YMMV / Young Justice (2010)

For the comics, see Young Justice.

Subpages

• Alternative Character Interpretation
• And the Fandom Rejoiced
• Authors Saving Throw
• I Knew It!
• Narm
• The Woobie

General

• Adaptation Displacement: The animated series has far eclipsed the original comic in the eyes of many. However, it's hardly an adaptation as they really only share the basic concept of focusing on a young team of superheroes in common, so it feels like the "Young Justice" name was essentially given to the show arbitrarily by DC. Still, mention "Young Justice" and you can be sure that this is what will come to mind for most.
• Adorkable:
  • Robin has his moments, especially when he gets nervous and flustered when put in charge of leading team alpha and his facial expressions to his teammates' antics.
  • After Red Arrow spends the first two seasons as rather uptight and angry, by the third season his demeanor's completely changed. He makes bad puns and jokes about diarrhea, is openly worried about his insurance premiums when Brick attacks his car, and gets adorably flustered during his time with the moms in "Home Fires." In short, he is such a dad.
  • Zatanna in Season 1, at least, where she shares Robin's love of wordplay and occasionally mixes Buffy Speak into her magic spells.
  • Wonder Girl's cluelessness, general clumsiness and idolization of Wonder Woman make her very endearing.
  • Wally's expansive scientific knowledge is appealing to many fans.
  • Thirteen gets so excited about visiting an alien planet that she jumps into a Boom Tube, and accidentally throws off the destination with her magic.
  • Amnesiacs are Innocent is in full effect for Violet, which means Halo/Violet is curious, excitable, and seemingly oblivious to many social cues (like idly commenting on Brion's naked body). She's endearingly awkward.
• Arc Fatigue: For some fans, the unresolved continuing grand scheme of the Light became this by the end of the series - and since the series was revived, so has the fatigue. Portions of this mostly have to do with Greg Weisman's focus on Worldbuilding and producing a more expansive depiction of the DC universe, often over audience expectations of the major set pieces used for telling the story of the franchise. While most fans have inevitably accepted since then that the Light and especially Vandal Savage may continue to be an active threat in the series for years to come, the slow conflict with Apokolips continues to be a point of contention.
• Awesome Music: The YJ OP theme from Season 1.
  • The YJ Phantoms OP theme for Season 4 uses an electric themed remix.
• Better on DVD: This feeling of arc fatigue was undoubtedly magnified with the constant Schedule Slip the first and second seasons were subject to on TV, particularly the first. Watching the episodes as they aired with a lot of unexplained hiatuses in between could easily make one feel lost or frustrated, and binge-watching them does a lot to alleviate this. The high viewership on Netflix was a major factor in the show's renewal on the DC Universe streaming service, and the release schedule of three new episodes a week all but says they're meant to be binged, being as plot-heavy as ever.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Evil Is Cool: The Light get a lot of love for being a group of Magnificent Bastards and A-list supervillains who run circles around the heroes. In particular, Lex Luthor (an Affably Evil Badass in a Nice Suit) and Vandal Savage (a compelling Genius Bruiser with an interesting philosophy) stand out.
• Fandom Rivalry: Ever since the show began, there's been a rivalry of sorts between fans of this show and fans of Teen Titans (2003) for their different approaches to the DC teen team concept. Related to this, the more serious tone compared to the Teen Titans cartoon is the key or overarching issue some fans have, since many other issues they have ultimately stem from it, and they see Teen Titans as just more "fun". Others prefer the more serious tone because Teen Titans was too lighthearted much of the time for them. This became Hilarious in Hindsight when Teen Titans Go! (a comedy show, unlike the others) drew a lot of flak for not being the proper Teen Titans revival the fans wanted^note Though it was finally teased in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies and Young Justice characters were used in a Self-Deprecation episode to tell the Titans off.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With the Titans (2018) fanbase, since they're sister shows on the DC Universe as the first two originals announced, and both were Screwed by the Network in the past (CN canceled Young Justice out of nowhere, TNT prevented Titans from ever being made on their network). Many fans of either often share the same communities.
  • With Green Lantern: The Animated Series after Phantoms revealed that elements of the show were canon with Young Justice in Broad Strokes and it continued Razer's story.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: There was a five-year Time Skip between seasons 1 and 2. Season 3 debuted five years since the show was canceled.
• I Am Not Shazam:
  • Word of God says "Young Justice" is just the name of the show while the Team is just "the team". Thus they have yet to be called "Young Justice" on-screen. In-universe, since the team isn't public like the Justice League, it doesn't get to have a "fancy name." This also further differentiates the team from the original Young Justice of the comics.
  • Also, officially speaking the teams led by Nightwing and Batman have no names, and have yet to be truly called "Outsiders" and "Batman Incorporated", respectively. For the former, they've been referred to as being "outside" the law as a nod, and for the latter, they've been called that twice by Black Lightning, but only as a disparaging remark. Still, just about everyone (including this wiki) refers to them as Outsiders and Batman Incorporated, because having "The Team", "Nightwing's team" and "Batman's team" just doesn't quite cut it.
    • This becomes even more complicated in the latter half of Season 3, where Beast Boy's newly created 'public' team is referred to by him as 'Outsiders', and Nightwing's team that had the spotlight in the first half has seemingly now had the majority of its members rejoining the old team or joining Beast Boy's new team, barring Nightwing, Black Lightning, and Cyborg^note  Until Cyborg joined the Outsiders later on, Nightwing finally returned to the Team, and Black Lightning became the Justice League's new leader. One could make the case that the "Outsiders" of the title is meant to refer to both teams, with Nightwing's team in the first half of the season being 'outsiders' (albeit drawing inspiration from the Outsiders of the comics), while Beast Boy's in the second half is actually named the Outsiders (but based primarily on the Teen Titans).
• I Knew It!: It now has its own page.
• Magnificent Bastard: See here.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Superman's initial reluctance to form a relationship with Superboy has been met with criticism as being out-of-character for the Man of Steel. However, Superman has historically had a rather hands off approach to the younger members of the Super family in the comics. In the original Supergirl stories he had her put into foster care and in post-Crisis, he left her training to the Amazons. With Superboy, Clark initially wanted no part in raising him (and the feeling was mutual on Conner's end) but they did become close eventually, as is the case with the show. Even then, Clark left Conner to be raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent.
  • Cheshire's more sympathetic depiction has been criticized by some comic fans as her being softened by the show. However, Jade was more of a Punch-Clock Villain and Noble Demon in her original appearances; she once helped stop a group of racists who wanted her to kill a black civil rights activist and was shown to care for Lian. She became the Ax-Crazy Dragon Lady she is known for being in the comics after the story in Deathstroke's book where she nuked Qurac, but prior to this she had more in common with how she is portrayed in this series.
  • Some fans have taken issue with season 3's very unsubtle attempts at creating similarities between Lex Luthor and Donald Trump. While it doesn't excuse the quality of the writing, this is not the first time Luthor has been modeled after Trump. John Byrne modeled Post-Crisis Lex Luthor after Donald Trump and Ted Turner (“evil corporate executives”, as he said). There was even a one-shot comic called Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography, which was clearly modeled off The Art of the Deal. Granted, that was before Trump became a controversial political figure. Luthor's position of power was also given to him in the season 2 finale, three real life^note The timeline of the series put season 2 firmly in 2016 even though it aired in real life in 2013 years before Donald Trump was elected President (and thus in Barack Obama's second term), and even then, Luthor was portrayed instead as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, which gave him a much more influential position to aid the Light's plans than he would have had during the time in the comics he actually was the President.
  • Razer being able to wield both a blue ring and a red ring in season four may seem innovative, but the concept of a Lantern using more than one ring of the emotional spectrum at once has been used many times before in the comics. For example, Hal Jordan once wielded a green and blue ring at the same time, and Guy Gardner has used a ring in conjunction with a ring of another color on two separate occasions. Also, Mother Mercy was chosen by both green and yellow lanterns at the same time and briefly wore both rings before choosing to join the Green Lantern Corps. Furthermore, Kyle Rayner once briefly managed to wield seven different color rings at the exact same time.
  • Darkseid being portrayed as rarely getting his hands dirty^note His only onscreen fight to date takes place in a flashback detailing Vandal Savage's backstory and how they became partners has met some criticism for Darkseid seeming to barely do anything in the show, instead taking a backseat to his minions and partners in regard to screentime and story relevance despite being one of the primary candidates for the Big Bad of the DC comics canon. However, this is actually quite accurate to his earliest appearances in the 1970s and 1980s, when his creator Jack Kirby primarily viewed the character as a Paper Tiger, and Darkseid largely remained confined to the New Gods comic, never paid attention to the other heroes of the DC universe, and preferred not to actively fight heroes (with The Great Darkness Saga and Legends, some of the first major storylines to have him directly face non-New Gods heroes, primarily portraying him as a manipulator similar to the members of the Light, with the latter even inspiring Young Justice's portrayal of Glorious Godfrey)^note Even his flashback appearance saw him only use Omega Beams, as Darkseid in the comics preferred using these rather than fighting people directly, comics that Greg Weisman would have been familiar with during his tenure as a comic book writer at that point. It's primarily due to Audience-Coloring Adaptations such as the DC Animated Universe and Geoff Johns' run on Justice League (2011) (and in turn the myriad of adaptations based on it, such as Zack Snyder's Justice League) that he became popularized as a more openly aggressive conqueror, making it quite unusual for Young Justice to revert him back to his classic portrayal as working from behind the scenes. Granted, the show's tendency to portray him as The Voiceless (chalked up to the show's constrained budget limiting the use of guest actors such as Michael-Leon Wooley, who only voiced Darkseid in a single episode), contrasting his original comics self still having plenty of dialogue, did also play a part in making him appear overshadowed by his more frequently appearing minions.
• One-Scene Wonder: Cameos abound in this show due to the loads and loads and loads of characters from all across the DC Universe, making their appearances special for avid DC comics fans. Particularly if they've never been animated before.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Season 3 is considered much weaker than its previous seasons by most of the viewership. The structure changed dramatically to mimic a live-action show, abandoning its previous recon tone. While Season 2 marked the start of members of the Team being out of focus, it only truly started negatively affecting the quality in Season 3. The Team is Demoted to Extra, while most of the focus shifts to the newcomers recruited into Nightwing's team and the Outsiders, which is considered to be very inefficient, with characters who were given the spotlight all throughout the season still coming off as underdeveloped, such as Impulse, Blue Beetle, and M'gann being Out of Focus. A lot of Fanservice served to hurt the series further. And at some point, the show feels like a parody of itself (i.e., Garfield having Teen Titans Go! hallucinations, or Wally West appearing too frequently in hallucinations for the impact of his death to be maintained). The series also starts handing out the Idiot Ball, with characters making questionable choices, even Batman (i.e. allowing Helga Jace, a civilian who was knowingly doing questionable acts such as tar-ing two of the Markov siblings, to overhear much of the heroes' development, even the compartmentalization plot with none of the Bat-Family detectives figuring out that Jace had been leaking information to The Light).
  • Season 4 attempted to address this criticism by finally giving the founding members of the Team the spotlight they lost in the previous season and dedicating storylines to them again, through the form of an experimental formula where each hero had their own storyline to themselves with an Arc Villain while a major antagonist advanced in the background. However, this did not entirely pan out in the long run and resulted in another season derided by the fandom, as many heroes still faded into the background of their own story arcs, the show's focus on real-world issues (now taking the form of a divisive depression storyline handed to Beast Boy throughout all their storylines) competed for screentime with them, the Light was less relevant to the season (only returning in full force in the finale), and the show's Bloodier and Gorier content was starting to become hollow and insincere due to several characters Faking the Dead. Even the show's focus on minor characters had started to fail in favor of more notable characters, as its introduction of the Legion of Super-Heroes culminated in an adaptation of the General Zod storyline popularized by Superman II that (aside from including non-Superman characters) was barely any different from previous takes on the story (even when the previous season proved the show could pull twists on other famous storylines like The Judas Contract to keep things fresh).
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The show is really more like the Teen Titans comics, thanks to its heavy focus on plot and character drama, than its namesake.
  • Additionally, in some ways it's Truer to the Text than the beloved 2003 Teen Titans series. It's played entirely straight as opposed to being lighthearted and comedic (though that's not to say the original couldn't have serious moments either), has heavier themes, a focus on romance, and features an expanding and revolving lineup as opposed to a core five like what 2003 series had, which brings it in line with how the Titans were portrayed as in the comics. Furthering this, the founding members include Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad (albeit, a different one) much like the original founding Titans.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some fans of the Young Justice comics give this show flak, particularly because it's using the name while being closer in sensibility to the more serious Teen Titans comics. In the same way, the Teen Titans (2003) cartoon is closer to the less serious Young Justice comics, and caught some flak of its own for that. Still, roster additions in season 2 increased the number of Young Justice comics characters, and the first two seasons even had episodes written by Young Justice comic writer Peter David that came with nods to the Young Justice comics.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Much like Justice League before it, the show coming out in 2010-2011 and its penchant for including as much of the DC Universe as possible meant that it reflects an Adaptation Distillation version of the DCU before all the massive status quo changes from the New 52 onward happened. For instance, all four members of the Flash family - Jay, Barry, Wally and Bart - are present while they were assigned to different Earths with the New 52, significantly altered, etc.

