Way back in World War 2, a German scientist tries to demonstrate the "Captain Nazi" Super Serum that he intends to use to create an army of powerful soldiers for the Reich, only to be stopped by the hero Spy Smasher, who steals the serum. In the present day, Cadmus has been disbanded, and General Wade Eiling is unhappy about it. No matter how much Amanda Waller tells him that perhaps they weren't the good guys there and they should be happy they weren't all arrested for inadvertently helping Lex Luthor nearly destroy the world, he isn't satisfied. The Justice League still exists, and (as he sees it) there's still no counter out there against metahumans. So he steals a sample of the Captain Nazi serum and injects it into himself, turning him into a monster.
Meanwhile, it's a busy day for the Justice League. So many of them are out responding to disasters that the only members they can spare to appear at a Metropolis parade are Green Arrow, Shining Knight, Stargirl, S.T.R.I.P.E., and Vigilante. Which becomes a problem when the monstrous Eiling appears and demands Superman fight him. Superman's out on a mission in space, so the League members present take Eiling on, but they're not very effective against his Doomsday-like strength, and the only backup available is the Crimson Avenger and Speedy, who also don't have the power necessary to overcome Eiling, who's desperate to prove metahumans are a threat.
Eiling, much like the legendary naked emperor, is only stopped when a young bystander points out the obvious: none of the superheroes present are metahumans. Stargirl and Shining Knight use magic artifacts and Stripe has Powered Armor, but that's it. The only one with superpowers is General Eiling himself. When Eiling realizes that he has become the metahuman threat he feared, he departs peacefully, though he warns that someday they'll need people like himself again.
Tropes:
- Alternate Company Equivalent: We get three in this episode. Spy Smasher stops the Nazis from creating a super soldier and steals the formula. General Eiling, who is a general obsessed with stopping metahumans and protecting America, injects himself with the Super Formula and becomes a giant muscle-bound monster that gets around by leaping. Although Eiling's monster form is actually from when (in the comics) he transferred his mind into the body of the monster "Shaggy Man."
- Armor-Piercing Question: When Eiling attempts to kill Shining Knight, a group of civilians come to the latter's defense, one old woman being particularly vocal about it. This and the below Armor-Piercing Response result in Eiling finally seeing and acknowledging the inherent hypocrisy of his actions, and folds."You think killin' Superman would make the world safe? Or killin' this boy? Or us? Tell me, how many of us do you have to kill to keep us safe?"
- Armor-Piercing Response: A child follows up the question when Eiling claims to only be against the superpowered beings: "You're the only one around here with superpowers."
- Badass Bystander: After Eiling gives all the present Justice League members a sound thrashing, he gets into another "must protect the people from metahumans regardless of the cost" spiel. The crowd responds with angry stares, and then an old lady calls him out on his disregard of the cost and a little kid tells him he's the only one with superpowers around. This makes him realize that he's become what he hates. He leaves, but not before he says he will be right one of these days and that they need the likes of him to protect the people from the likes of the Justice League.
- Badass Normal: The Justice League members in this episode have no superpowers.
- Black-and-White Insanity: General Eiling clearly suffers from this.
- Blood Knight: While General Eiling genuinely does believe in American superiority and wants to protect his country at any cost, he's also clearly spoiling for a fight and wants to exact revenge on the Justice League for shaming his government. When the gathered citizens begin shaming him, the old woman leading the charge snaps "Drop the act"—he's using his supposed patriotism as an excuse to bully and abuse those weaker than himself, and his attempts to justify it are paper-thin.
- Call-Back: The test animals mentioned by the Cadmus scientist are likely the ones seen in "Ultimatum".
- Shining Knight starts out firmly believing that when your "police captain" tells you to do something, you should "play by the rules". But towards the end, he admits he's no stranger to "besmirching orders", as he once disobeyed an order from King Arthur he felt was wrong. Though the context is very different.
- Character Development:
- Waller is shown to be regretful of Cadmus' anti-Justice League stance and has softened in the interim. This characterization is a subtle Call-Forward to "Epilogue" and her becoming the League's government liaison and developing genuine respect for the team.
- The parade crowd itself goes from having its prominent voices, including the old lady and the group of kids, complaining about how there's no Superman and wondering why they even bothered coming to see the parade if he's not there, to genuinely respecting the Badass Normal heroes and willingly standing in Eiling's way to protect them.
- Stargirl, who had previously been depicted as a showboating teenager more interested in popularity than heroics, has matured and takes her job much more seriously. Her first action upon getting Eiling in a telekinetic lasso is to start flying him as far away as possible, as her chief concern is keeping people safe: "Haven't you ever heard of innocent bystanders?"
- Contrived Coincidence: What are the odds that every actual metahuman in the Justice League was called away into deep space or their own missions during all this?
