The Team (Season One, Season Two, Season Three, Season Four) | The Outsiders | Justice League | Other Heroes | The Light | Minions of the Light (League of Shadows) | The Reach | Apokolips | Other Villains | New Genesis | Other Characters
The Reach
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General
Species: Reach
Also known as the Kroloteans' Competitor, The Reach are an alien species who came to Earth in 2016, where they soon allied themselves with The Light. They seek to weaponize human superpowers, which they refer to as the "meta-gene", to expand their own empire.
- Adaptational Badass: While the Reach had fought the Green Lantern Corps to a standstill in the distant past, the modern-day Reach in the comics were highly intelligent but militarily weak; they relied on guile to enact a century-long scheme to conquer the Earth. On Earth-16, though, they reduce the Earth to a blasted wasteland in less than a few decades. Particularly notable is each Reach's choice of Dragon: Dawur of the comics is beaten by a teenager with a stick. Black Beetle of the show singlehandedly and effortlessly takes down Superboy, Wonder Girl, Robin, Lagoon Boy, and Bumblebee.
- Arc Villain: They're just as important as The Light in Season 2, their presence being the titular Invasion. However, they're dealt with by the end, and are forced to pay for their crimes afterwards, while The Light still remains the primary antagonistic force.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: With The Light in Invasion, led by the Ambassador.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Both the Light and the Reach were using each other and planned to betray the other eventually. It truly becomes this in the finale, when Black Beetle takes over and tries to destroy Earth, forcing The Light to make an Enemy Mine situation with the Justice League and the Team to prevent it.
- Call a Human a "Meatbag": Or just meat.
- Composite Character: In the comics, the Reach never had an interest in using the human metagene. That trait is taken from the Dominators.
- The Dreaded: "War" shows a number of aliens (especially Mongul) are wary of the Reach spreading their influence throughout the galaxy and gaining control of Earth's supply of meta-genes.
- Eviler than Thou: To Mongul, of all people. He's a vicious galactic conqueror that tries to destroy Earth, but he thinks an instant death would be preferable to life under the Reach.
- Evil Versus Evil: In reality, though, the Light has been consistently playing them while letting the Reach think they're the ones calling the shots. However, at the end of Season 2, Black Beetle becomes the Dragon Ascendant and plans to destroy the Earth - he fails, of course.
- His Name Really Is "Barkeep": All of them are known only by their roles, with the three major Reach characters being Ambassador, Scientist, and Warrior (Black Beetle).
- Mook Lieutenant: The regular faceless mooks are lead by a leader with a wider visor.
- Must Be Invited: John Stewart reveals that as part of their treaty with the Green Lanterns the Reach may not conquer a planet unless they're invited there.
- The Noseless: Of the literal variety.
- Pragmatic Villainy: They had insisted to Earth's governments that all they brought to Earth was one unarmed exploration craft. Mongul's attempt to destroy Earth forces them to reveal their fleet, which damages their credibility, causes a number of casualties, and leads to other problems. However, it's still preferable to Earth being destroyed.
- Sinister Silhouettes: Until "Before The Dawn", they're nothing but shadowy figures involved in a number of attacks on the Team.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: As things get worse for them, they have an increasingly difficult time getting along. Black Beetle in particular doesn't approve of the Ambassador's fear of direct confrontation.
- Terrible Trio: The three named Reach agents - Ambassador, Scientist, and Black Beetle.
- Villain Has a Point: While they only use it to discredit the League, they do accurately point out that the Team is a bunch of Child Soldiers.
- Villain with Good Publicity: When their ship is discovered by the Team, they immediately go to the United Nations building and introduce themselves as friends, in order to preempt any attempt by the Team to paint them as the bad guys. After the events of "War", the good publicity falls apart, culminating in "Summit", where their invitation to Earth is retracted.
The Ambassador
Voiced by: Phil LaMarr
The leader of Reach operations on Earth.
- Adaptation Name Change: His title is Negotiator in the comics.
