I'm probably not going to watch this show, buuuut when you said "Razor..." I got a little excited. It looks like he was not well introduced, but he was a popular character in Green Lantern: The Animated Series that was airing (I think like back-to-back) with Young Justice back during season 2. From what you said, it looks like this episode pretty much just picked up where that series ended. So there WAS a buildup, just not, ya'know, in the same show lol. Which is obviously a problem, because I imagine most viewers are like you and have NO clue who this guy is. Like, I don't actually think he's from the comics at all, so they're casting an even smaller net than usual for who will recognize this guy.
No Razor is that guy and it seems that they are using the episodes he showed up in as follow ups to the animated series... which is the most braindead choice because 1. that continuity has never been established and 2. no one should have to sit through a plot getting interrupted like that for a plotpoint in another show most people probably didn't even watch.
@@NintendoHighSchool I remember AYA, though I haven’t watched the entire show. Last thing I remember was Hal meeting Guy. Apparently, the show was cancelled because the Green Lantern movie bombed.
I loved how I called the forager thing as soon as he was kicked from the hive in season 3. I literally said "oh well since everyone else gets a romance, they'll probably just introduce a girl forager at some point. She'll be like pink or something." AND THEN THEY DID! AND THEY GAVE HER THE SAME NAME! THEY DIDN'T EVEN TRY!!
@@dragonwings123456789 Maybe if they have the same role in their separate hives. But the green one that turned evil has a different name. On a meta level though they could have at least given her a different name. But no they stuck with the "give the creature a girl version of itself as a love interest" to the letter
@@kcpugh5601 Well, she is a loose adaptation of the character from the comics, also named Forager. And Mantis does seem to have a different role in the Hive, as he seems to be the one that led that group of Foragers.
They haven’t teased Wally’s return at all. They just include him in this show mostly for fan service and at least the fan service makes sense storywise since he’s mostly just illusions that other characters see. Them bringing him back for real would probably make me stop watching. That would be the final nail in the coffin that the writers have given up.
@@yungdre4500 they teased it by saying Artemis wasn’t actually talking to Wally’s dead spirit. If it really was Wally, we would all know he’s dead. But by saying it wasn’t, that leaves the door open to him still being alive
@@yungdre4500 but why not just give Zatanna the ability to summon souls? There’s no good reason why Artemis had to talk to an imaginary Wally if they didn’t intend on bringing him back
Season 1 did everything right. Plot was generally tight, and you could really focus on the core group of characters. Every season since has moved away from this. Bloated cast, disjointed plot, and weak animation have really hollowed out the show.
Does it seem like the budget has been cut compared to the first two seasons? Greg Weisman says they have a bigger budget but I'm not seeing it. The animation looks choppy at times, they rely on static images a lot more and rely on characters speaking telepathically so they don't have to animate lip movements
in Invincible, in season 2 they have a joke about animation and how animators will try to find every avenue to not animate a characters mouth moving. my brain IMMEDIATELY jumped to young justice edit: theres nothing wrong with animating this way, its pretty clever.
The time skip was unnecessary and stupid. Things I wanted to see were. 1.Jason Todd before he died as Robin 2. Superman and Superboy resolve their conflict and see how they grow 3. m'ganns power growth and so much more but we didn't get that. Plus I don't like the art style I don't see why they had to change it.
@@hirarana93him becoming Nightwing was so odd especially since he had that talk with Black Canary where he claimed he didn’t want to be “The Batman”, in so far he didn’t want to develop Bruce’s drive to sacrifice whatever it took for the mission.
I was so interested in how they were going to resolve that conflict... and then we get a timeskip and "they worked it out". Why the hell aren't you showing us that? What was the point of all the scenes about the conflict then? I'd rather spend time with that than with freaking Lagoon Boy.
It was pretty much set up with the last episode of season 1. You could say it resolved or at least showed the beginning of Clark being more comfortable then.
Can we talk about how Nightwing, arguably the Batfamily in general got the short end of the stick this season. Nightwings arc wasn’t even his this season, it was just the finale, he had barely any character development whatsoever. Robin(Tim Drake) was given the same treatment DC gave him which is just shafting him completely. They still haven’t even done anything with freakin JASON TODD being alive again.
How much more Bat Family do you want? (i agree with nightwing being ignored though) You got BTAS,TNBA, Batman Under The Red Hood (the co-developer actually works on Young Justice), not to mention a very developed Gotham TV show. Then Titans which basically became a Bat Family TV show in Season 3.
