Young Justice “Darkest” Review
Aqualad hits the team where it hurts in this week’s explosive episode.
S2, Episode 9: Darkest
Given a mission to prove himself to the light, Aqualad leads a team of youthful supervillains in an attack on Mount Justice to acquire Blue Beetle. Luring Beetle and Impulse into a trap, Aqualad sets his plan in motion, and sets them up for a fall, getting a device inside the team’s HQ, so that he could hack his way into their systems. Accompanied by new villain, Tigress, Aqualad then breaches the security of Mount Justice, taking three captives, and setting off an explosion to devastate the team by eliminating their base. Meanwhile, Mal flirts with Karen at the science lab in their university, only to grow bored and head back to Mount Justice just in time to see it in flames.
This episode is a significant one in two ways, first its showing just how deep into cover Aqualad has moved, and just how much trust he has gained with the Light. Unfortunately his actions have made Wally understandably nervous because of the second significant point… Artemis has joined him. Taking her place as Tigress is a great evolution for Artemis in terms of the show if only because that was her actual villain identity in the comics, and the utilization of her like this is just fun to see. That said, it comes while Aqualad’s facade is taking him into extreme depths. Yes, he gave Nightwing info and enough time to make it to safety before the explosion hit, but like Wally said, he also took two more prisoners than he was supposed to. There could be more than just lovers’ worry in Wally’s corner on this one, especially when you consider the Light’s history of mind control. Could Aqualad really be a triple agent? Its not far fetched, though I personally am not expecting it (though I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be a quadruple agent with only Nightwing in the know).
There is one glaringly bad moment in the episode though. The scene where Artemis takes off her mask while talking to Aqualad on the ship is distracting. Here her hair color changes from the black of her disguise to her original blonde. At first it seemed like a huge colorist mistake, which prompted me to rewind the scene, but upon rewatching it, the musical queue that plays along with it would seem to indicate it was an intentional ploy to tell the members of the audience who didn’t already know that this was, in fact, Artemis, and this just makes me feel bad for the show because it shouldn’t have to result to such distracting tools. I mean, they even go on to explain that she’s Artemis at the end during Wally and Nightwing’s conversation, so why the added ploy? It really is just a glaringly bad moment for the episode, and even the whole series, in my opinion.
At any rate, the episode served as a forward push of the seasons’ apparent overall storyline, and did so in an interesting and enjoyable way, and really what more could you ask of a plot episode? Its not a huge wowing episode, sure, but they can’t all be full of crazy awesome fan service like last week’s. Bottom line, the episode was another good one, and it serves to further the interest in the season’s story.
A COMIC BOOK BLOG RATING
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Moves the storyline forward in a very interesting and enjoyable way. | A really bad “reveal” of Tigress’ true identity serves to hurt the episode. |
| Rating |
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3 Comments
The fact she has her blonde hair is because that’s how Aqualad sees her. The necklace is an illusion casting device and it was my understanding that Aqualad can see her in her original form.
If not for that then it was used to show the emotions that run high when she pushes the button.
I thought that for a moment, too, that the necklace was creating an illusion… but I dismissed that notion out of hand almost a soon as I thought of it, because it just didn’t seem wise to me to have her disguise completely dependent on a charm, especially when its not exactly hard to just dye your hair. And then there’s the fact that the Light would more than likely have ways of seeing through the charm (though granted, she hasn’t been around many members of the Light as far as we know)… but then maybe I was just thinking about it too much. In fact, after reading your post, I jumped back to 2.07, and I think you’re right that it was just showing us the effects of the charm (since we see her looking different in her reflection back in that episode), in which case it is quite an understandable effect, however, it was still a weird and fairly distracting thing to do. But yeah, good catch!
Thanks for your comment!
It is a bizarre moment though, now I’ve watched it again.
No worries.