Triptych
Original Airdate – January 18, 2019
As Meta-Human trafficking spreads across the United States, three very different teams of heroes seek to put a stop to it!
Written by Peter David
Directed by Mel Zwyer
Review by GregX
Media by Warner Bros. Animation
Review:
If the first three episodes of Young Justice: Outsiders were Hamlet with superheroes, then “Triptych” is a Tarantino superhero flick. One story told from three different perspectives featuring three incidents that line up into one cohesive whole presented in a non-linear fashion. Most of it appears to be setting up events that are yet to come. We also delve into some pretty deep ethical questions about how far one should go to defeat an enemy, but we’ll get to that later.”Triptych” features our heroes, now seemingly falling into different factions, taking out another meta-human trafficking ring. On the surface, this story appears to be about the metahuman villain, the Shade. We see him get freed from a transport to Belle Reve by Sportsmaster, injected with nanites to control him by the Mad Hatter, and then joining Cheshire’s team to steal a Reach created metahuman fail safe device. The Shade is our through line into this story, with each event told, effectively I might add, in reverse order. In the end, Cheshire seemingly releases the Shade from nanite control so he can take his revenge on Simon Stagg, who made him into a pawn in the first place.
But all throughout, we get some wonderful character beats. We are introduced to the current Bat Family consisting of Robin (Tim Drake), Spoiler, Arrowette, and Orphan. This team manages to shut down the Mad Hatter’s operation and free Clayface from nanite control. I appreciate the ethical decision that Robin makes here, because theoretically keeping Clayface under a leash like that might seem like a necessary thing to do, but doing so would be a violation that I am not comfortable with our heroes violating… dominating someone’s free will like that takes us into dark territory.
Cheshire finally makes her first appearance this season, against voiced by the magnificent Kelly Hu. Her confrontation with Artemis was a long time coming, these two have a wonderful dynamic. Yes, Artemis acquires the location of the League of Shadows’ new base; but that’s not really why she was there… trying to convince Cheshire to go visit Lian was obviously at the forefront of Artemis’s mind when they met up. Artemis even lets Cheshire escape with Shade, rather than attempt to capture her. I’m sure Artemis justifies this by telling herself she accomplished the mission’s objective. Yes, Cheshire is her sister and the mother of her niece… but is letting her go the right thing to do? Cheshire is an assassin for hire, after all.
Justifying less than ethical decisions while venturing into dark territory is where our story ends when we find out that the big split we saw in the opening episode of the season wasn’t the split we thought it was. The leaders of the Justice League, the Team, the Outsiders, and Batman Inc are working together without the knowledge of those under their leadership… a conspiracy designed to get around the United Nation’s barriers by using the same underhanded methods that the Light has weaponized to further their agenda. Wonder Woman, correctly, calls them all out on this. The opposite of Light is darkness. Heroes like Superman aren’t in on this conspiracy so that they won’t need to lie under oath should they be exposed.
I love this.
Heroes needing to make ethical decisions that aren’t the best, when done correctly, can make for great drama. As it stands, the Light just might be the most dangerous organization in the history of comic book adaptations. How far should our heroes be willing to go in order to defeat them? Are they don’t what’s necessary? Maybe. Are they doing what’s right? Those two aren’t always the same thing. How much of themselves are they going to compromise to bring Vandal Savage down? I am thrilled that the show itself is considering the ethical and moral ramifications of the choices that are being made here. Batman used the phrase fighting fire with fire… but we all know that just makes a bigger fire. This is a dangerous game they’re playing, and I think Savage just might be better at it than they are.
I look forward to seeing where this goes.
[ Back to Reviews ]
The World’s Finest and all original content on this site – copyright, The World’s Finest.
Contact us and share your thoughts on social media via Twitter and Facebook pages!
Check out WF video content at The World’s Finest’s YouTube channel!