@@Volatik2006 maybe I’ll want more of the other character when they start doing something interesting and so far the only characters that still hold up are Dick and Wally, and Wally is dead
@@Volatik2006 I mean sure, there’s a lot of Batfamily content already; however, especially relating to Jason, you can’t just name drop him twice in the show as such a tragic death people were affected by and then NEVER talk about it. Maybe the writers didn’t feel the need to given how popular Jason and the Batfamily are, but it’s like why even mention him if we never elaborate? Id rather you just left him the background as an easter egg for fans to pick up. To someone who isn’t all that familiar with Jason, it would probably make them feel like they missed something. Exactly the problem with Raizor.
@@idkanymoretbh5452 same reason they don’t elaborate on characters like fire and hardware. It’s easter eggs for comic book nerds. Other DC shows do this as well. JLU literally name dropped black adam in season 3.They’ll probably do this storyline in season 9(never gonna happen) after darkseid is gone. They’re just setting up a threat in the form of leviathan and protagonists through the super sons and jason
Razor is pure 100% fan-service. He's an original character from the cg Green Lantern cartoon that was loved by fans but only lasted 1 season. If you didn't watch that show you'd have no idea who Razor was or why he was important. So... yeah, it's dumb. I mean I loved the GL show too but If I never saw it that episode in YJ would be a complete waste of time.
Thanks for the info. I haven’t read a lot of DC comics and have been only starting on Batman ones. Seeing Razor randomly appear made me really confused on why he was in the show. The whole time I was watching that ep made me think why I should care since YJ really loves to bring in new characters and push old ones into the background.
@@DakotaCityRag I mean a fast rehash for people who dont know him would be fine. To make it less "who the hell is that" for a lot. And razor very much could have been relegated to cool cameo.
@@marocat4749 to lowart’s point (which I agree with) a fast rehash would not have been fine. Razer earned our emotional investment in GLTAS by taking the time to develop him properly. If they did a fast rehash in YJ, it’s too quick for investment. If they put in the time and effort, it’s a distraction from everything else they setup. By contrast, I appreciated Kilowog’s inclusion because he has a clear function in the story already being told rather than requiring us to step away from it.
I've never watched the Green Lantern show, and I had no idea that Razer was a new character and not just some random dude from some GL comic. It didn't reduce my enjoyment of those Season 4 episodes at all. There's so much universe that these characters could be coming from, why nitpick about it?
I think Beast Boy's arc was ended way abruptly. While they have been building up his depression for entire arc, yet when they finally showed his recovery, it ended with him saying he gets better by simply having a dog. Even his argument with his sister and teammates was revolved off-screen. I highly doubt the actual recovery of the depression would be that easy.
The show itself says he's still recovering, and that's why he still didn't come back to acting or the Outsiders. Even in the newer comic tie-in, he's still recovering and just ready for his first new mission back as a hero.
@@GamerSlyRatchet1 Which does make sense. Still, it could have been nice to have scenes showing the recovery process. Its not as bad as Steven Universe future's six month timeskip but it would be good to show that recovery, whilst not easy, isn't scary.
@@halloweenfriday Yeah. Whilst it could be a generic happy reaction, you could have Gar relapse a little since his grief was, technically, for nothing,
Dang they did that? I don’t like when shows showing characters getting “better” after going therapy, or getting meds. As someone who suffers with mental health it does not get better that fast, I had relapsed a lot.
Rocket was done dirty. We only got introduced to her at the finale of season 1, being the newbie to the team of character we got to know earlier in the season. I thought at the time when season 1 ended we were going to see how she would meshed with this established team of characters in the next season. However the time skip in season 2 happened, Rocket moved on to the League and we never got much of anything other quick snapshots of her life in season 2 and 3. By the time the writers/creative team of Young Justice decided to dedicate an arc to Rocket in season 4, she STILL had to share the spotlight. And even with the time she did get in the arc, I did not have the same feelings for Rocket that I did for other original team members. Even Zatanna who was a slightly later addition to season 1 herself, had more development throughout the series than Rocket ever did.
I think the biggest issue outright is that they tried to make too much of an intricate plotline for the series. They got way too deep into the hidden war and story with that instead of focusing, as you pointed out, on the characters. Let alone the passage of time element.
Razer is SUPER cool. . . but only because he's actually an original character from a completely different series that got cancelled before that character finished it's plotline. They pulled in a fan favorite from a completely different series just to continue his arc. And it's RLY fking cool for the people who saw the other show. The series is called "Green Lantern: The Animated Series", and it's FULLY CGI/3D animation. It's a rlly gud show.
It was cool, but I don't think it fit. Razer is a fantastic character in the green lantern TV show, but him showing up out of noware, resolving his character arc in a 20 minute eppisode, when in the original show, he was just starting to accept his new identity, and then fucking off to find Aya is just so disrespectful to him. Like, he didn't even have the chance to interact with Hal.
I watched it and loved it. I love razer's arc in green lantern, but if it gets in the way of making another story put it up until you can tell it. I'm honestly loved young justice and I'd honestly rather it've ended in season 2 than become this trainwreck.
