no no no you dont understand. the m'gann, superman and match hallucinations where in their regular colours. wally was the same fucking negative colouring as the phantom zone, superboy, and phantom herself. idk why he isnt in the speed force but that was him that was literally him my dudes
My review for Rocket’s arc in Young Justice Phantoms
Transcript under the cut
Hello!
This video will be a review of season 4, episodes 18-21 of Young Justice so there will be spoilers.
Okay so I liked the arc decently well enough. There were parts that I really enjoyed and parts that I found lacking. Which is how I feel about all of the other arcs. Each one had things that I liked and didn’t like. Now with this one, it’s Rocket’s arc and my main issue with it is that it just didn’t focus that much on Rocket. I feel like we didn’t learn that much about her as a character. I mean we kind of did with her interactions with her son and such but we didn’t get anything at all about her backstory.
Now in the comics, that being Milestone Comics, Rocket - real name Raquel Ervin - actually becomes a hero by talking a guy named Augustus Freeman into becoming a hero - this being Icon. They actually met when Raquel broke into his house and tried to rob him. Then she saw that he had superpowers and thought he would make a great hero. She demanded to be his sidekick and she designed their costumes! But none of this is mentioned in Young Justice so there is the possibility that this isn’t her backstory on the show. Still, I would have liked to have seen some backstory for her, whether it’s the same as in the comics or not.
In the other arcs, we did get to learn new things about the focus characters, or at least saw some of their backstory. With the first arc, we got to learn more about M’gann’s relationship with her family and that really added to her character. Way back in season one she mentions that she always wanted an Earth sister and implies that she didn’t get along with her sisters on Mars. And in her arc we got to meet one of those sisters and their interactions with each other really added a layer to M’gann’s character. In Artemis’s arc we see great interactions with her sister Jade and even flashbacks that add some context to some of their interactions in season 1. In Kaldur’s arc, there was an episode where he talks to his parents about the past and we learn more about his backstory which explains his personality pretty well. Zatanna’s arc is a little lacking in this area, the same with Rocket’s. We did get some flashbacks of her childhood but that was from her father’s perspective, not her own but it did still give us insight into her character a little bit. Now I do think Zatanna’s arc suffers from not focusing on her so much as it focuses on Klarion and Vandal Savage. I feel like Rocket’s arc suffers similarly by focusing a little too much on the Zod family.
I did like the parts in episode 19 when Lor-Zod was explaining his backstory and it was inter-cut with Saturn Girl and Chameleon Boy telling the same story but from their perspectives. Like from Lor’s point of view, he is in the right for wanting to rescue his parents while the Legion thought he was evil for that because his parents are criminals. It was really cool to see differing viewpoints of the same events. I thought it was an interesting way of handling a lot of exposition.
Now I did actually like Lor-Zod to be honest. Didn’t really care for General Zod but I never really like him in any adaptation. He’s just not a character that I enjoy. Lor-Zod’s determination to get his parents out of the Phantom Zone was kind of sweet though. Like yeah I know they’re villains and have done awful things but still it was sweet. Even if it is kind of far removed from the comics. Lor in the comics actually fights against his parents and gets raised by Superman and Lois as a Kent. Maybe that could still happen in Young Justice? Time travel is possible so maybe Superman could travel in time and then take baby Lor away… uhm although that would be kidnapping… hmm so maybe not… Anyway. I found the song they sang in the Phantom Zone kind of cringy. I know that’s a small thing but when they started singing I was like, “Really? Y’all are doing this?” I get that it was supposed to be brainwashing Conner into being loyal to Zod but still. I felt like it lasted too long. I know it wasn’t very long but I feel like a couple of verses could have been cut and that little extra time could have been given to, I don’t know, Rocket.
I just feel like she didn’t get enough screen time for it being her arc.