Seasons 1 and 2: A-G

• Alternative Character Interpretation: It now has its own page.
• Angst? What Angst?: Justified, but it's there. Jaime spends the most of his arc terrified of being a weapon for the Reach, and then it finally happens. Jaime spent months trapped in his own mind, but by the time we get a look inside his head and he's developed a coping mechanism: throwing insults and snarks at the Ambassador. A bit of what we'd expect is demonstrated when the Ambassador orders the Scarab to kill Impulse and Batgirl and he freaks out, but otherwise it's pretty angst free. Jaime came out of the experience surprisingly well, in fact too well.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Okay, admit it, you hate L'gaan because of so many reasons, but it’s hard to leave him in the dirt because M'gann left him. In fact, he may have probably went worse than Superboy because despite Superboy getting Mind Raped, at least he and M'gann had a genuinely loving relationship, whilst L'gaan was selfishly used to repair M'gann's self-esteem.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Black Beetle throughout Invasion is The Juggernaut who effortlessly worfs most of his opponents not named Blue Beetle. Then, the penultimate episode made him the Dragon Ascendant for the Reach, who takes over as Big Bad for the finale with a plot to destroy the world. In the final episode, he loses easily to Blue Beetle through weakness exploitation. This happens after roughly five minutes, and the majority of the finale is about everyone undoing the damage before Earth can be destroyed, but he's already been taken out by that point. Some might be disappointed about how quickly he went down in his final appearance, all things considered.
• Arc Fatigue: Besides the general issue with the Light, Season 1 in particular got a lot of flak for ending several episodes the same way, with the Light going "All According to Plan" even before their faces were revealed. Understandably, Death Note keikaku memes were often invoked in response.
• Ass Pull: The Team's Starro-Tech cure and vaccine in the first season finale. To elaborate, the Light spent the entire season assembling the technology to create the Starro-tech mind control device to subjugate the Justice League, while the Team manages to procure a cure for it completely off-screen in the span of hours, with the help of some Atlantean scientists who were minor characters earlier in the series.
• Awesome Music: The first season's opening theme is the definition of short and sweet.
• Awesomeness Withdrawal: The many random hiatuses the show suffered did not help.
• Badass Decay: Superboy. When he first appears, he's shown to clearly be the overall strongest of the main characters, but as time went on, he kept getting subject to The Worf Effect. It's especially bad in the second season when he's largely Demoted to Extra and can barely win a single fight, even losing against Aqualad despite easily defeating him in the pilot.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Miss Martian. A horrible abomination of a character, or a delightful breath of fresh air in a team full of jerks? Her Catchphrase ("Hellooo, Megan!") isn't helping matters. Though these turned out to be Arc Words as well, directly connected to her character issues (and indirectly, Beast Boy). As of "Earthlings", we have whether or not her mind raping a Krolotean leader to get information was unnecessary and overkilling it or whether she did what she had to do. This latter behaviour also extends into her romantic relationship with Superboy, with the disturbing implications of her abuse of power on him in Season 2 to make him forget they argued, though she eventually realizes she was wrong and apologizes. It also doesn't help that his status as an impressionable, freshly created clone and her chronological age (48, the equivalent of 16 for a Martian), and giving him the same first name as her TV boyfriend as part of her insistence on modeling her life after her favorite TV show, can come across as child grooming and just plain psychologically unhealthy for both of them.
  • Artemis has her share of haters as well. An intriguing character (Dark and Troubled Past, Broken Bird, Badass Family That Slays Together) or just a snotty bitch? You decide!
  • The Light are either Magnificent Bastards or Invincible Villains, depending on who you ask.
  • The Joker also suffers from this: some are criticizing how the show handled him, while others defend the show's take. Some are also annoyed he isn't voiced by Mark Hamill (Batman: The Animated Series et cetera) or John DiMaggio (Batman: Under the Red Hood).
  • Klarion the Witch Boy. It's not so much his personality as his role in being a member of the Light. Even then, you have people saying he's a funny Faux Affably Evil villain, and people who find him annoying.
  • Dr Fate. Some fans consider him a Knight Templar the League should have destroyed, others consider his actions, while harsh, both understandable and justified. Sharing an opinion on the matter among fans is bound to start a fight.
  • Aqualad is either viewed as being an awesome stoic leader, or a Flat Character who never expresses any emotion. There's also those who say Greg Weisman is making him overly perfect at the expense of Dick (by making him leader instead of Dick, though this was remedied as of Season 2 until The Reveal and finale arc) and Garth (by not having Garth becoming Aqualad before Kaldur). And then in Season 2 there's his off-screen Face–Heel Turn. And then this turns out to be fake. And then there are those who feel he doesn't get enough of screen time compared to the other characters.
  • Kid Flash is either viewed as a childish Jerkass (especially compared to previous incarnations), or being one of the funnier and more genuinely likable characters on the show. However, some see the episode "Coldhearted", late in Season 1, as the point where he gets some much-needed maturity.
  • Lagoon Boy: Is he an obnoxious, brash jerk towards Superboy or is his behavior justified because Conner not-so-subtly belittles and picks on him because of his lingering feelings for Ms. Martian? Note that even though the base is broken on whether his behavior is justified, he's still rather disliked.
  • Nightwing's actions. Was he right to keep the team out of the loop? Was his plan too risky? Was he wrong for kicking Arsenal off the team?
  • Arsenal. Does he endanger the Team too much to settle his own agenda, or is he a Shell-Shocked Veteran who didn't get proper treatment for his obvious PTSD?
  • Superman's refusal to help Superboy or spend any time with him at all during the first season rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and brought up some serious questions about this particular Man of Steel's morality and compassion. Also a divisive character for whether or not Superman was actually justified in feeling uncomfortable around Superboy, a clone made without his knowledge or permission for shady reasons, and wanting distance when Superboy did nothing to really merit such treatment.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Captain Cold's appearance in "Satisfaction" served no purpose whatsoever and when confronted by the girls he gave up without bothering to put up a fight, with no explanation being given for what that had to do with anything.
• Broken Base: The Season 2 Time Skip divided fans over the new characters replacing most of the old team, as well by as its very nature. It's either a hackneyed plot device that only leaves them wanting more of the old team as they were, or an awesome way to hit the ground running plot-wise and introduce more DC characters who wouldn't be the right age in season 1. The fans remained divided for the duration of Season 2 over the Gambit Pileup of the heroes and villains, as the plot grew more and more complicated with more and more new characters being introduced, including a new villainous faction, the Reach. Some also felt that gradually revealing what'd happened over the previous 5 years gave the current events more impact and others thinking those past events would've been far more interesting if they'd been shown in chronological order and if not for the fact that half of them we only got told about rather than being shown at all.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • Adam Strange quoting Alice in Wonderland and "Jabberwocky" to escape the space gestapo.
  • Joker attacking Mount Justice with an army of green, bomb-throwing monkeys!
• Die for Our Ship: Lagoon Boy, and it only took a single episode.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • While people are divided about the characterization of most of the cast, particularly Superman and The Joker, there's one character nobody dislikes: Captain Marvel. He's the most fun character in the cast and seems to be as popular with the fans—and even non-fans—as AQUAMAN was.
  • The runaways who were experimented on by the Reach (Eduardo Dorado, Jr., Tye Longshadow, Asami Koizumi, and Virgil Hawkins) achieved this after "Runaways". Virgil already had a built-in fanbase, being one of the most hoped-for characters since the show premiered. But Eduardo, Tye, and Asami, derived from Superfriends, have already garnered plenty of fans on their own. That they're all True Companions already helps.
  • True to her fan-favorite status in the comics, Stephanie Brown may only get a brief cameo, but in the comics she's better known as Spoiler, the fourth Batgirl and fourth Robin. Even if her appearance was only confirmed by the credits, she still got a lot of love. And then she was announced for Season 3 assuming her comic identity as Spoiler, and was immediately considered the "main course" of the three newcomers. Many also hope that her BFF Cassandra Cain will be joining too now that she's been announced.
  • "Coffee Pot Guy", the unmasked manta trooper who offers Tigress a fresh pot of coffee in "Complications".
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Mongul, despite his limited appearance in Season 2, was extremely well-received by the fans. He effortlessly thrashes the Team without even trying and nearly becoming a greater threat than The Reach, all the while speaking in the smooth baritone of the legendary Keith David.
  • Cheshire, for being a femme fatale, a formidable opponent, and a loving big sister to Artemis, wife to Roy and mom to Lian in near-equal measure.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: A lot of this. For instance, there's a lot of preference for Artemis/Robin, as well as some Kid Flash/Robin.
• Fanfic Fuel: Kid Flash getting lost in the Speed Force is a surprisingly common starting point for YJ crossover fics given the possibilities it allows.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Radical" Robin (for his very familiar hacking style).
  • "Batdad," "Batdaddy," or "Daddybats" for Batman's surprising aptitude for being a good parental figure.
  • "Kid Fate," for Kid Flash wearing the Helmet of Fate.
    • "Fate Lad" and "Fatanna" for when Aqualad and Zatanna do the same.
  • "Rolly" for the sphere that Superboy brought back from Bialya in "Bereft"
  • "Rageboy" and "Emoboy" for Superboy's early anger management issues and his angsting about Superman ignoring him. But these are markedly toned down as the show progresses.
  • "Angroy" for Red Arrow's anger at the whole sidekick thing.
  • "Aquabad" or "Mantalad" for Aqualad after his Face–Heel Turn.
    • There's also Manta II and Manta Jr.
  • "Mama Canary" for Black Canary, who was Team Mom to the young heroes in season 1.
  • Eduardo is also known as Spike Spiegel in the fandom because of their similar looks.
  • In the wake of Arsenal joining up with the Runaways, fans have started calling dubbing the group "The Outsiders" and "The Outlaws."
  • The Runaways aren't really called "The Runaways" in capital letters, but since the term is used both in dialogue and an episode title, fans have adopted it for that purpose.
• Genius Bonus: "Whelm" is, in fact, a real word all by its lonesome. It basically means the same as the colloquial meaning of overwhelm. (i.e., Overwhelm should mean whelm, but taken up to eleven.)
• Growing the Beard: Some possible points:
  • Around or after the middle stretch of the first season, especially Episode 19, "Misplaced", and after, when the show finally stopped suffering from Cartoon Network Schedule Slip and the plot development seemingly picks up the pace in time for the season 1 finale.
  • The second season, where the original team members are now more mature and competent due to a Time Skip, more mature themes are explored, and more stuff from the DCU is introduced. In particular the shipping, catchphrases and wangst are much reduced. The second season also has a full-season Story Arc, so the writers can focus on developing that instead of having to come up with a new plot for each episode.