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Eiling pretty much destroys everyone he fights in the episode with the only visible damage dealt to him at all is a minor cut from Shining Knight's sword to his arm. It's even lampshaded when the Justice League members present gets reinforcements.Speedy: Ollie, how many guys has this bozo taken out?Green Arrow: That would be all of us.
- Distant Prologue: The opening scene of Spy Smasher stopping the Captain Nazi experiment and recovering a syringe full of their super serum.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: Towards the end, Eiling justifies to Shining Knight that everything he's done is in service of his own country. In response, Shining Knight shares an anecdote, where he was ordered by King Arthur to lay waste to an entire village, but chose not to because he felt it was wrong. Eiling calls him a lousy soldier. Shining Knight is thoroughly disappointed in Eiling's mindset, and has to spell it out that the whole thing was a Secret Test of Character by King Arthur to see if he was a good person of his own accord.
- Deus Exit Machina: All the really strong League heroes are busy saving something other than Metropolis's parade, leaving only some unpowered humans that Eiling can easily take down. Fortunately, Eiling isn't quite so far gone that he can't be brought back to reality by some brave civilians telling him off.
- Empowered Badass Normal: Three of the Leaguers in the episode qualify as this: Shining Knight has magic armor, S.T.R.I.P.E. wears a giant robotic exoskeleton, and Stargirl wields the Cosmic Staff, which grants her abilities including flight and telekinesis.
- The Fundamentalist: Eiling again. He's just nuts.
- Godzilla Threshold: Green Arrow's Quantum Arrows are painted as such in this episode (given that they seemly create an explosion comparable to a pretty large explosive device), and are used, but they don't work.Green Arrow: Still got your Quantum Arrow?Speedy: Yeah, but you said-Green Arrow: This is an emergency!
- Graceful Loser: While General Eiling is stewing over the Justice League and insisting that they're still threats, Amanda Waller has accepted that she was wrong about them and abandoned her anti-metahuman views, instead trying to work with the League. When Eiling continues to protest, she simply shrugs and remarks "It's a different world, General. Learn to live in it."
- Heroic Bystander: After Eiling has taken out all of the "C-list" Leaguers and is preparing to crush Shining Knight with a car, the ordinary citizens gathered for the parade form a human shield around the hero to protect him and give the general a collective Death Glare for the ages. An elderly woman calls Eiling out for his massive hypocrisy, while a child points out that the general, who claims to hate metahumans, is the only one on the scene who actually has superpowers. It's enough to make Eiling stand down.
- Hero of Another Story: Eiling accuses Superman of being a coward when he doesn't show up. Shining Knight explains that Superman is currently saving a planet from an unspecified crisis.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Eiling wants to protect America from powerful metahumans who endanger civilians and might go rogue. Eiling goes rogue himself to take the super serum he used, and spends most of the episode beating up on non-powered League members, and nearly (indirectly) kills a child who was trying to help the League.
- Hidden Depths: Apparently, Vigilante is very good at playing the guitar, according to him. Then again, he is a cowboy.
- How Much More Can He Take?: Even though all the heroes present do not have any superhuman abilities they refuse to yield to Eiling and his demands to bring Superman and refuse to lie down in defeat even in the face of the utter beating he gives to all of them.
- Hypocrisy Nod: When a crowd of civilians defends the members of the Justice League that Eiling attacks, and one kid points out that Eiling is the only one there that has superpowers, Eiling stops and acknowledges that he has become what he hates but still stubbornly holds that they will eventually see that he was right at that they need people like him to protect them from the Justice League.
- Hypocrite: Eiling attacks the League members at the parade because he wants to protect the world from metahumans. But as one of the kids at the parade points out, he's the only one there who actually has superpowers (the League members are all regular people who have advanced tech or magical equipment).
- I Did What I Had to Do: Eiling justifies the potentially-deadly aftermath of his attacks with this trope. When Stargirl points out that his actions risk hurting or killing innocent bystanders, Eiling scoffs at her concern and brings up the military concept of "acceptable losses." In his own words, "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs."
- Karma Houdini:
- Discussed, as while General Eiling is frustrated that the Justice League still exists and is still an N.G.O. Superpower, Waller is willing to let it go, pointing out that with all the crap Cadmus has pulled, they're lucky they weren't arrested.
- Eiling himself ultimately gets away with his actions in the episode, largely because there isn't anyone around who's strong enough to arrest him. Then again, one suspects that being turned into exactly what he despised is quite reasonable as consequences goes.
- Knight Templar: General Eiling turns himself into a mutated monster to fight the Justice League. Ironically, one of his opponents is an actual knight (though not of the Templar order), and is far more considerate of civilians than Eiling is.
