsiders episode 12.
Related: 20 Things That Make No Sense About Young Justice
9. Why Didn't They Rebuild The Mount Justice Base?
M'gann's concerns about her and Conner's privacy do raise the question of why the Justice League never rebuilt the Mount Justice base which the teen heroes utilized during the first two seasons of Young Justice. While Batman said in the second season finale that the young heroes had earned the right to share the Watchtower with the Justice League, it still seems odd that they would do nothing with that space. It seems likely, however, that the Outsiders may reconsider and move back into the original Justice League headquarters, as Superboy suggested making a new secret base when he and M'gann discussed how to deal with their recent lack of time together (her less drastic solution was scheduling a regular date night.)
8. What Was The Deal With Beast Boy's Vision?
Much of the action of Young Justice: Outsiders episode 12 is devoted to a series of increasingly surreal scenes as Beast Boy's mind is attacked by the program within the Goode Goggles. The strangest of these is a parody of the Teen Titans Go! animated series, which is devoted to the Doom Patrol. The sequence details how Beast Boy was adopted by Elastigirl but how she and the rest of the Doom Patrol died on a mission, leaving Garfield in the custody of her jerky husband. To make this scene even stranger, there's a musical number and the voices for The Chief, Robotman, Negative Woman and Elastigirl are provided by Scott Menville, Khary Payton, Tara Strong, Hynden Walch - the voices of Robin, Cyborg, Raven and Starfire on Teen Titans Go!
As strange as this scene is, it's an incredibly effective way to explain what has happened to Beast Boy over the last two years without a lengthy exposition dump or two characters talking to each other about things they should already know. Everything described in this sequence does match up with Beast Boy's life in the comics before he joined the New Teen Titans. Even the part about him becoming an actor and playing a shape-changing alien.
7. Is Beast Boy's Vision A Sign Wally West Is Alive?
Part of Beast Boy's vision while under the influence of the Goode Goggles takes place on the set of the TV show Space Trek 2036. Here, Beast Boy sees several superheroes who died in the line of duty, including Aquagirl, the Jason Todd Robin, the Ted Kord Blue Beetle, and Wally West, taking positions on the bridge, only to be gunned down by the invading aliens. The only one to survive the attack is Wally West, who is left alone when Beast Boy goes chasing after a manifestation of his pet monkey. Could this be a subtle bit of foreshadowing that Wally West is still alive, perhaps drawn into the Speed Force during the second season finale as many fans theorize?
Related: Red Hood Finally CONFIRMED in DC's Young Justice
6. Are Beast Boy's Powers Really Magical?
Beast Boy's vision in "Nightmare Monkeys" ends with Beast Boy being confronted by a being who introduces himself as the Monkey God. He claims to have chosen Beast Boy and to be responsible for having given Garfield Logan his shape-shifting powers. The Monkey God admits that Beast Boy getting a blood transfusion from Miss Martian did help the process come about, but asks a good question - why can Beast Boy only change into green animals if he completely inherited a Martian's shape-shifting powers?
Also known as the Monkey King and Sun Wukong, the Monkey God is a trickster character from Chinese mythology known for his shape-shifting and his sense of humor. There is some logic to the idea that Beast Boy might be a chosen avatar of such a being. While there's no way to know if Beast Boy is just hallucinating or if the Monkey God is lying, it's an idea that makes more sense than Beast Boy's original origin story from the comics. This story saw his parents using a serum to transform him into a rare species of green monkey so as to cure the rare disease a young Garfield Logan had contracted that was lethal to humans but not to green monkeys.
Page 3 of 3: Mister Bliss, Masked People, Judas Contract, and More Titans
5. Who Is Mister Bliss?
The mid-season finale, episode 13, "True Heroes," sees the Outsiders finally making some progress in the search for the missing Princess Tara Markov. Tracking a series of metahuman trafficking victims, Nightwing discovers one whose description sounds like GeoForce's missing sister. This leads the team to a metahuman auction stage/gladiatorial combat arena in the nation of Bialya, which is overseen by a colorful character named Mister Bliss.
While Young Justice delights in giving cameo appearances to obscure DC Comics characters, Mister Bliss may be the most inglorious one yet. Originally introduced in the 1994 Starman series, Mister Bliss was a demon who ran a traveling carnival with an old-fashioned freakshow. Like most demons in the DC Universe, Mister Bliss fed on the suffering of mortals and his preferred "flavor" was the unique sense of humiliation felt by those who are ashamed of their appearance. While he never appeared in the main DC Comics Universe after being sent back to Hell in Starman, Mister Bliss would later be adapted for The Flash: Season Zero comic based on The Flash television series. In that comic, instead of a demon, Mister Bliss was a circus ringmaster who gained mind-control powers. This concept seems to have been the inspiration for his Young Justice incarnation.
Related: Young Justice: Outsiders Voice Cast & Character Guide
4. Who Are The Masked People?
The metahuman auction in Bialya is attended by a sizable crowd of well-dressed people. Presumably paranoid about being seen in such a venue, even in a terrorist nation such as Bialya, all of those in attendance wear the same featureless white mask that completely obscures their features. Fans of Scott Snyder's work on Batman will recognize these masks as the distinctive costume of the Court of Owls - a secret society of the rich and powerful who run many questionable enterprises and secretly rule Gotham City. Their involvement in the metahuman trafficking game is no surprise and hints at another aspect of the Batman mythology being introduced into the reality of Young Justice.
3. Who Is The Intended Audience Of This Show?
It's a well-known fact that Young Justice was originally canceled because it was better at attracting older viewers than children. This was something of a problem given that the show's sponsors were toy companies that were trying to sell action figures based on the show. It was expected then, when Young Justice: Outsiders was picked up by DC Universe, that the show might be a little more free with the innuendo that made up much of the humor of the first two seasons and that they would be allowed to show a little more blood than on Cartoon Network.
The first half of Young Justice: Outsiders seems to have confirmed this expectation but now fans have to wonder if the show is making any effort to acknowledge its younger viewers. Some of the violence and viscera depicted in the latest Young Justice: Outsides episodes toes the line of a TV-M rating, particularly the depiction of Victor Stone's injuries in episode 11. The show has also confirmed that Ms. Martian and Superboy engage in regular premarital sex and their inability to get time alone together is a plot point in the latest quartet of episodes.
2. Is Young Justice About To Recreate The Judas Contract?
Young Justice: Outsiders episode 13 ends with the recently rescued Tara Markov secretly sending a text with two words - "I'm in." - to Deathstroke. This would indicate that Tara truly is an agent of the League of Shadows and has been a willing tool of the organization rather than a brainwashed slave as she claimed. This isn't much of a surprise, even to casual comic fans, as Tara Markov's betrayal of the superhero team that took her in is the character's defining moment and has already been adapted into multiple media, including a feature-length animated movie. At this point, the most shocking possible twist would be if Tara didn't turn out to be a traitor to the Outsiders!
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1. Will We See More Titans In Part 2?
With the series having just introduced Victor "Cyborg" Stone and an adaptation of Teen Titans: The Judas Contract on the way, it's fair to wonder if we might see more of the New Teen Titans characters joining the Outsiders in the second half of Young Justice: Outsiders. With a number of interstellar wars being waged in the background, it would be a simple matter for Starfire to be introduced to the show as a refugee princess from a war-torn planet. It would also be interesting to introduce Raven into the team as a foil for the usually upbeat Halo, who also has similar semi-mystical powers that she often can't control. We don't know for certain that Starfire or Raven will show up, but at least the wait for the second half of Young Justice: Outsiders will be far shorter than the wait for the first half.