A big point of contention in the show’s fandom is how she handled her son Amistad’s Autism and then how her feelings about that were mirrored to her feelings about Orion. Now I don’t have Autism or claustrophobia so I can’t really speak on how accurately either of those were portrayed. I’ve seen people saying that Amistad was written relatively accurately as an Autistic characters and I’ve seen people say that it wasn’t actually great representation. I think it’s important to note that people with Autism aren’t a monolith and each person is different. I saw a lot of people saying that him eating the cookie in a specific way and being sensitive to strong smells and not liking disruptions to his routine were things that many Autistic people can relate to. Some were more upset about how Raquel handled Amistad than how Amistad was portrayed. I saw people say that it was accurate that parents of Autistic children would be frustrated and I saw people say that Raquel shouldn’t have been so dismissive of Amistad’s needs. I personally didn’t like that scene at the beginning of episode 18 where she’s pretending to look for his wool hat. Like she looks under the couch and stuff and keeps saying “no hat” over and over which felt condescending. I get it was to show her frustration and stress but still I kind of wish that part was left out. Even Amistad’s facial expression during that scene showed that it was upsetting him. But you can argue that this is just a character flaw for Raquel and that all good characters should have some type of flaw, which is fair; characters should have flaws, even heroes. But still I can understand why many fans didn’t like this aspect of her character or how the show handled it.
This sort of plays into her judgement of Orion as well. So I understand her calling him a monster after he becomes unstable and hits those two larvae children. I get that and I don’t blame her for having apprehensions about negotiating peace with him. The problem that I have with her judgement of Orion is how she felt about him after learning his biological father is Darkseid. I mean, she has several teammates who have evil relatives. She’s friends with Artemis, isn’t she? And Artemis’s dad is a villain and Raquel never seemed to judge her for that. Granted, Sportsmaster isn’t quite on the level of evil as Darkseid but you get my point. It just felt kind of out of character for her to judge someone for having an evil family member.
Though I will say, it was good that she acknowledged that they got off on the wrong foot and apologized. It was at the beginning of episode 20 and while it wasn’t actually Orion but Ma’alefa’ak, it was good that she realized they needed to make amends. She didn’t know it wasn’t actually Orion of course but it was still a nice gesture that showed Rocket’s maturity.
Okay, yeah Orion could be a jerk and stand-offish but really the only bad thing he did was hit the two larvae. And, yeah that was bad; he shouldn’t have done that but still. I feel like Rocket was a little too judgemental of him. Like when she got mad at him during the meeting for saying their off-topic conversation was of little importance. He was definitely a jerk in the way that he worded it but he was right. Them sidetracking the peace negotiation with talks of romance and birthdays was kind of… unprofessional. I think Orion was right to call them out for that. I get Bear wanting to extend his condolences about Superboy’s death but the conversation should have ended there.
The only really important thing we got from that off-topic conversation was that Forager was thinking of staying on New Genesis. But to be honest, I don’t really care much about that. Okay, a little bit of a tangent: I had some issues with season three and one of those issues was that I just didn’t care that much about the new characters. I didn’t care at all about Brion, or Helga, or Forager. I just didn’t care about them! The only new character that I even kind of cared about was Halo. And speaking of them, I don’t like that the writers had Rocket use the wrong pronouns for Halo. Okay, I know Violet said that they didn’t mind she/her pronouns but they did very clearly state that they preferred they/them pronouns. Now they only said this to Harper Row but I would have assumed that they could tell the whole team. I can understand the New Genesis gods not knowing and calling Halo “she” by mistake but I feel like Rocket should have referred to them with ya’know “them.” But I’m going to blame the writers for this.
Going back to Forager though, since I didn’t care that much about him in season three, I didn’t really care about the romance either. It was kind of cute. Them reading Shakespeare made me think of Jason Spisak’s YouTube videos of Wally Reading the Classics, which did warm my heart a little bit. (I’ll link on of them down below.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftf-sMzRuBY For context, Jason Spisak is the voice actor for Forager and Wally West so I liked the little reference to him as Wally quoting Shakespeare. He voices another character doesn’t he?….