Seasons 1 and 2: H-O

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In-universe:
    • M'gann's off handed comment about how she always wanted a sister and that had a bunch on mars but that it wasn't the same came across as a desperate attempt to fit in among humans given how she modeled her life after a sitcom. right up until season four it's revealed that as the only female white Martian in her family the rest of them shunned her to fit in.
    • Most of Red Arrow's bits about how he can't trust [certain team member] because anyone might be The Mole becomes this by the end of "Usual Suspects" since it's him, and his tone of voice as he realizes this implies that he realizes that he was programmed to put suspicion on the new heroes, to turn suspicion away from himself.
    • In "Infiltrator", Artemis says to Red Arrow, "Step into the light!" Oh Artemis, you have no idea...
    • In "Terrors", when M'gann and Connor are disguised as Belle Reve inmates Tommy and Tuppence Terror and are attending a therapy session with Hugo Strange, M'gann tries to help out Connor's issues with how much Superman, his biological father, has been avoiding him by trying to bring up "father figure issues" that "Tommy" has, but Connor winds up snapping back that he doesn't want to live in her "stupid fantasy world where every problem's solved in half an hour". We then get a brief glimpse of an extremely hurt expression from M'gann before she turns away in a mix of guilt and discomfort. It's not until the later episode "Image", where we find out that M'gann has modeled her entire Earth identity on an old TV sitcom she used to watch obsessively, that we realize just how deep that comment accidentally cut.
    • Actually not that accidental: In "Bereft", Miss Martian's mind repair on Suberboy is later revealed to have done "too much at once" and given him knowledge of her White Martian nature. Clips from Hello, Megan can also be seen during the mind repair, showing that he learned about that too.
    • In "Disordered", Dick Grayson expresses trauma over thinking like Batman and making huge risks/sacrifices, explicitly stating "that's not me." By "Darkest", he's pulling off gambits so unstable that the one person in the loop gives him a What the Hell, Hero? speech.
    • In "Darkest", Wally starts doubting whether or not Aqualad really is a Fake Defector as they think he is. Come "Before The Dawn", it's revealed that he is, and always has been, on their side via Mind Rape, courtesy of Miss Martian.
    • In "Welcome to Happy Harbor", M'gann is hesitant to use her telepathic powers on Mr. Twister after using them on the other Team members. Dick/Robin tells her "It's okay to use it on the bad guys!" and she runs with it. By Season 2, she may have taken this a little too far...
    • Wally not being as fast as the Flash or Impulse. In Endgame, it kills him.
    • Also, Wally tells Bart in "Summit" that he's gonna retire after all this is over. He retires, all right. Permanently.
    • Also relating to "Endgame", the hashtag for the Twitter storm for that week was "#HeroesNeverDie".
  • Try reading these lines of dialogue after Wally dies in the season two finale.
    Robin: (referring to Wally being in school)' A moment of silence for our absent comrade.
    M'gann: Poor Wally...
  • Beast Boy telling Nightwing "No faking anyone's death for at least a year!" in "Summit"? Hilarious. After the next episode, where Kid Flash dies? Not so much.
  • In addition: in the debut episode of Impulse, much fun is made of the fact that KF Can't Catch Up to Impulse and The Flash when it comes to speed. In "Endgame", that inability to catch up results in his death.
  • In "Secrets", Mal Duncan briefly guesses that Superboy's Halloween costume is that of a burn victim, before Superboy clarifies the bandages are actually for a mummy costume. This is harder to look at when the events of "Involuntary" end with Superboy being forced to drop himself into Martian lava to destroy the gene bomb, and being thought to have been blown up in the explosion. Though he actually winds up in the Phantom Zone thanks to Phantom Girl, he still is covered in burn scars for the rest of the season until the finale.
• He's Just Hiding: Wally's death in "Endgame" earned this reaction from many fans. It helps that Word of God describes a clarification of his fate as a spoiler.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: When the Scarab controlling Blue Beetle fights Impulse and Batgirl, he uses the Nail 'Em attack to pin them against the wall relatively uninjured. At the beginning of the season, the Scarab would advise Jaime to shoot through bone—it seems to have learned some compassion from Jaime since then.
  • Lian's name becomes this in "Overwhelmed" when Artemis' full civilian name is subtly revealed via a diploma on a wall. Cheshire gave her daughter her sister's middle name.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In a funny coincidence, this version of Superboy was introduced at the same time that Smallville was doing its own Superboy storyline, and the reactions of the respective Supermen to the existence of Superboy could not be more opposite.
  • In "Bereft," Robin wakes up without his memories of the last six months, and yells "In September?! What happened to March?" "Bereft" was the last episode aired before the six month hiatus... in March. "Targets" didn't officially premiere until... September.
  • Miss Martian tells Superboy to "Stop behaving like a character in a 70s Sitcom" during "Alpha Male", then several episodes pass, and during "Image", this is shown to be Hypocritical Humor as we learn that her entire personality and appearance is based around that of a 70s Sitcom character. Not to mention that Conner's name—which she suggested—is the name of her character's boyfriend from the same show.
  • For the comic based on the original series, in issue #45 one of the campers suggests that Beast Boy might be of Martian origin because he's green and shape-shifts. Beast Boy's counterpart in Young Justice (2010) got his powers and green skin from receiving a blood transfusion from Miss Martian (mixed with his dormant metagene).
  • Dick's retort that "The Batcave is crowded enough already" to the offer of being cloned in Season 1, only for the Time Skip between the two seasons to establish Barbara as Batgirl and introduce Tim as the latest Robin, with Jason having died in between. Continues in season 3 as Stephanie is now Spoiler after briefly appearing last season, Jason is alive, and Cass/Orphan/Batgirl and Damian are introduced.
  • A preceding Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) is famous for his very close friendship with time traveler Booster Gold. Come Young Justice and the current Blue Beetle has a developing bromance with another time traveler, Impulse.
  • The episode "War" starts off with Superman not understanding the Rimbor judge's alien language. The Green Lantern: The Animated Series episode that aired alongside this, "Babel", focused on Hal not understanding Kilowog and Razer's alien languages for nearly the entire episode.
  • Assuming the Runaways' name really is a Shout-Out to Marvel team of the same name, there were some amusing coincidences later on. Members of YJ's Runaways were introduced in Beneath, an episode featuring an all-female mission, and their leader later got to join the Team, which is basically a sister team of Justice League. In 2015 the (second) leader of Marvel's Runaways joined A-Force, an all-female sister team of Marvel's equivalent to the JL, the Avengers... that, according to Word of God, was directly inspired by a conversation Nightwing and Batgirl had in Beneath.
    I remember watching one of the DCU animated cartoons a couple years ago where they put together a team of female heroines to go fight a villainess. I think it was Dick Grayson who was talking to them on screen and he was saying something like they couldn’t send any male heroes to fight this villainess because she can control the minds of men. I believe it was Batgirl who sassed him back and essentially said, “Why are you trying to justify having a team of only women? No one would ever try to validate sending a team of only men.”
  • In a 2001 issue of Wizard Magazine the casting-call section had then-current Titans writer Jay Faerber suggest Kelly Hu play Cheshire in a live-action Teen Titans film. Guess who ended up providing her voice in this ten years later?
• Ho Yay: Has a page for it.
• Hype Backlash: Any person can claim this show was the second coming of superhero show greatness after the DCAU. However, not every critic is going to have the same opinion. (Skip to 33:09 for part on Young Justice). The fans of Teen Titans (2003) often compare it unfavorably to their show as well as the DCAU.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: Hoo boy! There's a lot of them. Pretty much every kind of ship naming convention was used in this fandom.
  • Kid Flash (Wally West) and Artemis = Spitfire
  • Superboy (Conner Kent) and Miss Martian (M'gann M'orzz) = SuperMartian
  • Robin I, later Nightwing (Dick Grayson) and Zatanna = Chalant
  • Cheshire (Jade Nguyen) and Red Arrow (Clone! Roy Harper) = RedCat or Cheshroy
  • Guardian III (Mal Duncan) and Bumblebee (Karen Beecher) = GuardianBee
  • Tye Longshadow and Asami "Sam" Koizumi = Team Headbands
  • Eduardo "Ed" Dorado and Asami "Sam" Koizumi = Vest Duo
  • Lagoon Boy (La'gaan) and Miss Martian (M'gann M'orzz) = Angelfish
  • Artemis and Red Arrow (Clone! Roy Harper) = Longshot
  • Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) and Arsenal = Wonder Gun
  • Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) and Blue Beetle III (Jaime Reyes) = WonderBeetle
  • Robin, later Nightwing (Dick Grayson) and Artemis = Traught
  • Blue Beetle III (Jaime Reyes) and Impulse (Bart Allen) = SpeedBuggy or BluePulse
  • Artemis, Miss Martian (M'gann M'orzz), and Aqualad (Kaldur) = Symbiosi
  • Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) and Lagoon Boy (La'gaan) = WonderChum
  • Aqualad (Kaldur) and Red Arrow (Clone Roy Harper) = Koy
  • Captain Marvel (Billy Batson) and Zatanna = Mazahs
  • Aqualad (Kaldur) and Artemis = SeaArrow
  • Zatanna and Artemis = Snaibsel (respell it backwards)
  • Superboy (Connor Kent) and Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) = Powerhouse
  • Artemis, Robin I/Nightwing, and Kid Flash (Wally West)= Museum Heist (what you get when you rob the wall art)
• Inferred Holocaust: In "Misplaced", children and adults are separated into two dimensions by Klarion and four villainous sorcerers, which takes a few days for the heroes to reverse. While it does show the teenagers rounding up younger children and babies, the episode largely glosses over the countless thousands of fatalities that must've occurred without adults. Such as babies in bathtubs that drowned, children that were in the middle of surgery, toddlers at home unsupervised (especially as if the stove was on), or children that were in moving airplanes, trains, and cars (this one actually is shown, with a girl that turned eighteen while flying transported to the adults' dimension in midair, while Billy is left in the airplane with no pilot, although the fact this must've happened on a massive scale is ignored).
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Superboy, very quickly. Superboy/Aqualad, Superboy/Miss Martian, Superboy/Artemis, Superboy/Black Canary, Superboy/Wonder Girl.
  • Robin. Yes, the 13-year-old one. Maybe it helps that his other canon counterparts in the comics and other media are the same way. Up to eleven when he becomes Nightwing.
    • And after seeing what happens in the "Players" arc in the Young Justice tie-in comic it becomes canon. Kisses from Zatanna and Rocket. Sleeping with Bette Kane the night before his birthday. Implied to sleep with Batgirl the night of his Birthday. Four at least kisses in a ~24 hour period
  • Artemis and Kid Flash get their fair share as well. They've been paired with each other, Robin, Aqualad, Superboy, Miss Martian, Zatanna, Red Arrow, and their respective main-stream comic love interests. And that's not even getting into threesomes, mentor-shipping, or crossover shipping.
  • Heck, anyone in this show basically plays this trope straight. Aqualad and Miss Martian aren't entirely spared.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • One of the problems with "Failsafe". In the opening thirty seconds, Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and John Stewart are vaporized without warning. That would be pretty unbelievable in itself, but then in the next thirty seconds so are Captain Atom, Captain Marvel, Martian Manhunter, Superman, and Batman.
  • In "Depths", Artemis dies in the opening. The episode covers the events leading up to this moment and the aftermath and it's revealed that her death was a ruse.
  • In "Darkest", Aqualad's threatens to set off a pseudo-nuke and destroy Mount Justice, and kill Nightwing, Superboy, Wolf, and sphere, which turns out to be a bluff. Then Aqualad has Artemis use the real trigger, and Mount Justice is totally annihilated, though they survive.
  • Many fans predicted that Barry Allen/Flash was going to die by the end of Invasion. Come "Endgame", Barry doesn't die. However, Wally does.
    • Greg Weisman qualified a lot of his statements with little phrases like "assuming everyone survives" and "if they survive," when talking about characters. A tumblr user once reblogged one of these statements adding, "And you're assuming we're stupid enough to believe you'd kill one of your characters off." Well...
• Love to Hate:
  • G. Gordon Godfrey is one of the most insufferable characters in the series for his Fantastic Racism attitude and hostility towards the Justice League. But fans also can't help but enjoy Tim Curry's hammy performance and even rooted for him when he calls out the Reach Ambassador.
  • Lex Luthor here is no less devious than his other counterparts. However, he comes off as too charming and polite to truly hate.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Robin, soon after the pilot premiered.
    • And thanks to the events of "Depths", Nightwing just cranked up the dial several notches. We're talking on par with, possibly even better than "Batman with prep time"-level schemes here.
  • Aqualad developed into this over the course of season one.
  • Sportsmaster, due to the implications of his name.
  • Artemis in Season 2 is getting there. While everyone else is angsting or complaining, she's out getting things done.
  • Mongul. While already holding badass credentials due to the Curb-Stomp Battle he delivered to the Team and overpowering Black Beetle, fans attribute this to his voice actor
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The words Robin creates by removing prefixes (such as "whelmed" and "aster" from the words overwhelmed and disaster).
  • Superman will take his pie to go. *dramatic background music*
  • Robin hacked the motion sensors. ^Explanation In Independence Day, Dr Desmond gloats that Robin may have disabled most of his security, but not his motion sensors. Nope, Robin hacked his motion sensors, too.
  • Aqualad is the son of The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.
  • "X is a sport."
  • It's hard to pin just one down, but there was a flurry of angry memes when the hiatus until January 2013 was revealed.
  • "Now THAT'S a rutabaga!"
  • Judging by pure gif saturation, Blue Beetle whacking his Heterosexual Life-Partner in the head with a rock.
  • Wally was a fan-favorite character in season one who was Demoted to Extra in season two, which resulted in a lot of "WHERE'S WALLY?" posts on Tumblr after each episode would air with no sign of him. This was eventually mashed up with Where's Waldo?, who is called "Wally" in every country but Canada and the U.S. Then, after Wally's death in "Endgame," Artemis's first words are "Where's Wally?" Which is now getting added to the meme.
  • Equating the Light (particularly their faceless group shot) with Cartoon Network executives.
  • "Touch the Batmobile, and you're fired." "...I hate this family." ^explanationA meme that cherrypicks several screencaps from "Alienated" with a caption that makes it seem like Batman is being comically stern and cold towards his proteges in contrast to the other mentors and their sidekicks. Its even assumed by newcomers that it was spoken in the actual episode (especially since it sounds like something Batman would actually say), even though it wasn't—the line and context of the scene (where Batman sincerely sees off Nightwing, Robin and Batgirl on good terms) is completely different from the meme.
• Moe: The fans' opinion of Asami "Sam" Koizumi, who is a cute Japanese girl with a tendency to apologize in Japanese.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The Light technically crossed it before the series even began. The Season 1 finale reveals that they kidnapped Speedy and cloned him more than three years ago. The Roy Harper we've been following in the series was a clone and part of their plan, which even he didn't know. Not only that, the real Roy had his arm amputated to give Cadmus a steady source of DNA to be able to rapidly clone Roy's body. They then take the original Roy with them alongside Match when covering their tracks from Cadmus following the events of the episode.
  • Harm intentionally invokes this, murdering his little sister, Greta, the only person he ever loved, so he could wield the Sword of Beowulf. Since only the pure of heart could wield it, Harm decided to make himself pure evil. Even his reason for wanting the sword was so that he could be strong enough to murder members of the Justice League, seemingly just for kicks.
  • Queen Bee is revealed to have killed Garfield Logan's mother purely out of spite, if the Light's overall moment isn't enough to push her over the line. Seeing Beast Boy so broken shows how horrible she truly was.
  • The Reach crosses theirs by abducting and torturing children in their attempts to weaponize the meta-gene. In "Cornered" it's confirmed that not all of the abductees survived.
• Narm: It now has its own page.
• One-Scene Wonder: Because of the huge cast of DC characters, even those with brief or one-time appearances can make waves in the fandom. These include:
  • Jason Todd aka Robin II, who appears as a hologram, having died between seasons. This is only his second animated appearance after the movie Batman: Under the Red Hood, not counting a background joke in Teen Titans.
  • Cissie King-Jones aka Arrowette in the Young Justice comics, who appears in season 1 as an unnamed young girl with no lines (her father had a minor speaking role and was named, which is how fans identified her). Since the show is basically an In Name Only adaptation, fans of the comics appreciated it very much.
  • In season 2 there's Stephanie Brown aka Spoiler/Robin IV/Batgirl III, who says a line or two and is only named in the credits. By this time in the comics she'd been Demoted to Extra due to the New 52 reboot as Barbara was Batgirl again (and the only one ever), so her fans took it very well.
  • Special mention goes to Darkseid in the season 2 finale. No lines and not even a full minute of screentime, yet the fandom went nuts at the sight of him, with many even citing that scene as a major reason they were angry about the show being cancelled.
• One True Threesome: There a couple of prominent ones. Sometimes, they get folded together into OT 4/5.
  • There is Dick/Artemis/Wally, due to Artemis and Wally being an Official Couple, and fans interpreting Dick and Artemis's interactions as being more than Just Friends.
  • Then there's Zatanna/Dick/Barbara. Both Zatanna and Barbara are love interests for Dick in both the series and the tie-in comic, and are implied to be Friends with Benefits with him at possibly the same time. And then there's Barbara's suggestive reaction to Zatanna kissing Dick◊.