@@Hadeks_Marow They back peddled on his development, and in the story of young justice, Razer's presenc was not needed. If he comes back in season 5 or they bring back the Green lantern TV show, then I'd be happy with what they did here, but as it stands now, I wish they didn't bring him back at all.
@@lordquaz7154 Then he would have died as a character in GL:TAS. When speaking in terms of concepts, a concept only dies when they are no longer used in the hearts, minds, and works of art of others. I'm just glad he's still around.
The fundamental mistake of Young Justice was the time skip. In my opinion, one season should've been one year in the team's life. So, we could see all plot threads slowly getting resolved and some heroes stepping down while others would organically take their place. Another issue is that the show, in real time, has been going on for too long (2010-). That hiatus made everything muddled and with "modern issues" taking 60% of the story in this season, the show simply isn't Young Justice anymore.
Yeah but idk I give the show a lot of grace going from Cn to DC to Hbo max with 4 seasons spread out over 12 years. Even with the production nightmares they've been through Young Justice is still one of the most ambitious young adult/teen cartoons out. lt's said but its really slim pickings for animated series in this vein.
i always thought of him as MEH but young justice really did the impossible and made me absolutly hate a fictional character i actually hoped he would off himself cause his sad boi phase got really tiring
Look, I like the idea of Beast Boy being a more mature character and not being held back as Comic Relief, but they didn't need to have him be depressed and sad for an entire season.
Justice League & Unlimited did the smart thing. Introduced new characters to the league little by little, give them a few lines, show their power set. Give them a 2 parter and done. New storyline, YJ on the other hand is a scrambled mess.
@@yungdre4500that’s because they knew who they wanted to focus on. They had one major plot line and the right amount of characters they wanted to feature and they stuck with it
It used to be that this show could do character AND plot, at the same time, and do it well. Everything... tied together. There weren't tangents and distractions from plot and character arcs, everything was relevant in some way. And even singular character focused arcs felt important because with the way the cast interacted, one character's development would have an impact on everyone. Now things feel... messy. There's too many characters, too many plots, not enough focus on bringing them all together in a satisfying way.
I feel ya but for me the issue isnt to many characters one piece have that yhe issue the story focus and plots are a mess and gives off no clue what tbeh want to do
@@marinary1326 that is also a fair point true but it also try to contain in each arc what characters needed in the young jusice they keep adding unneeded cast that make it hard to juggle them all But again ya not wrong
Really? Because I felt the final arc for this season brought most of the characters and elements from the season into the climax. Not to mention some of main characters' arcs since season 1 finally advanced or were resolved. Superboy and Miss Martian got married, Artemis reconciled with her sister, and Zatanna got her father back. Even Beast Boy got to deal with issues he's had since season 2.
“Rescue and Search” should be the standard for the show. It’s probably my favorite episode this season because it is focused, and the characters really feel like people. Even the exposition feels natural. Everyone bounces off each other and synergizes well. Charlotte Fullerton is a great writer. 21:02 Not just Beast Boy. The team has no reaction to seeing Conner in the zone. Nightwing goes “there he is!” and that’s it. This was their best friend of 10+ years, who they mourned for months, and 4/5 of them don’t even react? Have Artemis cry tears of joy or something. Even small body language would’ve been enough.
Pretty sure Artemis is smart enough not to have an emotional break down in the middle a life or death situation. You think it would make more sense for her to start crying when to rescue Superboy? The Team more or less figured out that Connor was alive. At that point they were just hellbent getting him back. They had plenty of reaction.
@@ShinobiPXO By that point they weren’t sure he was alive though. They were going off Zatanna’s and Rocket’s visions with no guarantees. I mean that’s the whole reason M’gann wasn’t with them. Also lol I was exaggerating a bit with the crying thing. Even a little tear or smile makes a big difference. Just look at M’gann’s reaction. She’s giddy and lets out a little laugh when she feels Conner’s mind. It’s not anything big, but it really makes the scene more impactful.