OH! Razer! He also voices Razer. That’s something else that happens. Boy do I have some feelings about Razer. I LOVED seeing him again. Was not expecting it in the slightest. So Razer is a character who had only ever appeared in Green Lantern: the Animated Series. This was a show that aired when Young Justice seasons one and two were airing on Cartoon Network and were both canceled at the same time. Which is a real shame because Green Lantern: the Animated Series was actually a really good show. I’m not even a big fan of the Green Lanterns but I did still really enjoy that show. And now one of its main characters has appeared in Young Justice. Could this mean a revival for Green Lantern? Maybe? I could only hope. It deserves a season two.
Speaking of Green Lanterns, it was sad that Tomar Re died. And it was extra sad that he was killed by a Kryptonian considering he tried to save Krypton. I do love some irony. But he shouldn’t feel guilty about not saving Krypton because really what could he have done to stop a sun from dying? Oh and it was interesting to learn that he knew Superman’s biological father and uncle. So we have confirmation that Zor-El existed on Earth-16 so maybe his daughter Kara does too. It would be cool to see Supergirl show up at some point.
My only issue with that would be that there are already soooo, so many characters in Young Justice. It felt crowded back in season two and it’s only gotten worse. I think that’s one of the reasons why some of the arcs and story lines don’t follow their focus character all that much: because there are too many characters vying for lines and screen time.
Maybe if there were less characters, we could have gotten to see more of Rocket.
I hope she’s featured strongly in the next arc, which I know will be Nightwing’s, but that’s set up as being about finding Conner and Rocket can definitely help with that since she now has some key knowledge about the Phantom Zone projector getting destroyed and all. She did see Bioship’s lasers destroy the projector, even if she doesn’t know what it was. So maybe we’ll see a lot of her in the last arc. I’m looking forward to it!
Let me know what your thoughts were! Did you love this arc? Hate it? Feel indifferent to it? Should there have been more of Rocket? Do you think they handled Amistad’s Autism well? Or not? Let me know! I’m always interested in what other people thought.
Okay so for the Young Justice fans who are seeing people flip about about this image
And have never watched Green Lantern the Animated Series/have no idea who Razer is, here is a quick rundown on who he is and why so many people are excited to see him in YJ. I won’t spoil too much from the show because you should all go watch it on hbo max or you can buy the blu ray on amazon.
So this is Razer
Razer is a member of the evil Red Lantern Corp that is the main antagonists in the first half of GLTAS (he is also voiced by the same guy who voiced Wally in YJ). He is essentially the Zuko character of the show. Young, angsty, has fits or rage (which is where red lanterns get their power from, like how green lanterns get their power from Willpower). In the first couple episodes of the show we see that he is relatively new to the red lanterns and the other members of the corp are encouraging him to be more ruthless/actively kill people, stuff like that.
Anyway, he ends up causing the destruction of an entire planet and then gets left behind by the other red lanterns when he is captured by green lanterns Hal Jordan and Killowog (might be spelling that wrong…). At the point of being captured he is straight up suicidal (he literally begs for the green lanterns to execute him for blowing up the planet). After a while of being their captive, a big fight breaks out and Razer ends up fighting beside the green lanterns to keep them all from getting killed. From then on for the rest of the show Razer becomes an unlikely part of Hal Jordan’s crew.
We find out his backstory and how he had had a wife who was killed back on his war torn home planet, which is what filled him with enough rage to get a red lantern ring. It is all very tragic. And while he is a red lantern, he still hesitates and holds an immense sense of guilt over what he has done (hence the whole begging for death thing).
Razer’s entire story arc through both halves of the show evolves around trying to be a better person. He struggles a lot with his pain and rage, but does what he can to help defeat the other red lanterns. He has to learn how to not only move on from his loss and the bad things he has done in the past, but find a will to live again and something to live for. A big part of his arc involves letting go of his guilt over his wife’s murder and finding it in himself to let others in again/let himself be loved. He in essence is all about what it means to find hope. It is all wonderfully written to where by the end of the season he is a very different person than when we first met him. His character was honestly one of the best, if not the best part of the show for most fans.