- Angrish: His response to learning that the Light has been covertly screwing him over at every turn is a rage-filled scream followed by an angry rant.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: With the Light as the leader of the Reach.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Although competent, the Ambassador ultimately fails in the face of the Light's manipulations and the heroes dismantling his plans. After the fiasco in "Summit", Black Beetle abandons him and decides to handle the rest of the Reach's plans himself.
- The Chessmaster: He effortlessly manipulates Captain Atom, turning every attempt to expose the Reach as villains back on him by revealing secrets the League doesn't want known, and even discrediting possible witnesses as impressionable fans. He's not as good at this as Vandal and Darkseid, who play him like a fiddle.
- Death Glare: Gives a pretty good one in "Intervention" to the Scientist when his plans fall apart again.
- Faux Affably Evil: As is to be expected from an ambassador, he is diplomatic, polite, and accommodating in public. In private, he's gleefully plotting to conquer Earth and enslave the human race.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: His reliance on G. Gordon Godfrey comes back to bite him when the anti-alien reporter calls him out on lying about the Reach's military power, live on national television.
- It's All About Me: Major character flaw is his insistence on ignoring Scientist's advice and Black Beetle's superior tactical advantage in favor of his preference of playing others and using his Beetle puppets (ie: Doing everything his way). He ignored the Scientist's attempts to study Blue in favor of getting him under control ASAP, and not only does he ignore Black's suggestions of direct confrontation but refuses to let him assist at Bialya. If he'd done either they wouldn't have lost in "Intervention", and when his scheming falls apart he has nothing to fall back on.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Despite commanding the Reach's invasion force, he's no warrior (that would be Black Beetle's job). The closest the Ambassador ever comes to posing a physical threat is when he's controlling Blue Beetle's scarab.
- Not So Stoic: He's pretty soft-spoken, or at the very least upbeat, but has lost this when his plans go awry.
- "War" shows him severely annoyed, even angry, though his mood improves by the end.
- Happens even more so in "The Hunt" when things just keep worsening for the Reach.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: His death threat in "Intervention" is so hilariously nerdy that Jaime mocks him for it.
- Smug Snake: While his strategy is sound, he underestimates his opponents severely, failing to realise that his own so-called allies, the Light, are manipulating him much more competently than he could ever hope to manipulate them.
- Spared by the Adaptation: He survives by his final appearance, when his comic counterpart the Negotiator perished at the conclusion of the Reach invasion arc of the first Blue Beetle comic starring Jaime Reyes.
- Villainous Breakdown: Seems to be undergoing one that started in "War" and has continued ever since. He is noticeably furious and having trouble controlling his temper as things begin going south for the Reach. It finally reaches its head in "Summit" when the Team reveals that not only has the Light been playing against the Reach, but the Team completely Out-Gambitted both of them. He basically loses it when Black Beetle turns on him and leaves him to be captured.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: On the wrong end of this from Black Beetle.
The Scientist
Voiced by: Masasa Moyo
A Reach scientist who researches applications for human meta-gene.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Shows signs of this alongside Black Beetle to the Ambassador.
- Canon Foreigner: She is created for the television series and did not exist in the Blue Beetle comic starring Jaime Reyes. In the comics, it was just the Negotiator (Ambassador), Dawur (Black Beetle), and a cadre of mooks.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: When Black Beetle usurps control of the Reach and leaves the Ambassador to his fate, he takes the Scientist with him, having decided she might still be useful.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Implied to have overseen the torture of dozens of children.
- I Warned You:
- If the Ambassador had heeded her warnings, The Team would never have been able to save Blue and Green Beetle from Reach control.
- Gives this one last go in "Endgame" when she and her colleagues are taken into the custody of the Guardians of the Universe. Seeing the decidedly irritated looks on their faces causes the Scientist to raise a quizzical eyebrow and ultimately lower her head in shameful defeat.