Seasons 1 and 2: P-S

• Pandering to the Base: The show's target audience is teenagers. Episode six contains a beach scene and the beginnings of a Love Dodecahedron.
• Periphery Demographic: The target audience may be children 6-14, but the show, particularly the second season, has managed to attract many older viewers due to its tight plotting, serialized plot arcs, and willingness to touch on and openly refer to themes one might expect to find on a pay cable drama. There's even a decent hint of sex, with Wally and Artemis sharing an apartment and her greeting him wearing only a sports jersey. It's much more justified with the Cerebus Syndrome of the second season.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Many characters are quickly labeled by fans as The Scrappy due to actions that typically have payoffs a few episodes later; which either explain why said character acted that way or they get their comeuppance for it.
  • Superman in season two with respect with his relationship with Superboy and his questionable behavior towards him in the first season - if you can get by the lack of actual on screen character development.
  • Bizarrely, Aqualad's (false) Face–Heel Turn and Miss Martian's new penchant for Mind Rape are appreciated by some fans as finally giving them some character depth.
  • Freakin' Lagoon Boy got some much-needed depth in issue #23 of the tie-in comic. He expresses a lot of the same desires M'gann had over coming to Earth— but, unlike her, La'gaan isn't a shapeshifter. So he's still isolated from general society despite living his dream of seeing the surface world. The episode "The Fix" provides him with depth as well, or at least some Woobie points. Issue #25 also gives him a Big Damn Heroes moment.
  • Arsenal establishing himself as The Strategist and as a Shell-Shocked Veteran in "The Hunt" is probably the only reason Nightwing kicking him off the team was controversial.
  • This incarnation of Cassie Sandsmark/Wonder Girl is this for people who labeled her as a Scrappy in the comics. No doubt she gets better characterization than her comic incarnation.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: The Superboy/Miss Martian relationship for some.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Some fans seem to give Superman more grief than he really deserves for his reaction to Superboy - though for some it wasn't so much his reaction but rather the lack of character development that went with it that bothers them.
  • Lagoon Boy for being Miss Martian's rebound guy. Noticing a trend?
• Rooting for the Empire: Everyone rooted for Deathstroke to beat the life out of Lagoon Boy in their fight, to the point where they actually wanted him to get killed by Slade.
• The Scrappy: Aquagirl is hated by some fans who believe her to have strung Kaldur's feelings along, when she rejected him and started dating Garth instead (despite the fact that her and Garth were paired together in the original comics). It doesn't help that any more possible character development occurred offscreen before her death (during the timeskip between seasons).
• Ships That Pass in the Night: WonderBeetle gathered a bit of the fandom despite them never interacting on screen.
  • Then the tie-in comic reveals that Nightwing chose Wonder Girl to help him recruit Blue Beetle.
    • And according to the Scarab, she triggers bio-chemical changes in Jaime.
  • Red Arrow and Cheshire, unless one counts the two times in season one where she flirts with him (and both were for deception). Come season 2, and they're married with a daughter, although Red Arrow is questionable father material at best (he's consumed with searching for the real Roy Harper). Kind of strange when you realize that Chesire antagonized Red Arrow and the rest of the team, and he acted harshly towards Cheshire's younger sister, Artemis.
• Signature Scene: Wally's death is cited by many fans as the most memorable (and saddest) scene in the whole series.
• Squick:
  • Miss Martian and Superboy making out while still disguised as brother and sister Tommy and Tuppence Terror. Would it have been so hard for Conner to give Megan some sort of warning so she could drop the disguise before she and Superboy played tonsil hockey? Icicle Jr. has this exact reaction in-universe.
  • Queen Bee creepily splayed out on the bed next to Garfield in the same episode. Knowing that she had him in her thrall certainly didn't help.
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • Robin and Wonder Girl hooking up in the Season 2 finale, mostly because they're never seen interacting with one another beforehand.
  • Miss Martian and Lagoon Boy is at least justified by the Time Skip, but from the audience's perspective we go from "Miss Martian and Superboy in a successful relationship" to "Miss Martian locking lips with someone we've never seen before".

Seasons 1 and 2: T-Z

• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • In spite of the fact that the series itself is not an adaptation of the Young Justice comics, quite a few fans of the comics aren't happy with the creative team's decision to alter the identities of characters from the comics of the same name. (Weisman's take on the issue.)
  • Some fans' complaints are incredibly petty, such as people complaining that Superboy is wearing cargo pants instead of jeans.
  • Brent Spiner voicing The Joker is taking hits for generally not being very good, for not being Mark Hamill, for not being John DiMaggio, etc.
  • In the first season, Superman's characterization and behavior regarding Superboy was a sticking point for many viewers.
  • The Season 2 Time Skip gets a lot of this for changing almost everything. While it explores more mature themes, the second season also put many of the older members of The Team out of focus for a long time while introducing characters that hardly have any personalities aside from a few aspects.
  • Some of the Adaptational Heroism can feel a bit jarring. This is especially true of Cheshire, to those who know her as the genocidal psychopath from the comics. Though in Cheshire's case it is a bit closer to how she originally was in the comics (see Older Than They Think.)
  • Wally West not becoming the third Flash is this for his fans. It doesn't help that they had to pull a lot of stuff for him to die in the last episode, and that, with him coming out of retirement during the large crisis, it was almost point for point like how he became the Flash in the comics. What makes it worse is that this was the last people saw of the classic Wally West for years until DC Rebirth.
  • Lagoon Boy. In the comics, he was pretty cool, despite not being as characterized as the other heroes. He was even pretty ripped, to the point where his puffer form reaches Roshi-On-Max-Mode levels of ripped. Here, he’s less characterized and a Plot Device in Superboy and Miss Martian's story and is a Jerkass to almost everyone, especially Superboy. It reaches the point where he even disrespects his ex-girlfriend M'gann once when he immediately throws an accusation in her face that she's still in love with Conner after she breaks up with him (La'gaan). Also, he’s lacking the muscular features that his comic counterpart had, instead being a bit lanky and being extremely fat in his puffer form.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: As a consequence of having a large cast and limited screentime, more than a few of the cast end up getting the short end of the stick in terms of utilisation and characterisation in the eyes of the fans.
  • Ocean Master. He was the least featured member out of of the original seven members of "The Light", and whilst it is known that he is actually Aquaman's brother Prince Orm by DC fans and from reading the tie-in comic, those who are only following the show will have no idea that Orm and Ocean Master are one and the same. In between seasons 1 and 2, he has been "disgraced" and replaced by Black Manta, who was already featured in an episode. He returns in Season 3, only to be unceremoniously killed off by Lady Shiva before he even does anything, all because he attempted to murder the heroes' children in revenge, something even the Light frowned upon for the sake of making sure the heroes don't become too extreme. Notably, Word of God confirmed that the Light covered it all up, ensuring the heroes never found out about his plan or even that he died. He is eventually given a posthumous second chance during Kaldur's arc in season 4 via a disposable clone copy of Ocean Master, with his real mind inserted into a clone body of Vandal Savage's grandson Arion.
  • Black Adam and the Ultra-Humanite both got this treatment in their first and only appearances (not counting the tie-in comics). In the show, they were both reduced to The Voiceless Dumb Muscle to Count Vertigo of all people (an Adaptational Badass, but partly just because he's bossing around guys like these two), and are defeated relatively easily. In the comics, both are A-list Genius Bruisers and Visionary Villains who can challenge entire teams of heroes by themselves, and neither would look out-of-place amongst the leaders of the Light. Ultra-Humanite ends up becoming one of the Light's newest members in season 3 onward, and Helga Jace's mentor, giving him more screentime benefitted by now having speaking lines from Greg Weisman himself. Black Adam, meanwhile, only gets a mention of conquering planets offscreen for the Light.
  • The Justice League as a whole. Many of the members barely get any speaking lines (and some like Hawkman and Hawkwoman never speak at all, at least not at first), and generally the League is shown to be fairly incompetent at their jobs, requiring the Team to do most of the actual work in defeating the Light. In fact, it's often when the Team ignores the League's orders to stay out of things that saves the day. It seems like the world would be a better place if the League placed the Team in charge of things.
  • Robin III (Tim Drake) has gotten this reaction from some because despite having quite a few appearances, he's rarely given any depth and characterization besides being yet another Robin leading a squad. Most of the time he doesn't even speak unlike Robin I/Nightwing who has plenty of lines; Batgirl also has more lines. Young Justice is also only the third time Tim has appeared in a DC cartoon after The New Batman Adventures, Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman and Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, unlike Dick who's featured in many more shows - thus all the more disappointing for some. Also consider that Tim was the Robin of the Young Justice comic, not Dick.
  • The Runaways. They were set up as a potential anti-heroic rival for the Team, only for Static to join the Team and the others besides Arsenal to quit. One of them, El Dorado, escapes this when he joins the Outsiders in season 3, but the rest are still no shows (apart from a viewscreen listing Sam and Tye as League reserves in season 4). Notably, their quitting isn't even shown on screen.
  • Bane. He's shown to be every bit as smart as members of The Light, but the episode he appears in has already suffering from a case of Eviler than Thou / The Worf Effect at the hands of Lord Kobra, and the next he appears, he's just relegated to the role of a generic thug. Fixed somewhat in his return in season 3, where he works with Deathstroke and combats Batman when he and his squad infiltrate Santa Prisca.
  • Klarion is a powerful and entertaining villain, but by season two he gets no speaking roles and appears only to shuttle Vandal Savage around. He finally gets a major appearance again in season 3, even speaking once more, due to his role in Project Rutabaga. But alas, Zatanna and the Outsiders trap him in Doctor Fate's tower and he is reduced again to silent cameos (Greg having confirmed he did escape the tower later on). He climbs out by season 4 when confronted by the Eviler than Thou threat of Child, forcing an Enemy Mine with Zatanna and the reveal that he caused a Running Gag involving a school bus that somehow had the same passengers each time it was in trouble.
  • Wally West himself, one of the most popular characters in DC comics, founding member of the Teen Titans, longtime member of the Justice League and the definitive Flash for an entire generation, is Demoted to Extra in Season 2, and then killed off before he can even become the Flash in the very same way Barry originally died.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Not taking the time to explore the subplot of Superman and Superboy finally developing an actual relationship (season two expects the viewer to just accept that they now see each other as brothers) may count. The comics that were made alongside the show do show some of the process... but the comics end long before Supes gets out of the "Stalker without a Crush" stage of Superdickery.
• Ugly Cute:
  • The little G-gnomes fall under this.
  • Megan's true form falls under this. Despite being a 'hideous' White Martian? You still want to hug and comfort her due to her genuine sweet personality. Doesn't hurt that she's a full-on Woobie.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: After all the whining and bitching he did throughout the show not everyone wanted to comfort Roy "Speedy/Red Arrow" Harper when the Jerkass finally learned he was a clone and came to doubt the validity of his existence.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The original series on Cartoon Network was guilty of this. The show is rife with innuendo (including a joke about twincest), many references to and depictions of murder, and doesn't shy away from the severe mental strain that is put on Child Soldiers.
  • One of the protagonists' favorite tactic is Mind Rape. And it is played out for maximum shock value.
  • The subplot in "Beneath" heavily implies that the mother of one of Jaime Reyes's friends is being physically abused by her boyfriend. The same episode also reveals that Queen Bee is essentially running a child-trafficking ring, where innocent teenagers are kidnapped and sold to evil aliens who use them for horrific biological experimentation.
• The Woobie: It now has its own page.

