Young Justice: "Happy New Year" Review

Full superhero sidekick spoilers follow.

O.K., who saw this coming? A five-year time jump between last week's Season 1 finale and this week's Season 2 opener? Huh.

Young Justice Faces an Invasion
Further confusing the matter for me personally is the fact that producers Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti specifically told me a few days ago that Young Justice Season 2 would pick up "a minute" after Season 1 ended. Yes, the show this week did begin with a brief rerun of last episode's final moments… but still. We're clearly in a completely different world now for these characters.


What world would that be? Well, Dick Grayson is now Nightwing, making many a fanboy giddy no doubt. Dick, Megan and Conner are apparently running the team now, while new members include Mal Duncan, Lagoon Boy, Bumblebee, Blue Beetle, Beast Boy, Batgirl, Wonder Girl and… the Tim Drake Robin. Cue even more fanboy giddiness.

The arrival on Earth of the Main Man himself, Lobo, brings the Justice League and their young companions back to the main cliffhanger thread from last week (a.k.a. five years ago): Where exactly were the mind-controlled six members of the League when they went missing for 16 hours, and what did they do during that time? It turns out they were in outer space, and seemingly not doing very nice things at all. This info is gleaned by Adam Strange, who at this point is just a scientist who works on the League's Zeta-Beam tech -- and doesn't have a jet pack (yet). Through a mad-dash of Strange exposition, we learn that the heroes are not welcome on the alien world of Rann, apparently because of whatever they did during those 16 hours.

And that's where Young Justice comes in, as they are free to visit Rann -- which needs to be done, as the critter Lobo was chasing down (a Krolotean) was just one of many that have been secretly setting up teleportation stations on Earth with technology stolen from Rann.


Or something like that. Once again, Young Justice throws these plot points at us fast and furious style, and if you can't keep up... well, then you just watch for the action-scene eye candy. And sure, there is some of that here, especially when the new Robin leads Lagoon Boy and Blue Beetle on a mission that turns out to be much more intense than they expected. The Wonder Girl/Batgirl battle with Lobo is also pretty sweet, as is the Clayface tussle.

But where does this new set-up leave us? Five years is a long time, and considering that Season 1 left a lot of loose story threads dangling, one can't help but wonder if we'll ever get a resolution to most of those. Add to that the fact that we now have an entire new team of characters to deal with -- albeit a pretty cool wish list of names -- plus an alien invasion storyline and six less episodes than last season, and one can't help but wonder if one of Young Justice's weakness from its first year -- a rush to action and intricate plots that sometimes left characterization on the table -- will be amplified in Season 2.

That said, I get how a time-jump like this can be a great thing. And it was pretty exciting even for an old seen-it-all fanboy-grump like me when I realized the show really is now set five years later (as opposed to just doing a one-episode gimmick). No one was a bigger fan than me of Battlestar Galactica's similar New Caprica twist, but it's important to remember that much of what happened in that "One Year Later" storyline served the characters -- both in where they had been before and where they were going. Will Young Justice do the same?


Some notes: Tim Drake and company's mission ends in a very similar manner to the team's first adventure in "Fireworks," with the Justice League all floating down from above to surround their young sidekicks. Where are Wally, Aqualad, Artemis and Roy? Could any of them have taken on their adult mentors' personas by now? Gotta wonder if this G. Gordon Godfrey subplot will go all the way to its comic-book roots…


IGN Movies Editor Scott Collura made a Kid-Flash costume for his son last year. Follow him on Twitter at @ScottIGN, on IGN and subscribe to his Facebook updates.

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