- Mad Scientist: Black Beetle even jokes about it.Black Beetle: Admit it, you just like playing with the meat.Scientist: Well, there's that too.
- Women Are Wiser: Is the only female Reach member we see, is much more logical than the Ambassador and is usually right.
- Would Hurt a Child: She oversaw the torture of abducted children in the Reach's attempt to activate the metagene. It's later confirmed that not all of the children survived the experiments.
Black Beetle / The Warrior
Black Beetle / The Warrior
Voiced by: Kevin Grevioux
A Reach warrior equipped with a Scarab device identical to Blue Beetle's.
- Arm Cannon: Standard equipment for Beetles.
- Badass Boast:
- From "Before the Dawn":Wonder Girl: Listen, ahh... Black Beetle! You're totally outnumbered. Open those doors, and we'll go easy on you!
Black Beetle: You... will go easy? On me? Hehehe hahaha... HAHAHAHA!!
Bumblebee: Oh, that is not a good sign. - From "Endgame":Aqualad: You are alone.
Black Beetle: I am sufficient.
- From "Before the Dawn":
- Big Bad Ensemble: Turns against the Light in the season two finale, taking over the Reach and planning to destroy Earth.
- BFG: His scarab forms powerful arm cannons that he can combine into an even bigger weapon.
- Black Comedy: Takes to irradiated holocaust as a source of entertainment. For example, this line from him in "Salvage":Black Beetle: Mixing an Appellaxian Husk with the potential for nuclear meltdown could be a recipe for disaster, or hilarity. I haven't decided.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: One of his scarab's constructs, which Black Beetle memorably uses to skewer Ra's al Ghul.
- Blood Knight: Called out on his sadistic pleasure of harming others by Green Beetle.
- Brought Down to Normal: Gets his scarab destroyed by Blue Beetle in "Endgame", thus reducing him to an average Reach member.
- Character Catchphrase: Refers to humanity as "Meat."
- Chest Blaster: His armor can form a powerful blaster on his chest.
- Color Character: Black Beetle.
- Composite Character: He's basically Dawur from the comics with Black Beetle's name, who in the comics is human and really has nothing to do with the Reach besides the fact that he uses a Scarab.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Pretty much every fight he gets into in Season 2 is one for the opposing side, to the point that Blue Beetle is the only member of the team who can do more than modestly inconvenience him. Even his defeat in the finale comes as more of a clever trick than a direct fight.
- Dark Is Evil: Black Beetle is part of an organization bent on world domination.
- Deadpan Snarker: He's... surprisingly funny in addition to terrifying.Black Beetle: (After Blue Beetle blasts him, to no effect) Ahh, nothing like a warm plasma bath to calm the nerves. And clean off the tomato stains.
- Dragon Ascendant: Deems the Ambassador to be unfit to lead, abandons him, and takes command of the Reach. He goes down pretty quickly, though.
- The Dreaded: When this guy shows up, the good guys do their best to run away as fast as they can.
- Energy Weapon: His weapons fire heated plasma.
- Evil Counterpart: To Blue Beetle. Both have the abilities of the scarab, but while Black Beetle uses his granted abilities to harm humans, Blue Beetle uses his to protect them.
- Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: He finds things like potential nuclear meltdowns and executing helpless prisoners hilarious.
- Evil Laugh: Most memorably when Wonder Girl tells him that the team will go easy on him
- Evil Sounds Deep: He has a deep, bass voice. And no, it isn't digitally altered.
- Faux Affably Evil: At times, he comes across as good-humoured and genial, especially with his fellow Beetles. Beneath that, he's a brutal and sadistic sociopath who happily anticipates killing Blue and Green after the Reach loses control over them.
- Genius Bruiser: He instantly recognizes M'gann's method of intangibility and knows how to alter the density of the wall to knock her out, and like Green and Blue he probably has access to all of the Scarab's knowledge.
- The Heavy: The most visible and physically active antagonist connected to the Reach.