Season 3

• Arc Fatigue: By the conclusion of season 3, very little progress seems to be made on the overall series arc. Luthor loses his position as Secretary-General, but remains free and retains his position in the Light. Granny is being punished by Darkseid as a scapegoat, but Season 4 shows she is free to continue as before. And despite everything that happened, the alliance between Darkseid and the Light remains firmly intact. While there's talk of a great galactic war coming, it's kept so vague that it's near-impossible to guess what the threat could be. This entire season can be considered just setup for the actual central conflict that may or may not finally happen in Season 4. Either way, the arc of the series is moving a lot more slowly than many had expected. Most fans took as given after the Season 2 stinger that Apokolips would invade Earth in Season 3, which doesn't happen. The Earth is arguably never under direct threat in Season 3, unless you count the minutes it appeared Granny had successfully taken control of most of the heroes.
  • This can also apply to the many subplots started or continued in Season 3. Even more so than previous seasons, the writers clearly didn't write the season with any aim to be conclusive overall. Plot threads are laid all across the season that are never touched upon again but are clearly meant to be continued at some point. Anything involving Jason Todd and Ra's al Ghul, Cheshire, or the potential for giving non-metahumans the metagene is left unresolved.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: It now has its own page.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Seeing Luthor get taken down a peg by The Outsiders can be satisfying after getting away with a Villain with Good Publicity status in the first two seasons. The finale with his corruption being exposed has him being forced to resign from his post as UN Secretary General only sweetens the deal.
  • It's treated in-Universe as his Moral Event Horizon, but Brion executing his vile uncle Baron Bedlam by suffocating him to death is still satisfying to watch, especially considering what Bedlam did to ruin Brion's life at the start of the season.
• Character Rerailment:
  • Lex Luthor's portrayal in Season 3 is more in line with his other counterparts, coming across as being a somewhat petty and vindictive man in his P.R. war with the Outsiders. In addition, after several seasons not acknowledging his history with Superman, the Targets miniseries also has him briefly remark about standing up to him, confirming that he still has his rivalry with Superman that other versions of Lex are known for.
  • Similarly, Batman in season 3 becomes more in line with his more mission-obsessed depiction from the comics than in earlier seasons when he is forced to split off a portion of Justice League members, while secretly organizing the Anti-Light.
  • While Cheshire's portrayal in previous seasons is closer to how she was initially characterized in the comics, it is believed the only reason she was said to marry Red Arrow in season 2 was because Cartoon Network wouldn't allow Lian to be born out of wedlocke. Season 3 keeps these decisions and her overall Adaptational Heroism canon, but with the more relaxed standards that come from being made for streaming, it also allows Cheshire to run away from her family like in the comics.
• Continuity Lockout:
  • The show has always required you to be fairly well-versed in the DCU to fully grasp much of it, but this season takes it up to eleven, especially now that the show has moved to a service that's aimed primarily at existing comics fans. Season 3 really ups the New Gods lore, with (so far) the appearance of the Female Furies, the Source Wall, Metron, Bugg, and other elements that are mostly exclusive to that part of the DCU. The New Gods are quite popular with both comic fans and critics, but barring Darkseid, are extremely obscure with general audiences. They have appeared in prior adaptations (most prominently the DCAU), but they rarely dug too deeply into that part of the universe. They've also never had an adaptation dedicated solely to them. Young Justice seems interested in exploring and developing it much further than done in prior adaptations and isn't focused entirely on Darkseid.
  • Within the show continuity, the Atlantis plot builds on the purist storyline from the tie-in comics, so the new characters and their dynamics (eg. Lori's hostility towards ex-purists Ronal and Wyynde) might be confusing to anyone who hadn't read them.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • During a car chase, the vehicle containing the various Roy's and Dick veers into incoming traffic and is on a collision course with a school bus. The twenty some kids screaming in terror is not very funny, the four seasoned superheroes giving similar screams is.
  • Gar’s visions in "Nightmare Monkeys". Especially the Teen Titans Go! parody of the Doom Patrol, where it's about Beast Boy begging them not to go on the mission that killed them during the Time Skip and them insisting that they have to while cheerfully singing about how they're going to die. Yeah.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • That Terra is, or at least will become, a triple agent, since her betraying the heroes is a well-known plot that has already been done in the comics and the animated, adaptations that followed, and that it wouldn't be above the Young Justice writers to do something fresh with a plot twist.^note Which while she still is The Mole, she indeed chooses to be a hero instead of betray the heroes.
  • In Gar's visions in "Nightmare Monkeys", he sees all of the heroes that died during the show and they all get shot... except for Kid Flash/Wally.
  • That Hal is going to turn into Parallax because he looks visibly aged despite looking normal for a man in his thirties in previous seasons (and only two years have passed in-universe since Season 2), especially since this was what happened to his body due to Parallax subtly influencing him before actually possessing in the source material. That, or he got stripes from working with Guy Gardner for that past two years.
    • In addition, this will lead to another Green Lantern character appearing later in the show (most popularly guessed to be Kyle Rayner, a character that fans had been hoping would eventually appear), due to the show's frequent use of Chekhov's Gunmen, especially in this season where we've been introduced to numerous Legacy Characters that will likely later become superheroes in their own merit in line with the comics. Also, the Team has featured members from just about every part of the DC Universe, with Green Lantern being the biggest one that hasn't had any representation in any version of the team, as every Green Lantern introduced so far has been an adult. Kyle Rayner at the time of his introduction was a college student, making him arguably the easiest to fit onto The Team (though there are newer human Green Lanterns introduced since Kyle (Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz), but they were all older than Kyle was when they gained their rings).
  • Helga Jace's behavior has been suspect, especially in regards to how she's studying Halo and Cyborg. It's enough to make fans assume she's secretly evil, either working for the Light or toward her own selfish goals. Her behavior has been questionable enough that quite a few fans suspect that her (unverified) claim of Violet dying is a lie. The fact she still doesn't tell them, or even hint at, Violet dying after she runs away is certainly odd, if still potentially explainable. This turned out to be mostly correct.
  • Gar's new profound attitude and assertiveness in the later half of the season, along with his campaign for a public teenage superhero team, have garnered concern from some fans, especially when speculating how deep the subliminal brainwashing from the Goode Googles goes down.
• Franchise Original Sin: Most of the more discussed aspects of Season 3 aren't new:
  • The voice acting. As noted prominently in the trivia section, Young Justice has always had to employ clever audio tricks or heavily reuse voice actors (or not have characters speak at all), because many episodes feature so many different characters that bringing in a different voice actor for each is not practical from a budget standpoint. This is usually mitigated by the talent of the voice cast (Bugg has the same voice actor as Wally, but you'd be hardpressed to mix them up), there being in-universe reasons for characters having similar voices (Superboy is a clone of Superman; M'gann based herself after Marie Logan) as well as the fact that most of the main characters are all voiced by different voice actors, but with each actor doing several smaller roles; but each season adds more and more characters meaning more and more roles to voice in addition to the ones that already exist, so some of the voice actors end up voicing many, many roles. The issues some have with the voice acting for child characters, such as Amistad (voiced by Khary Payton) and Lian (voiced by Zehra Fazal), is, however, new, simply because characters of their age weren't present in prior seasons, and can probably be explained by the fact that they are young children being voiced by adults.^note By contrast, Beast Boy was played by child actor Logan Grove in earlier seasons, though season 4 would actually correct this in Amistad's case by featuring child actor Kurtis Mansfield in the part in place of Khary Payton.
  • Character Relationships. The show has always been weird about pairing characters, developing relationships, and teasing others, with many of the most prominent relationships being created whole cloth by the show itself, and many other relationships not getting the proper development or setup. Conner/M'gann and Wally/Artemis, as can be shown by entries covering the earlier two seasons, had some detractors because they had no basis in the original comics. Cassie/Tim are a rather infamous example of the show suddenly pairing characters with little to no build-up, as the two had never even been shown speaking to each other before they were stated to have gotten together, and each having more prominent love interests (or at least Tim does, Cassie's is taken) than each other in the comics (though they have dated in the comics, it's just not the relationship most fans of either character like). Thus, the sudden Ship Tease of Will/Artemis isn't unique, rather it just involves two characters that most fans particularly don't want to see become romantically involved with each other (as opposed to just apathy), whether it be the No Yay of in-laws becoming romantically involved while the spouse is still around (and may not have left of her own free will) or the fact both characters are part of other pairings that many prefer. Though to the show’s credit, ultimately Will and Artemis decide that there were No Sparks between them and that they had both let Paula’s desire for Lian to grow up in a Nuclear Family get into their heads. They decide that they don’t have to be in a relationship to raise Lian together.
  • Representation. Greg Weisman had incorporated greater diversity into his previous shows in the past, and Young Justice is no different. The show has always been invested in having a racially diverse cast, with characters such as Artemis getting a Race Lift, Kaldur being created to take the role of Aqualad, several Hispanic characters such as Jaime and Eduardo Jr. having prominent roles, etc. However, Young Justice, like most popular entertainment, has always skirted around religion, with none of the characters ever referencing it in either belief or disbelief. This presents a problem with Violet, the first character in the show that faith is ever presented as an issue for. Violet's appearance (dark skin, headscarf, dresses conservatively) fits the stereotype of what many assume a Muslim woman looks like, but they explicitly state that they are not a Muslim in practice or belief. It's obvious why the creators would want to specifically represent Muslims (as opposed to other religions) given topical events, but Violet was probably never a good fit given their new origin of being the spirit of a Motherbox, an extraterrestrial pseudo-mystical object/being that has no investment in any human religion. Season 4 addresses the complaint by having them briefly discuss their Islamic faith in a credits scene, while introducing the Muslim character of Khalid Nassour and portraying his own faith as a Muslim more accurately.
    • What also helped Greg Weisman with representation, however, was that the characters whose races were changed were either original characters bearing an existing name, or characters who were very minor and thus prone to less criticism for having their background changed. Season 4 ended up towing the line in a different way with the first Race Lift handed to a much more notable character from the comics than those before, General Dru-Zod, a major Superman villain, which gathered more criticism from audiences despite no attention being called to his changed race in-universe.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Every interaction and all the advice Dr. Helga gave to the young heroes and every scene of hers with Black Lightning are this given she was a heartless maniac who used them all.
  • Back in "Disordered", Dick admitted he was now disturbed by how Batman is willing to sacrifice everything to complete his mission and that he didn't want the same. Now he's fallen into the same supposed idealism as him, working with his Anti-Light and seemingly showing/having no remorse for it.
  • Wally's call out of Dick applies just as well in Season 3 as it did in Season 2, making it all the harsher because Dick doesn't seem to have learned anything (also potentially because what Dick had done before enabled the captures of Black Manta and Brain, and disabled the Light's partnership with the Reach). The Anti-Light was a complex, highly-sensitive operation that is exposed as a result of circumstances that couldn't be foreseen by anyone. But, unlike with the undercover op, the situation can't be salvaged by the individuals involved, and it's outside of their power to stop it all from falling apart after Jefferson forces them to admit it in front of half a dozen other people, irrevocably breaking the masquerade. The fact said operation involves two of the three major players as the one that was originally being called out only makes it more applicable. While Nightwing's original secrecy didn't give him too much consequences in the end once it was all revealed (he only chose to leave the Team because Wally died, whereas Artemis and Kaldur retained their positions on the Team), this time around, while they are still members of their respective groups, Kaldur and Wonder Woman hand the Justice League to Black Lightning for their parts in the scheme, and M'gann steps down as leader of the Team in favor of (according to the audio play at FanDome) Artemis taking over. On the bright side, at least it wasn't Dick's idea this time.