So where does Young Justice come into this? GLTAS only got one season before being canceled because the live action green lantern movie was a flop and dc didn’t want to waste any more money on anything green lantern related (this happened around the time that young justice was also canceled). I wont say the specifics, but the season ended on a cliffhanger that left fans desperately wanting more, but the show was never picked up again. Razer as a character was made specifically for the show, he was not from the comics, so when the show died, that was it for him. Dc never wrote him into the main comics continuity even though he was very loved by fans, so if you liked his character, then you did not have any way of finding out more about him or how his story ends.
And now we are here with a mysterious character in young justice featuring a red lantern ring AND a blue lantern ring (blue lantern rings are powered by hope if you didn’t know. You know, the thing Razer’s character evolves around) who looks like Razer. This is HUGE for fans of the character because we might actually get a glimpse of what happened to him after GLTAS ended. I highly recommend that if you have hbo max you watch green lantern the animated series. It is a great show made by great people and deserves as much love as young justice gets.
“WE cAn’t SAvE TraFFickINg viCims cUZ WE haVE SPaceSHIP tickets tO WRITE”
ACAB applies to space cops too, yall.
The green lantern corps couldda been an anarchist relief team using their powers to service vulnerable people, but instead they gotta police the entire fucking galaxy.
i still got to catch up with YJ but i just hope if they dofind Wally, they let Dick absolutely lose it and break down crying, like boy has been bottling up so much for literal years, pls let him break down if he gets his best friend back
Honestly it would be perfect if M’gann does somehow find out Conner is alive in episode 24. At the start of the season in episode 4, that’s when she thought she lost Conner, but 20 episodes later that would be when she finally finds out the truth that he is still alive!
I have no doubt that when the time comes Conner will be happily reunited with M’gann along with the rest of his friends and family… it’s just everything else in-between that has me worried. I’m worried about everything that might happen until Conner gets his memories back as well as what he might do while under Zods influence. I just hope in the end, the Team knows it’s not really his fault due to the current state of his mind after all that’s happened to him.
The episode begins on a prison space station circling the Green Lantern homeworld of Oa, where Lor-Zod is attempting to get back the Kaizer-Thrall, the panic box Darkseid gave him that turns out to be powered by a foresaken child. Lor is currently pretending to be a Daxamite, a Kryptonian colony that developed along different routes and survived the destruction of Krypton itself.
Kilowog is suspicious of Lor, but as he didn’t see him face to face, he doesn’t recognise him. Unfortunately, the son of the GL that Lor murdered a while ago, Tomar-Re, is on reception, who lets Lor know that the Thrall is heading back to his planet of origin (Earth) after being released as that’s public information that he doesn’t have to withhold. Space GDPR and all that. Lor indulges in dramatic irony by low-key mocking Tomar’s death to his unknowing son’s face, and departs for Earth.
After the titles, we cut to the Phantom Zone, where the Team are stealthing around looking for Conner, who thus far they’ve been unable to locate (although there does appear to be a relative of the Super Family wandering around in a daze). The converge on him, only for him to dismiss them as hallucinations, and unfortunately the Zods also appear, and demand that the Team free them too.
Back in the real world, M’Gann arrives on the Justice League Watchtower satellite. She’s there to try and communicate with the human child’s brain that’s been transplanted into the Thrall, the GL Forager having brought them to Earth for that purpose. Oh hey, turns out that the brain inside is Danny Chase, a member of the Teen Titans in the comics, who here was abducted, experimented upon, and then turned into a superpowered box for Darkseid. He has telekinesis and interdimensional travel abilities, but the process of using his powers both causes him immense pain and is ultimately killing him.
They project themselves into Danny’s mind, he says hello, thankful that someone can actually see him now. Their conversation is cut short, however, by a message from the Martian Prince from the first story arc. Evidently he’s bumped into Phantom Girl, who evidently has told him that Conner’s still alive, news that he’s pinged over to M’Gann…
Back in the Phantom Zone, Conner is reeling from his realisation that the Team are actually real and present. Zod attempts to force the Team into freeing himself and his people as well, while Kaldur attempts to telepathically convince Conner to stop doing what the supervillain says. While Conner DOES regard some of his memories… he still thinks that he killed Superman, and thus can’t return to the real world lest he hurt M’Gann too.