- His Name Really Is "Barkeep": As is standard with the Reach. The Scientist refers to him as Black Beetle when speaking to the Ambassador in "The Hunt." Later, he's simply referred to as "Warrior" in the same vein that his colleagues are "Ambassador" and "Scientist."
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Tries to hack and destroy Blue Beetle's Scarab, but due to the two of them working together, they reverse the hacking and destroy his. Unfortunately, his endgame plan was already put in effect.
- Imagination-Based Superpower: His scarab constructs weapons and armor based on what he mentally orders it to do.
- Invincible Villain: He's technically never lost a straight fight through Season 2. Every time he shows up, he ends up curb stomping everybody short of another Scarab host and Mongul. He only loses when Blue Beetle destroys his scarab, which is what made him so unstoppable in the first place, and that only happens because he opened himself up to the attempt by trying to do the same to the Blue Scarab.
- Jerkass: Probably one of the least sympathetic villains in the whole show.
- Knight of Cerebus: His savage beatdown of the Team drives home the power and threat of the Reach.
- Leave No Witnesses: When the Reach lose their invitation to stay on Earth, the Scientist is worried that the Green Lantern Corps will find evidence of their treaty violations. Black Beetle figures that there won't be any evidence if they destroy the planet.
- Light Is Not Good: His energy attacks manifest as a white/silvery light, as opposed to Blue Beetle's less dichotomous blue light.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: Most attacks either annoy or amuse him. Even when his armor's damaged, it just regenerates in seconds.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Pummels Wonder Girl into a door after he traps Miss Martian between it while she's shifting through.Wonder Girl: What did you do to her!?
Black Beetle: Shifted the density of the door. Wasn't quite prepared for that, was she? But don't be jealous; I can put you halfway through the door, too. Halfway, the hard way. - Not Brainwashed: Green Beetle tries to use the same technique that he used to reprogram Blue Beetle on Black, only to discover that while Black may have to follow orders, he otherwise has complete control of his body. Green Beetle's attempt then backfires when Black Beetle uses the connection to destroy his Scarab. This is later expanded on when his own Scarab is destroyed and he's become little more than a snarling monster, giving the Ambassador and the Scientist a Death Glare.
- One-Man Army: He brutalizes the huge team that invaded a Reach ship to rescue the abductees and is consistently shown being able to fight off multiple superhumans at once.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Wonder Girl makes up the nickname "Black Beetle" for him on the fly; his actual name was initially unknown.
- Only Sane Man: To an extent for the Reach command. He ends up leaving the Ambassador to be captured by the Team when his failures catch up to him.
- Powered Armor: His Warrior armor produced by his scarab is very well equipped to face off with Metahumans.
- Sadist: Obviously enjoys inflicting pain, donning a Psychotic Smirk as he informs Wonder Girl that he'll be putting her through a wall "halfway, the hard way".
- Smug Super: As an experienced Beetle, he's a Justice League-level threat, and absolutely revels in it.
- The Starscream: Downplayed. He doesn't like The Ambassador's plans and failings... but doesn't do anything about it, until the Ambassador is captured. Black Beetle refuses to save him and takes over the Reach's operations. He does this all with legal precedent, and doesn't actively overthrow like most examples.
- Super-Senses: While he may not have Super-Speed, his Scarab can process information even faster than Impulse can move, allowing him to perceive time as if Impulse were running at the speed of a normal human.
- Super-Strength: Enough to trade blows with Mongul, and possibly beat him (though that may simply have been boasting on his part).
- Swiss-Army Weapon: Like all Beetles, his armor can generate a wide variety of weapons to adapt to the situation.
- The Unfettered: He possesses the same powers as Blue Beetle, but is consistently the stronger of the two because he's both better at using said powers and more willing to use them to their full potential than Jaime is.
- Villainous Breakdown: When his attempt to destroy Blue Beetle's Scarab is turned back on him.
- Would Hit a Girl: Black Beetle doesn't care about the gender of his opponent, he'll hurt them with equal ruthlessness and cruelty.