  • Early in Season 3, Artemis reminds the others that being a metahuman doesn't automatically mean Violet and Brion need to become heroes, and that she and Dick aren't metahumans, but still heroes, with the implication being they are no less capable than any metahuman regardless. This can sure seem worse after Dick not being a metahuman is why the X-Pit effects him far worse than Jefferson. And then both she and Dick are taken control of by the Anti-Life Equation, which partly relies on the X-Pit to work and Granny states the Equation also has a far worse effect on the minds of non-metahumans...
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Season 3 reveals that Darkseid once tried to invade Earth in the distant past and was met by an army of humans with bows and arrows working with superhuman beings. This lines up fairly well with parts of the Justice League film and even better with the Zack Snyder cut. It's all the more amusing if Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti already planned this out years before, since Young Justice predates the DC Extended Universe that Justice League is part of.
  • In the 2003 Teen Titans animated series, Ashley Johnson played Terra. Now the Joel to her Ellie, Troy Baker, plays her brother Brion in the Outsider series. Meanwhile, Terra in Outsiders is played by Tara Strong, who as Raven in Teen Titans (2003) and Teen Titans Go!, was respectively the most suspicious of Terra, and her rival for Beast Boy's affection.
  • "Evolution" revealed that Vandal Savage was once a god-king of ancient Babylonia and saved it from an otherworldly invasion. The episode came out about a month after the videogame Fate/Grand Order released its Babylonia story chapter ^note (about a month after the English version, that is; it was originally released in Japan years earlier) which has a broadly similar premise, and this leads to some strange deja vu if you're a fan of both. Vandal goes by the name Marduk in Babylonia and while the game's god-king is Gilgamesh, the god Marduk still plays a role in its story. The goddess Ishtar appears in both and she is Vandal's daughter here. And the kicker is that Doctor Fate is given an unexpected origin story connection to Vandal, as Nabu the original Fate becomes Vandal's son. Similar to the Justice League movie above, while the game predates the release of Season 3, the cartoon as a whole and thus the planning for it predates the game by several years.
  • Artemis has a major argument with her mother over her continuing super heroics in “Illusion of Control”, with Paula pushing her hard to retire permanently. Almost immediately following that episode, Artemis falls Out of Focus and isn't seen participating in any on-screen missions until “Terminus”.
  • This page has a comment from 2014 suggesting that Gwendoline Yeo voice Lady Shiva. Cut to 5 years later, and she ends up voicing her.
  • On Ask Greg during the show's original run, when asked if Laura Bailey or Troy Baker would be joining the cast, Greg answered that he had no idea who they were. Come Season 3, where Troy Baker is a main cast member.
• I Am Not Shazam: Fans assumed that Nightwing's team in the first half of season 3 were The Outsiders despite them not using the name. The name is actually used for Beast Boy's team in the second half of season 3. To be fair, the confusion is understandable — they were clearly based on the Outsiders from the comics with team members distilled from various eras, have had brief a Mythology Gag where they were referred to as operating on the outside (emphasis on "outside"), and thematically they are outsiders in the first half for not being legally sanctioned. It was likely an Intended Audience Reaction, if anything. The fact Nightwing's team bore a closer resemblance to the comic team in terms of team make-up (though still heavily divergent) and operation, while Beast Boy's bears a closer resemblance to the Teen Titans (right down to them operating out of a tower) also makes the misconception understandable and is likely more proof that it was intentional.
• It Was His Sled:
  • A red-hooded ninja working for Ra's al Ghul being Jason Todd, the presumed to be dead Robin II.
  • Even casual viewers probably won't be surprised to learn Terra is secretly working for Deathstroke.
  • Believe it or not, the existence of the Anti-Light was originally a twist. Even This Very Wiki never bothered hiding it.
• It's the Same, So It Sucks: Terra being revealed to be a traitor and a spy in "True Heroes", since it had already been done in the comics in the '80s and their animated adaptations, although fans hope that she's some sort of triple agent. This became subverted when she ended up Becoming the Mask to a far greater extent than in previous depictions, undergoing a Heel–Face Turn, turning against Deathstroke for good and ultimately surviving the ordeal.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • After "Private Security" was streamed, many viewers want to see a spin-off series with all the Harpers working in Bowhunter Security, being assisted by Dick at times. This gained more support after Greg posted someone's tweet in his Twitter account, being supportive of the idea.
    • Coming off that same episode, there's Will Harper's love for his clipboard with fans joking the clipboard has usurped Speedy's yellow hat in Will's heart.
    • Viewers call Dick in a Bowhunter Security guard uniform, "Officer Dick Grayson".
  • "Oh my God, they killed Halo!" Halo's multiple gruesome deaths and resurrections throughout Season 3 have been met with both criticism and amusement by viewers, even though the show itself hasn't played their series of fatal injuries for Black Comedy (yet).
  • "Tim Drake said "Let's go, lesbians!"". Tim leading a squad of superheroines who all happen to have a lot of Ho Yay lead some fans of adopting famous Billy Eichner line for him.
  • Referring to Forager as "Fred Bugg With Two G's" grew popular quite quickly after he spent an entire episode thinking that the whole phrase was his new name.
  • "Have you read the part about the bear?". Olympia, one of Vandal Savage's daughters, is senile and constantly obsesses over that part of the book that she wrote about him. This annoys her sister and ultimately proves to be her undoing since it draws Vandal's attention to her mental state.
• Memetic Loser: Again, Halo due to their repeated Death Is Cheap moments, and Static due to his less than successful love life and his vocal whining about needing to get a girlfriend.
• Most Wonderful Sound: A lot of fans find the bassy thrums let off by Mother/Fatherboxes and Overlord whenever they open a boom tube to be quite satisfying.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • From Outsiders, there's Baron DeLamb the leader of Bedlam, a metahuman trafficking ring that experiments on children and teenagers to activate their meta-genes. The process has an incredibly high mortality rate, with the best-case scenario being that the survivors are sold off-world as mind-controlled living weapons. Two stand out moments of DeLamb crossing the line are either when he experimented on and sold his own niece or assassinated his sister and brother-in-law.
  • Helga crossed it by either deciding to experiment on Tara, manipulating Brion and Jefferson or orchestrating Violet's downfall, resulting in their and Brion's emotional suffering and ultimately on Darkseid getting the Anti-Life Equation.
  • Granny Goodness is nasty as typical for her character, but it's not until "Terminus" she really shows why she's one of Darkseid's most feared lieutenants: using Violet, the living Anti-Life Equation, Granny attempts to plunge the entire galaxy into an X-Pit, which will result in the tortuous death of countless billions, only sparing the Meta population to use as slaves.
• Narm: It now has its own page.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Roy “Will” Harper suffered from a bad case of Unintentionally Unsympathetic due to an abrasive attitude, which even preceded his Clone Angst, developing a implied drug addiction, and then lashing out at his friends and family when they staged an intervention. So many fans were pleasantly surprised when he reappeared at the start of Season 3 as a devoted, lighthearted, mostly-retired-from-heroics single father focused on running his own small business and doing his best to raise his young daughter after his wife's mysterious departure. His day in the limelight episode is one of the better-regarded episodes of the first half for being a Breather Episode after a three-part Darker and Edgier season premiere. It helps greatly that he is based off a version of Roy Harper whose absence in the comics for over a decade now is something a vocal group of fans are still very bitter about, giving fans starved for any content relating to that character something to enjoy. Also, the existence of both him and the original Roy Harper means that fans of either (or both) versions of the character can get what they want. Fans of the more mature, single-father Red Arrow Roy Harper (and his daughter, Lian) have 'Will', while fans of the newer, edgier Arsenal Roy Harper have the physically-younger, brasher, original Roy Harper. The only new aspects of 'Will' Harper a majority of fans don't seem to appreciate are his heavily-suggested romantic interest in his sister-in-law and that his mostly-retired status means, like Wally in Season 2, he has little-to-no relevance to the overarching plot of the season, with his appearances outside of his limelight episode being mostly a side-benefit of Artemis and Violet (and later, Tara) living in his house, and once Violet and Tara move out, he disappears almost entirely for the second half of the season.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Outsiders is the closest thing to an X-Men animated series we've had in a very long time. Substitute "mutant" with "metahuman", and it's a very easy comparison to make, and some would say that Outsiders have done the X-Men concept better than the recent stories. Outsiders focuses on the discrimination and weaponization of Differently Powered Individuals via metahuman trafficking, a criminal enterprise that's plagued the world. The main characters are heroic outcasts, fighting the good fight when the world is actively pushing against them to do so, and integrates real-world subtext in with the storyline by tackling social issues in a way that isn't intrusive or at the expense of the plot. In addition, Vandal Savage's origin is expanded to make him the first metahuman, drawing comparisons with the X-Men antagonist Apocalypse, who is said to be the first mutant. One of the things it does better is how the general public reacts — many civilians support the heroes, and they gain more support over time. The metahumans aren't treated with universal hatred like the mutants often are, and there's more nuance than many X-Men stories had while also avoiding potential questions that comes in dealing with Fantastic Racism for one superpowered race in a setting where many different origins exist; one of the most commonly asked questions by the fans of Marvel is "why does everyone hate mutants, but give all the other superpowered beings a pass?". To that end, it's done very well.
• Tainted by the Preview: While the overall reception to Young Justice: Outsiders is very positive, there's a little bit of this.
  • The animation being apparently below previous quality in the "Bedlam" teaser. Many have taken notice, and worry that budget is a problem. Though given the reversal in the SDCC trailer, it's speculated that it hasn't been properly completed yet.
  • There's also the slight Art Shift into making the style resemble the DC Animated Movie Universe, itself having its detractors due to the New 52 influences^note Phil Bourassa is the character designer for both this series and the New 52 movies. Some have raised issue with it for not sticking to the classic style of the first two seasons.
  • A number of people expressed their displeasure with Barbara returning as Oracle and not Batgirl. As she was Out of Focus in Invasion, they were hoping she would get more here instead of jumping straight into the Oracle persona. Some are happy if only because it leaves the door open for fan-favorite Cassandra Cain to join under the name of Batgirl.
  • Nearly all the fans have been consistently irritated that in all the 2018 trailers, there was still no sign of Miss Martian, Aqualad and Arsenal. At least Aqualad was revealed close to the release, revealed to be the new Aquaman, but it was a long time coming.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Season 3 has gotten this reaction from certain fans in regards to both the new character designs and in part because of the slight shift in the animation style compared to the prior two seasons. Both of those aspects end up making the show look much closer to the DC Animated Movie Universe with certain characters being redesigned to look almost identical to their counterparts in that continuity, which for those who aren't especially fond of those films, isn't helped by them taking a large amount of inspiration from the New 52, whilst many characters (in particular the Justice League) were largely based on their counterparts from more classic comic eras (like the Post-Crisis era) in the prior seasons.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: There has been some grievance over the Team being Demoted to Extra, despite them having been the main focus and driving force of the series beforehand. Instead, the series now focuses on Nightwing's Team faction, and the Team end up being very Out of Focus with all of one episode to themselves in the first thirteen episodes, which even then was still mainly focused on Miss Martian (who's avoided being completely demoted via her association with Superboy plus their house being the group's base) and was mainly used to debut the character of Forager for Nightwing's Team. By extension, this means that Blue Beetle, Kid Flash II (the two most developed newcomers from Invasion), Thirteen (the only Outsiders newcomer to remain on the Team), Wonder Girl (who already suffered from being Out of Focus beforehand), and Static (an Ensemble Dark Horse who many were looking forward to especially due to him being Exiled from Continuity in the comics), all have little if anything to do with the plot. Subverted in the second half of the season, with the characters from the Team gaining significantly more focus with the creation of Beast Boy's new public team known as the Outsiders, which features much of the Season 2 Team, plus the folding of Nightwing's Team into the main Team allowing for heroes from both teams to work together.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Season 3 begins with fan-favorite characters Spoiler, Arrowette, and Thirteen already on the Team, and Cassandra Cain on Batman's team. Not only does this rob fans of seeing an origin story for any of them, it also means they're severely Out of Focus. Also, Cass appears as her less-liked later (New 52) identity Orphan rather than Batgirl, which she was created and gained a following for until Spoiler replaced her in the role before the New 52 hit. Meanwhile, Barbara is Oracle, meaning that Batgirl's shoes are currently empty.
  • Wally West's birthday is November 11th (as shown in Season 1), and this season does pass through November, but the day is skipped over completely and is never referenced. It could have been an opportunity to more directly address how characters have dealt with his death, as only Artemis and Dick have really been shown directly dealing with grief, while it has to be inferred or assumed for everyone else, but it goes by ignored.