Back at the Watchtower, Superman, the Martian Prince and Phantom Girl get everyone else up to speed on what’s going on, including how Conner is currently under the thrall of the Zods. Phantom Girl decided to reveal herself to the Prince so they could contact M’Gann, as PG believes that she is the only one who can free Conner from his current state and return him home (Superman being there too will also help, re him not being dead).
Briefly cutting to Subspace, Lor and Ma’alefa’ak decide to use Chameleon Boy and Saturn Girl’s rings to spy on PG, via the Martian impersonating CB. Clark, meanwhile, asks PG about whether she can contact her friends as they can’t reach Bart, Dick or Zatanna (the only other people who knew of the Legionnaire’s existence). PG and M’Gann attempt to phase into the Zone, which PG warns might be hard as she only got there by accident last time… And it doesn’t work, with them instead overshooting themselves to PG’s homeworld and back to the satellite instead.
Meanwhile in the Zone, Kaldur confirms that Superman isn’t dead but that Conner’s claims about Krypton being destroyed were true. Zod demands to be released from the Zone, but refuses to Kaldur’s suggestion that they old a hearing to determine if people can be released by a case by case basis, leading to fight! As the Kryptonians can phase through things but don’t have the standard superstrength, the playing field is somewhat even, although the Team are quickly overpowered by the criminals home advantage.
Back at the Watchtower, Danny offers to help get Conner out of the Zone, as he was able to get a lock on the place briefly back on New Genesis, but as he’s mostly inorganic, his powers won’t work in conjunction with PG’s powers. So they summon Orion with a Motherbox to help guide them there, who suggests that they open the Boomtube to the Zone on Trombus, a planet with a red sun but Earth-like atmosphere, so that any escaping criminals won’t have Superman’s powers. …And it’s right at this point that Ma’alefa’ak contacts PG, impersonating Bart, CB and Saturn Girl, who PG promptly gushes about what’s happening despite Superman’s suspicions. They agree to meet up with folk on the planet for the rescue attempt.
Back in the Zone, Dick attempts to use Kryptonite to subdue the Kryptonians… only it doesn’t work there due to the whole status effect thing that’s kept the inhabitants passing out from their various injuries. They vanish with the help of Zee’s magic, and attempt to regroup.
Later, on Trombus, they open a Boomtube to the Zone, which Zod, Ursa and Conner enter to make sure it’s safe for the other Kryptonians. And while that happens, Lor and his Martian friend erase Danny’s mind, use the Thrall to incapacitate the surrounding heroes, while the Team plan to block the Boomtube from the inside.
After the Kryptonians exit the Zone, Conner promptly passes out from his multiple burns and claw marks, while Lor welcomes his parents and proclaims the Galaxy is there’s! …Zod for his part seems confused and annoyed at Lor’s presence, remains to be seen if he accepts the whole timetraveler thing or assumes it’s another trick.
The episode closes out with Teekl asleep on a random chair… Weird to see Klarion’s not around too, but presumably he’s up to something nefarious.
- Review
Things continue to come together as we rapidly approach the finale, with every previous character or plot except for the Markovia stuff coming into play here. My guess in terms of resolution? Lor still probably die or trapped in the Zone once more, while the old original Team will arrive at the last minute to save the League folk on Trombus.
Trombus, perhaps unsurprisingly, is from DC Lore, specifically it’s a pre-Crisis home of a superhero group called the Hyper Family. Their deal is while they did end up getting rocketed to safety after their hometown exploded, they landed on Trombus, where the high gravity and red sunlight gave them Superman’s powers (whereas that environment negates Kryptonians’ powers).
I like Phantom Girl, it’s a shame we’ve only gotten her actual personality in the last two episodes, she seems nice!