- Meaningless Villain Victory: Eiling easily defeats the Badass Normal heroes who were at the parade, only to realize that in doing so, he's become the rogue Metahuman threat he feared. He leaves, never to be seen again in the series. On top of that, his attack also gives the heroes at the parade, who were mostly seen as C-list losers with no powers, a chance to show off their bravery and skill as they try to hold him back—by the end of the fight, the crowd has gone from derision and disappointment to praise.
- A Million Is a Statistic: Eiling invokes this trope when Stargirl calls him out for his reckless actions and their lethal potential to civilians.Stargirl: Haven't you heard of innocent bystanders?!Eiling: You ever heard of "acceptable losses?"
- Mythology Gag:
- The heroes that defend the parade (Green Arrow, Vigilante, Shining Knight, Stargirl, S.T.R.I.P.E., Crimson Avenger and Speedy) are the DCAU versions of the original Seven Soldiers of Victory.
- The four children the Vigilante deputizes resemble Tommy, Big Words, Gabby, and Scrapper of DCs 40's "kid gang" the Newsboy Legion.
- "Captain Nazi" is a Shazam! villain, and the hero who stops them, Spysmasher, was also a Fawcett Comics creation.
- Never Mess with Granny: The leader of the citizens who stand up to Eiling is an elderly woman who has no patience for his nonsense. She stares down a guy five times her size and wins using nothing but an Armor-Piercing Question and a firm attitude.
- Noodle Incident: Green Arrow has parted with his sideki—I mean, partner, Speedy, in less than amicable circumstances.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Amanda Waller reflects on her hardline anti-League stance and comments that it's similar to what the U.S. government said about the USSR during The Cold War—and considering that people who were rabidly anti-communist are now remembered as zealots, she and her ilk should be careful not to go down the same path.
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Stargirl bemoans how it takes five Badass Normal League members to rally up the crowd as much as one Superman, stating that they deserve more respect. Immediately after, a police officer walks up to thank them for their work, Green Arrow tells him that the police are The Real Heroes, and Stargirl acknowledges how shallow she was sounding.
- Pet the Dog: Shortly after Eiling transforms into a muscle-bound monstrosity, he wipes the floor with the soldiers stationed there when they attack him, but doesn't kill a single one of them, and when one of them begs for his life:Soldier: Don't kill me!Eiling: I wouldn't kill you, soldier. You're just doing your job. And now I'm going to do mine.
- The Real Heroes: When a police officer approaches the superheroes to thank them for their help, Green Arrow states the police are this trope in response.
- Recruit the Muggles: When a group of heroes are attacked during a parade, several kids try to help them by throwing rocks at the villain and then the whole crowd marches up to face him down before he can finish off the defeated heroes.
- Reformed, but Not Tamed: Amanda Waller's anti-Justice League stance is notably softer, and she points out that she and the rest of Project Cadmus are lucky not to be in jail for their highly-clandestine actions. But when Eiling remarks that she's sounding like a "bleeding heart in Congress," Waller flashes a grin and assures him that she's still plenty tough: "I'd eat them alive."
- Secret Test of Character: The Shining Knight recounts one of these as a parable. Unfortunately, Eiling doesn't get that the moral is 'honor comes before following orders'.
- Sequel Episode: To the Cadmus arc, showing what's become of Eiling and Waller (and the Project itself) since "Divided We Fall".
- Shout-Out: Vigilante and Shining Knight just finished watching a Dirty Harry movie when they get put on assignment.
- The Smurfette Principle: Stargirl is the only female member of the "C-List" Leaguers at the parade.
- The Social Expert: Vigilante turns out to be quite the showman. At one point the scene cuts away from the parade after showing a group of civilians unimpressed with the present League members. When it cuts back, Vigilante has worked the crowd into cheering and applauding the show that he has the other Leaguers putting on. Lampshaded by the following exchange:Stargirl: Wow, you really know how to work a crowd.
Vigilante: Shoot, if I'd brung my guitar, I'd have 'em eatin' outta my hand. - Straw Character: Some of Eiling's arguments are rather obviously ultra-right.
- Stupid Jetpack Hitler: The source of the the Super Serum Eiling uses to become a hulked-out monster in his bid to gain equal footing versus the Justice League. The original batch was confiscated during WWII in the episode opener and reading a report on its effects is why Eiling steals it for his use during the episode.
- Superman Stays Out of Gotham: The League is spread pretty thin at the moment, so the heavy hitters are busy in various other locations. The featured heroes are only at the parade because they didn't currently have any assignments. Eiling is rather annoyed by all this, as he was hoping to fight Superman instead of heroes without powers.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Eiling genuinely believes that he's protecting the world from metahumans. When he realizes what he's doing, he leaves without any further fighting.