  • Tim and Cassie's relationship. They only shared one dialogue exchange onscreen, and that was at the end of Season 2. This season opens up with Robin leaving with the Team without telling his longtime girlfriend, putting a strain on their unexplored relationship, and it was patched offscreen during "Illusion of Control", rendering the drama pointless if it was never gonna be shown. Garfield claims to Tim that his relationship with her will be finished when she learns about the Anti-Light, but we don't see them talk after it's revealed to the wider League, and given how the League reacts well enough after they confess, it could go either way.
  • Subversive and surprising it may have been, there's still no getting around the fact the show decided to resolve something as big as Granny possessing the Anti-Life Equation and using it successfully on many of the heroes by simply having Victor Boom Tube in, shoot off the visor Granny used to control Violet, and then have both proceed to swiftly and easily turn the whole situation around and snag complete victory, with no lasting consequences for the heroes. To say that is not what fans had been expecting/hoping for would be to put it mildly. “Nevermore” would indicate there's possibly another means for Darkseid to obtain the Anti-Life Equation, but it can still feel like a pretty big wasted opportunity for fans who thought things were going to get much bigger after “Terminus”, rather than just have the heroes return to Markovia for the finale.
  • Provided you are of the position that Wally is dead and gone for good (which, of course, many are), then the reveal that the whole 'meeting' between Artemis and 'Wally' being a deception by Zatanna and M'gann wastes a perfect opportunity to unambiguously confirm Wally is dead and end any question/debate regarding his fate; give both of the characters some closure with one another; and maybe give Wally a slightly more satisfying send-off than his abrupt death in “Endgame”. Instead, it's revealed to have all been nothing but a trick. Artemis never went to Limbo and met Wally, M'gann used her powers to create 'Wally' from Artemis's own mind for her to speak to, meaning Wally himself was no more present than he was in Dick's hallucination in “Terminus”. It also renders everything “Wally” says to Artemis meaningless in hindsight, since, essentially, it's just Artemis talking to herself. Zatanna's claim about not being able to call back or contact the dead that have passed on at all can seem like a pretty arbitrary rule that hasn't been previously established (granted, it doesn't contradict anything either), existing just because the show doesn't want it to happen, perhaps because that would be too neat and straightforward in a show that prefers to be twisty.
  • The idea of the heroes suffering a split from disagreement in how they should operate is never explored at all. After the premiere, the heroes simply work separately and aren't shown interacting with each other. Little to no attempt is made to show how such a split would inevitably result in friction or bitterness between members on the opposing sides, and only brief passing nods are ever made at the effect it has on their personal lives.
  • The finale mostly glosses over any potential backlash the other heroes would reasonably have towards the Anti-Light for their deception. Unlike when Jefferson, Conner, and Garfield first found out, the other members of the League and Team quietly accept what the group did and don't even seem particularly offended for the months-long deception. Kaldur, Wonder Woman, and M'gann resign their positions by their own choice, as opposed to their teams' demanding it. Much like after the undercover op in season 2, there's no indication their actions have resulted in any loss of trust or negative consequences for those involved. It's simply used to make Black Lightning the new Chairman of the Justice League, embracing a new, more idealistic philosophy, get Nightwing to rejoin the Team, and have the members of Batman Incorporated reintegrate into their respective teams.
• Ugly Cute:
  • Forager, a squat bug-eyed Bug alien looks definitely inhuman but also endearing.
  • More disturbingly, the sight of Halo reviving with half of their face burnt off can qualify.
• Unexpected Character: Plenty of examples from Season 3.
  • Arrowette was a member of the original Young Justice in the comics, but left the life of heroism behind permanently and post-Flashpoint she has not returned at all, until several years later with her reappearance in Young Justice (2019). She makes her animated debut here, after having a small role as the little girl in "Insecurity".
  • Spoiler has always been an Ensemble Dark Horse but has a long history of being shafted if not outright meddled with by executives. She was even Batgirl for a little while and gained a big following as a successor to Barbara Gordon, only for the Reset Button to be hit and kicking her out entirely for a long time. So having Spoiler make her debut here was definitely welcome.
  • Thirteen is quite a minor character in the comics, first being a Superman supporting character and then moving over to Blue Beetle, before the Reset Button was hit and she didn't come back until 2017.
  • The Outsiders have several new recruits, and the one that sticks out is Forager, a very minor New God who died in 1989 and didn't come back until 28 years later in the Young Animal title. He also had no history with the Outsiders in the comics, making his inclusion even more left-field.
  • While it was expected that Barbara Gordon would return, it was thought that she'd still be Batgirl, not her Mission Control identity Oracle (which has long since been discarded in the comics). Though to be fair, many did believe (or hope) that she would eventually transition from her Batgirl identity to her Oracle persona (it being the role many fans prefer her in), but many assumed she would at least spend one more season as Batgirl and possibly suffer her crippling injury on-screen
  • Even returning characters can count. Who seriously thought Black Spider of all people was going to come back after appearing in only two episodes of the first season (only speaking in the latter) and never showing up afterwards?
  • Hardware, a Milestone Comics character, appears this season. Because of legal issues, Milestone characters are often tricky when it comes to adapting them^note they own the copyright with DC only having the trademarks, and Milestone is no longer part of the DC Universe in the comics due to a dispute between DC and the McDuffie estate. It also prevented Rocket and Icon from appearing in tie-ins and rarely do they appear nowadays in other DC media. There's also his relative obscurity, as while initially planned to be the flagship Milestone character, he lost considerable ground to Static over time.
  • Holocaust, another Milestone character, specifically one of its major villains, is surprisingly for the same reasons Hardware is, much less a fight against him and Terra.
  • Kaldur, after having been absent in the marketing beforehand yet still confirmed to be in the series, was widely expected to return as Aqualad. Instead he returns as Aquaman, succeeding Orin.
  • Cassandra Cain appears. The real surprise is that she hasn't exactly donned the Batgirl suit, rather a hooded ninja uniform, and she's already going by Orphan.
  • Batwoman was confirmed to appear in the premiere only after the release of a set of screenshots from the episode, taking many by surprise.
  • Donna Troy, after having relegated to being in the background and unseen in Invasion, debuts in Outsiders under the name of Troia to the surprise of everyone.
  • Kaizen Gamorra appears in the UN conference. For reference, Gamorra doesn't originate from DC proper, but rather the WildStorm Universe, as an enemy of Stormwatch. As WildStorm in general isn't featured much outside of comics, even less so than Milestone, it's definitely a surprise to see that.
  • While Lois Lane was expected to appear in Season 3 nobody also expected that both Clark and Lois are married here and both have a child who is no other than Jon Kent, who wasn't even created when the show first debuted (though Superman having a son, usually with Lois, named Jon Kent had already occurred in alternate continuities decades before the introduction of the main universe version, and he had other sons before).
  • Ultra-Humanite only appeared as a minor villain in one episode in Season 1 as part of the Injustice League, never seen again afterward. Few were expecting him to ever return, much less be promoted to a council member of the Light (and it helps Greg Weisman himself had taken over the role).
  • Bluebird is a lesser-known member of the Batfamily, and wasn't even created at the time the show first debuted. Her appearance in Outsiders, albeit as just Harper Row (for now), came as a huge surprise.
  • Henry Heywood, the name of three generations of Commander Steel, being mentioned as having a school named after him, which is where Victor Stone/Cyborg and Cisco Ramon (who may become Vibe) attend. The school mascot being the Steelworkers implies that whichever Henry Heywood the school is named after, he was Commander Steel at some point in the past.
  • Cisco Ramon, Vibe in the comics, being a classmate of Victor/Cyborg.
  • The existence of the Doom Patrol, since it would seem weird to have another superhero team unrelated to the Justice League. And it sadly turns out that they already died during the Time Skip between season 1 and 2, similar to their fate in the comics (though Mento, who never went on the fatal mission that killed the team in both the comics and the show, is still alive as usual). This is followed up on when Robotman's survival is confirmed in a season 4 episode attending Beast Boy's intervention.
  • Wally's "ghost" appearing to Gar in "Nightmare Monkeys".
  • The second half of the season featuring the Suicide Squad was a welcomed surprise, as it appeared they were Adapted Out of this continuity, although of the members shown, only longtime member Captain Boomerang newly debuted on the team, with Black Manta (a member in the New 52 incarnation) and Monsieur Mallah (who has never been on the team in any prior version), plus Amanda Waller, being the only ones to have appeared before.
  • The Newsboy Legion being not only genderflipped, but also being Composite Characters with Scooby-Doo characters (including of Mayor Jones and Sheriff Stone from Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated).
  • "Early Warning" introduces a Race Lift Dolphin^note  although her name isn't confirmed until "Unknown Factors", an Aquaman character who isn't necessarily obscure (unlike some other characters in the show, she has appeared in recent comics), but not prominent either.
  • Celia "Jet" Windward of The New Guardians and Global Guardians was an unexpected character to make a speaking appearance, even if it was a very minor one.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Few people are shedding tears for Silas Stone after Victor lashed out at him for turning him into a cyborg with the Father Box. From what we see of his relationship with his son, he's shown to be pretty apathetic and distant to the point he barely knows anything about Victor's school life (for reference, he chastises Victor for not doing well enough at school when he has a 4.0 GPA). And although we can forgive him for turning Victor into a cyborg out of desperation, he loses sympathy points when he instead tries to pin the blame on the Justice League for Victor's condition since they gave him the Father Box, even though the League warned him of its dangers.
  • M'gann may enter this territory in "Nevermore." She attempts to give back her engagement ring to Conner, heartbroken that he still can't forgive her for how she abused her powers in the past, while Conner immediately declares otherwise and they happily reconcile. Only problem with that is in just the prior episode she abused her powers to deceive Artemis by letting her believe she was communicating with Wally's spirit when it was really just a construct created by M'gann from Artemis' own mind. Conner, of course, doesn't know this but it's difficult to imagine he wouldn't regard the plan with similar distain when he considers her lying to everyone to be little different than her abusing her powers, and her actions in "Overwhelmed" are her abusing her powers again. Thus M'gann can be seen as receiving forgiveness even while she continues her previous behavior, only this time sucessfully keeping it hidden from Conner.
  • Black Lightning, the show treats him as a more moral and honest counterpart to characters such as Batman who work covertly with secrets, but many fans found him to be a hypocrite since he engages in many of the same things for the majority of the season, such as joining Nightwing's covert team after calling out Batman for making one, and only seems to have a problem with secrets when they're being kept from him, by the end of the season when Jefferson becomes leader of the Justice League many fans feel it was unearned due to his previous actions and behavior.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The new series on DC Universe is clearly meant for an older audience. While the first two seasons definitely had their edgier content, and may be one of the darkest shows to have aired on CN outside of anime, they still had to be written as appropriate for the kids due to network limitations and restrictions. But now, as a streaming-exclusive series, this most certainly is not the case.
  • Greg Weisman referred to the content as "PG-13 towards R" as opposed to "PG towards PG-13" , and the first five minutes make it clear; we see a 14-year-old girl being trafficked as she's completely helpless, sees corpses around her, forcibly turned into a monster, and then accidentally killed by Black Lightning, much to his horror. That's just the beginning.
  • The first three episodes alone of Season 3 contain multiple examples of Family-Unfriendly Violence; including people being stabbed or shot to death with visible blood getting spilled, and a teenager getting their face burned off by a monster (though fortunately, they instantly and completely regenerates from their injuries, but it was still a very gruesome sight).
  • Later episodes feature several instances of characters before or after sex; underage teens consuming alcohol while screwing around with a firearm; one character being repeatedly killed, in some cases rather brutally.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: For some reason, both Shiva and Talia have cleavage windows on their "work" costumes. It's odd because this is a show that doesn't unneccesarily sexualize its female characters. Shouldn't two women (including the canonical first or second best fighter in the entire DC Universe) who've been trained in combat by the League of Shadows know you shouldn't be running around fighting with your heart exposed and your boobs hanging out? Talia also had a perfectly fine, non-sexualized costume in the comics before her appearance in the show but they instead chose to recycle her sexualized model from the DC Animated Movie Universe.

