Young Justice Faces an Invasion

The Cartoon Network's Young Justice just finished its first season last weekend, but it's already heading into Season 2 this Saturday with a 20-episode storyline called Invasion. Featuring the adventures of the "sidekicks" of the DC universe, the show's lineup includes such stalwarts as Robin, Superboy, Kid Flash and Aqualad, plus a never-ending torrent of other familiar and not-so-familiar comic-book characters. For DC devotees and superhero fans alike, the show is a blast.

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I recently spoke to producers Greg Weisman (The Spectacular Spider-Man) and Brandon Vietti (Batman: Under the Red Hood) about Invasion, and while they're a couple of tight-lipped fellows -- getting spoilers from these two is like getting the kryptonite out of Batman's vault -- the pair did offer up some interesting insights into Young Justice. We started with the topic of how they approached Season 2, and if they went into it any differently than how they did in Season 1.


"We did," said Weisman. "For starters, Season 1, we had 26 episodes. We had an arc for the season, but we were introducing characters, concepts, a world. So I think there's a nice drive to Season 1, but it's absolutely relaxed compared to Season 2. Season 2, we only have 20 episodes. We have an intense story to tell -- really, in some ways, a single story. Each episode still stands alone and tells its own discrete adventure, but it's all part of the whole. And it really plays like a novel. It's got a drive to it that's just exponentially more intense, with more momentum. And we introduce a ton of new characters in Season 2, but this time you're going to have to get to know them on the fly because we are just pushing through to get to the end of this big, big story."

Young Justice is of course now part of the network's DC Nation programming block, which groups it with the Green Lantern animated series as well as various superhero short films each week. Interestingly, the creators feel that the often frustrating hiatuses that plagued Young Justice's Season 1 airing schedule ultimately proved to be a boon in that they allowed the show to join the DC Nation block early.

"That is, the end of our first season became a part of DC Nation, and it also allowed us to go straight from Season 1 directly to Season 2, which of course we never anticipated," explains Weisman. "It's really cool that there's only a one-week gap between Season 1 and Season 2. It's pretty neat. And the neat thing about DC Nation is we're partnered with Green Lantern, which is a show about a human being going out into outer space and facing dangerous aliens out there. And our show [in Season 2] is really about a bunch of dangerous aliens coming to Earth and our heroes being on the front lines and facing them here. I think that makes those two shows really nice companions."


The producers told me that Season 2 picks up "a minute" after Season 1 ended, and while they were hesitant to reveal any plot details, they did say that they've changed up the dynamic of the show -- and its characters.

"We changed things up a little bit," Vietti told me. "In the first season, the team's all very new. They're all young teenagers trying to come into their own in the world and be more grown-up heroes. So we explored a lot of relationships between teenage students and adult mentors. That was a big dynamic we explored throughout the course of the first season. In our second season, the team has really proven themselves since the first season. They're a full-fledged team. They're sort of the side unit of the Justice League, and they've been very successful. They've even come up with their own missions and stuff, to the point where they haven't needed to be assigned tasks to do. I think in the second season, you're going to see a lot less of that dynamic where somebody has to come give them an assignment. We wanted them to feel like they've grown. They're their own unit, they're finding their own missions and going out to solve problems on their own."

One of those problems includes The Light, the villainous cadre of characters who were pulling the strings from behind the scenes in Season 1. Their storyline, it would seem, did not end with the finale that aired last week.


"I think it's just begun," hints Weisman. "It's basically stage one of The Light's plan in Season 1. At the end of Season 1, Vandal Savage actually says, 'Let's begin phase two.' That launches us off into our second season where we explore more of his plans. You will see The Light [again]."

In the Season 1 finale, Savage memorably calls the Justice League "champions of stagnation … dedicated to maintaining society's calcified status quo." The producers explained that Savage and his fellow villains don't really see themselves as being bad guys at all.

"They see themselves as the heroes of the story," says Weisman. "I don't think they see the Justice League as evil; I think they see them as hugely misguided. So I think maybe one of the contrasts for our series, as opposed to other shows, is that our bad guys aren't particularly interested in killing our good guys. That's not to say that they won't kill them if they get in the way or they're problematic at a specific moment, but there's no desire to, you know -- 'I've got to get that superhero!' It's not really about that. Oftentimes, our bad guys see our heroes as useful pawns, and sometimes our heroes are useful pawns. That's not going to change. The Light has really, really long-term plans, and all that happens in Season 1 feeds into Season 2. And all that happens in Season 2 is part of those plans."