Season 4

• Anti-Climax Boss: After a large amount of build-up and a solid presence as a deadly force of nature, The Child and Flaw have an underwhelming final battle with the heroes. The foes of Zatanna's arc ultimately lose when Traci 13 simply takes a shot at a very obvious weak spot on the monster which kills it instantly. With the enforcer linking her in the mortal realm dead, Child is immediately sent packing back to her dimension with little fanfare. Many viewers were disappointed how quick and simple it was.
• Anvilicious: The first four episodes of Season 4 are set on Mars and focus on how the different races of Mars oppress each other despite being genetically and biologically identical, with Conner and M'gann getting racist attacks and slurs nonstop for being an Interspecies Romance. It doesn't take the World's Greatest Detective to know the season's stance on racism.
• Arc Fatigue: While Season 4 does make actual efforts to conclude earlier storylines from as far back as the earlier seasons when it comes to the members of the Team, the Light and Apokolips conflict once again continues at a snail's pace (members from both sides appear as Arc Villains, but the seasonal plot involves an unaffiliated third party in the Phantom Zone Kryptonians lead by General Zod, with the time traveler Lor-Zod only allying with Apokolips to set them free). The upcoming conflict only makes progress in the last episode when the Light imprisons the Phantom Zone's entire population of Kryptonians on the Warworld and hands Kara Zor-El to Darkseid so she can become a Female Fury.
• Ass Pull: Ursa becoming the Emerald Empress, thanks to Lor-Zod randomly carrying the eye on him at the time from his earlier visit to Metron's vault, when nothing suggested she was worthy of said power and the emerald trinket just happened to activate all by itself to bond with her while nowhere near her just because she was agitated by Nightwing. Not to mention, the Eye forces her out of the battlefield against Ursa's will when her husband loses their fight against the heroes even though it's supposed to obey her every command. Also, the Emerald Eye is more powerful than all Kryptonians even though the Super Family fought incarnations of the Empress before without issue.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Vandal Savage suffering his first real taste of defeat when the Lords of Order scupper his plans to rule Atlantis with no contingency to salvage it. The crowner is that Nabu, his son whose death Savage was indirectly responsible for proceeds to mock him for his failure.
  • After evading capture by the heroes at every turn and trying to get Superboy killed out of loyalty to his father General Dru-Zod, Lor-Zod being disintegrated by his own bomb was satisfying.
• Continuity Lockout: The inclusion of Kilowog and Razer, right out of Green Lantern: The Animated Series inevitably caused some confusion as to who these characters are and what events they're referring to. Not helping matters is that their introduction carries on a cliffhanger ending from another series, resulting in some viewers feeling perplexed what their deal is and why these guest characters are so important when this is their first appearance in the show's universe.
• Cry for the Devil: Out of all the villains to feel sorry for, Klarion gained some sympathy after his pet cat Teekl suffers a brutal death at the hands of his archenemy the Child, who proceeds to mock him for it as he's Forced to Watch. Never has seeing a villain cry for a loving companion felt so tragic.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Robotman, who is not only loved for resembling his TV counterpart, but genuinely comes across as a likable hero thanks to his concern for Gar and his heartwarming speech on why it's important to go on living for the sake of your loved ones.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • One significant criticism of season 4 was the extensive focus on the traumas suffered by Beast Boy, which while a more realistic depiction of trauma, was happening to a famed comic relief character in the comics who usually put a smile on in spite of his suffering. But he had shown problems with coping with his losses as far back as season 2. There, he had a brief moment where a waterfall on Rann reminded him of his mother's death, and another where he watched his mother's old TV show. Being the only such moments showing how he was hurting, it was used to show emotional depth, and he didn't angst over it every episode. Season 3 expanded on how he coped with several deaths of people in his life (both revealed in flashbacks and having already been known to have died in season 2), but he had been Demoted to Extra at that point, so it was A Day in the Limelight for him until he retook his spot in the cast, and even then he still didn't angst over any of them throughout the season (Wally's then-recent death was being grieved over by other characters like Dick and Artemis instead). In contrast to both earlier seasons keeping his trauma in check, season 4 used it to make Beast Boy become far more paranoid and agitated. This initially fit with his focus in Miss Martian's arc, but following Lor-Zod's seemingly successful murder of Superboy, he was handed a depression arc that excessively stole screentime from Artemis', Zatanna's, Kaldur's, and Raquel's arcs throughout the season and further contributed to the divisive nature of his characterization, and had a less satisfying payoff for some (his recovery is shown in less detail than his downfall aside from his new therapy dog Wingman, he never joins the final battle against the forces of General Zod nor encounters Lor-Zod, and he mentions Superboy being alive without his reaction to Superboy's survival being shown onscreen).
    • It also highlights another recurring theme that took over the plot, the usage of therapy. Therapy sessions had been featured as far back as season 1, but as the show was focusing on the more realistic consequences of featuring teenagers as child soldiers, it made sense some would need to seek mental help for their actions. It remained in subdued use throughout the series, until season 4 where Beast Boy's aforementioned mental trauma and the attempts to help him and provide him therapy took up large portions of screentime from other major characters.
  • The show's tendency to use Faking the Dead, sometimes treated with equal weight to real deaths to avoid actually killing characters off, and largely avoiding the use of C-List Fodder as other iterations of DC comics stories would do, started to become more visible by season 3 and reached its apex in season 4^note With the season long focus on Superboy being thought dead and Nightwing, Rocket, and Miss Martian being thought killed for a single episode and the Targets comic miniseries^note Where Miss Martian, Tigress, and Arrowette are seemingly attacked by their mind-controlled teammates only to have planned the whole encounter in advance to trick the Light, with the actual deaths instead being given to civilians such as Joan Garrick, villains such as Baron Bedlam and Lor-Zod, and non-Justice League, non-Team heroes such as most of the Doom Patrol and Tomar-Re. But it had warning signs from the earlier seasons where this was kept in check. The season 1 episode "Failsafe" killed nearly every hero off on Earth before turning out to take place inside a mental training program, and season 2 had as a major plot point Artemis Crock faking her death to become Tigress and aid Aqualad in infiltrating the Light. However, both instances still had consequences. The Team members who underwent the simulation had to seek therapy when Miss Martian inadvertently hijacked control of it, and Artemis' undercover role was concealed from the Team by Nightwing, causing various consequences for these actions, and it was later followed by an actual death, the Heroic Sacrifice of Wally West in the season 2 finale. Season 3 had the only faked death courtesy of Forager tricking Lobo into crushing his shed exoskeleton, but most other episodes would have Halo (who can heal from fatal wounds) seem to take all the gory deaths meant for other heroes. Season 4 marked the point where this was no longer able to be tolerated, as not only were several heroes only thought dead for at least one episode before turning up alive, but the entire season hinged on the fate of Superboy, who was still shown in the intro despite being presumed killed four episodes in, and resulted in consequences audiences were less tolerable about for being nearly nonexistent (Superboy seamlessly returned to his old life unscathed) or for dragging on too long (such as Beast Boy's depression arc). This also continued the growing problem with the show building up such a large cast of characters, as the show became much darker and more violent, avoiding killing off major heroes permanently further contributed to the show's bloated cast.
• Improved Second Attempt: Barbara getting crippled at the hands of The Joker was one of the most contentious, if not hated aspects of The Killing Joke, since it was a blatant case of Stuffed into the Fridge, with Barbara only getting crippled by Joker to get her out of the picture and to advance the development of the main male characters, with little attention being given to her and her condition in the comic, on top of it being anti-climatic in general. Likely because of this, episode 7, "The Lady, or the Tigress?" changes the reason for why she became paralyzed, revealing via a flashback that Barbara willingly let herself be stabbed in the spine by Cassandra Wu-San in an attempt to stop her from killing Joker and save her from becoming a murderer. While this explanation is contentious in and of itself, many fans vastly prefer it over the comic's, since it paints her getting paralyzed as a tragic Heroic Sacrifice instead of something that comes out of nowhere like in the comic, while also giving her more agency than in the original.
• He's Just Hiding: Conner's "death" in "Involuntary" was met with this reaction no less similar to Wally's. Especially given the amount of foreshadowing given with several members of the Legion of Super-Heroes, who were on Mars for an unstated purpose that they needed to hide from Miss Martian, Beast Boy, and Superboy. They were right! The ending of "Kaerb Ym Traeh!" reveals Conner is alive and trapped in none other than the Phantom Zone.
• LGBT Fanbase: The show has already had a subset of queer fans but it has seen a significant growth in this regard with this season due to a few key factors.
  • M'gann's situation regarding what really is her true form (her birth form or the white-skinned red-haired humanoid form) can be viewed as a Trans allegory.
  • Kaldur and Wyynde, an Official Couple introduced in the previous season, has the relationship get the spotlight during Kaldur's arc.
  • Said arc also reveals that La'gaan is now in a polyamorous marriage with a man and a woman. In addition, it is hinted at, though never stated, that Wyynde and Kaldur seek to enter into one with Delphis.
  • After questioning their gender in the previous season, Halo officially comes out as non-binary in this season.
  • Artemis has a throwaway line hinting she might be bi or pan.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • Absolutely nobody was surprised that Nightwing or Rocket didn't really perish in the climatic final battle, especially since it was the former's time in the spotlight, both were in positions they could easily survive, and the final episode revealing their survival had been leaked.
  • The Targets miniseries pulls a similar stunt when Queen Bee controls Red Arrow, Arsenal, and Halo into seemingly killing Miss Martian, Tigress, and Arrowette in the comic's fifth issue. Given how proficient the Team had become at faking their deaths in season 4, there was no surprise when the sixth and final issue promptly reveals the heroes had planned this out and faked the whole thing to catch her off guard. Arrowette even lampshades that she's now part of the 'faked your own death' club.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: In Season 2 La'gaan was widely disliked since his primary role was to be an obvious Romantic False Lead for M'gann, and his hot-headedness and sometimes jerkish behavior outside of that didn't do much to help. In season 4, he's matured as a hero and become a good husband and father and the fact that he's in a triad marriage endeared him to the LGBT Fanbase.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In general, this happens with the show's focus on dividing arcs up amongst the members of the original Team. While Miss Martian's and Tigress' arcs remained fairly connected to the base plotline of the season, further heroes have seen a wider disconnect in focus as more time had to be spent on the B-plots of the heroes who finish their arcs, other heroes getting minor B-plots of their own (Beast Boy, Halo, and Superman mainly), and B-plots connected to the overall conflict of the season (the Legion of Super-Heroes attempts' to change their future, Lor-Zod's plans to free his father, and Superboy's imprisonment with General Zod himself), many later members of the Team often do not get sufficient development within the alotted time frame when it comes to their own conflicts with their Arc Villain.
  • This is especially egregious for Rocket, who was Out of Focus compared to the rest of the team in previous seasons. Her arc notably featured very little involvement from her background in Milestone Comics, and instead put more focus on the seasonal plot (mainly Lor-Zod being revealed as the time traveler) than on her struggles with Amistad's autism. The numerous B-Plots that occurred in her arc made her development feel rushed and less impactful.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: M'gann's revelation that she felt actual body dysphoria over her appearance as a White Martian and her mother's statement that M'gann's preferred form as a human with White Martian skin color is her true form feels very similar to a transgender individual coming out to a parent about their gender.
• Unexpected Character: Being a Canon Foreigner who was made specifically for Green Lantern: The Animated Series and has yet to make any comic book appearances, it's highly unlikely that anyone expected Razer to show up, let alone continue his story from where GL:TAS left off
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Gar's arc of dealing with depression, while realistic, grated many fans the wrong way for both sides.
  • On one hand, several character's reaction to Garfield's condition and attempts to help him come across as quite selfishly. While there are signs of care in their words, it focuses on their desire to have the friend and leader back over wanting him to genuinely recover, or just not taking time to understand his trauma. Only Robotman during the intervention showed completely selfless empathy. This in turn makes Gar's claim that he "can't handle being needed" justifiable.
  • On the other hand, Gar's own attitude towards people genuinely trying to help him comes off as excessively callous, with dismissal and rudeness towards Perdita, M'gann and Robotman being particular standouts. While many viewers understood where Gar was coming from, they pointed it was not an excuse to hurt others.
• The Woobie:
  • In the span of one episode, M'gann says farewell to Bio-Ship, the Priestess who was going to officiate her wedding is revealed to be the accidental murderer of the Martian King, her own brother almost wiped out all non-White Martians, and Conner, who was about to marry her, performed a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy the bomb her brother was going to use in the plan. After one episode of heartbreak, The Stinger shows her sobbing, miserably, alone, for the entirety of the credits.
  • Beast Boy. After the death of Conner, Garfield has fallen into a depressive state. And unlike M'gaan, his state is shown in detail in the following episodes: he is unable to do ANYTHING, completely unmotivated, and relies on sleeping pills to sleep, not even being able to lead the Outsiders. He even breaks up with Perdita. It gets to the point where an intervention from M'gann, Jaime, Virgil, Cassie, and even his former Doom Patrol teammate Robotman can't shake him. Eventually, during therapy with Black Canary, he finally breaks down and admits he feels guilty over every death he's faced, learning the harsh lesson that heroes cannot save everyone.
  • Danny Chase is the true identity of Kaizer-Thrall, an 11-year-old metahuman boy trafficked to Apokolips, having his brain removed from his body by Desaad and put into the machine, and slowly dying on top of that.

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