@@s.x.1321 They were obviously pretty sure. And the situation did not call for an emotional reaction. M'gann found out in the Watchtower The Team found Connor on a stealth mission in a ghost dimension filled with Kryptonian criminals. If Artemis got emotional, they might have been caught so she kept in check until they got to safety
I think the shows biggest issue is overcrowding. For a show that shines with its fantastic characters, they’re constantly pushed aside for new characters to show up. Take brion for example, who despite being a major character and the biggest cliffhanger of season 3, he literally just disappears all of season 4 until the very end, and we’re all excepted to still remember and care about his conflict. Its really messy, and makes barely any sense. For me, my favorite characters from the show are tim drakes robin, batgirl, red arrow, and wonder girl, all of whom are essentially unused in season 4, which is really frustrating as a long time fan. The show seems obsessed with bringing in new characters and doing stories with them, when honestly they could just, use preexisting characters and developing them. Take the zatanna arc for example, where they randomly introduce the character of mary marvel; who is revealed to be a former hero who lost her powers and is now learning magic with zatanna. This is such a useless character to bring in. Why not use an existing hero like wonder girl instead? Have her lose her powers and seek out new magical ones with zatanna. Storywise it fulfill the exact same role, a former hero looking for new purpose in life, who struggles with that role. This even enhances the reveal in the finale that mary has joined darkseids team because if its wonder girl leaving the train instead of a complete stranger, theres actual drama there between the team. Another example is that jay garrick, (the old man flash) is one of the justice league members who goes to new genesis with rocket. Why???? He’s never been important before, and you could’ve just as easily used barry allens flash, or literally any preexisting hero, especially since they later admit this character is over 100 YEARS OLD, so why in gods name is he still going on missions? This is just one example, of how growing the relationships of existing characters instead of introducing new ones would revolutionize the show. I actually disagree with lowart that the issue with the show is relying on the comics, because even as a major comic fan, these random character introductions still seem really random and out of place to me, because they’re written so differently from the comics they still feel like strangers; and the constant time jumps between seasons, make me feel like I just started watching a tv show several seasons in. I honestly think the writers have become lazy. They don’t bother setting up relationships, or building up new characters, they just introduce 20 new heroes all at once, give 10 of them an interesting plotline, and then throw most of them away, only to be used in cameos from now on. Its sad to see this once fantastic show die out like this, but its happened nonetheless.
Agreed. For me, after season 1 they strayed away from character relationships with the main cast. I like the idea of maybe several seasons in you could filter new characters in as old character arcs are fulfilled but they skipped over important points like how robin became nightwing. They waste screen time on characters who will never get that screen time again thus wasting everyone's time.
Mary is a bad example. She was supposed to be in the show severql times during season 2 with Freddie and Donna Troy but the budget kept the 3 of them out. It was only a matter of time before she at least had a cameo like Donna keeps getting
On the Jay part that is mentioned in the arc that he's coming out of retirement to as a member of the League and it's not like he's new, he's shown up multiple times in the other seasons
Overcrowding def is an issue. It seems at some point the series stopped being about the core characters and more about the wider DCU. It stopped really being "Young Justice", especially with all the time jumps.
YJ derailed so hard after season 1, they did a massive time skip and put too many characters in for no reason. DC likes to rush things and think they can just speedrun through character developments and create a giant universe with a lot of characters but they tend to forget that it's the slow journey and small amount of characters to focus on is what makes a show great.
FYI marvel is no different and neither is Disney in fact they are both facing a lot of negative criticism both in live action and the comics right now, so next time do your research before you talk shit
@@gilbertmillers4865 the live action is pretty fine they just don't throw characters you see some type of development for each characters. Look at end game. Each Chacter at the end battle had some show or time center on them before that battle happen.
@@livedhill1640 well since we’ve entered the 2020s the old and new characters that have been brought back + introduced aren’t really that good with the way the production team & staff have been writing them lately
13:53 Razor is a character from the Green Lantern the animated series (which was cancelled and it's a really good show)he basically starts off as a Red lantern goes through some romantic problems with his girlfriend Ai name Aya and by the end of the show he becomes more at peace with himself and becomes a Blue Lantern. He actually has a pretty similar arc as Zuko both personality and aesthetic.
I think another part of the issue of Young Justice characters is that aside from time skipping important events/character moments, some of the moments mentioned in the show happened in other sources of media. Tula’s death and Aqualad’s motivation to join the light happen in a video game no one played or even heard about, which at the end gave Robin his drive to step up to become a leader. Allot of the comics go into plot points from the 1st and 2nd season, what happen to superboy’s clone (which ended up becoming bizarro superman) how beast boy joined the team, clay face origin and a few other plot points . There’s even a new comic coming out that deals with beast boy and Markovia. The issues you mentioned started happening as early as season 2 but didn’t get bad until season 3, and while season 4 it is a step up it still has its problems. This show suffers from bad pacing and an ever expanding cast. And this is coming from a casual fan of both the comics and the show.
Damn, that's a lot of stuff to put in the comics and games. Thaen again, the show was canceled after season 2, so I kinda get it. Yet, it's a shame they never showed what happened to that clone.
Expanding cast was something JLU did as well. Feel like most people are more annoyed by it here because it’s a more linear as opposed to JLU that did more one and done stories other than Cadmus and Darkseid. The creators are trying to do the same thing while keeping focus on the OG cast.
@@balsasjekloca9308 They’re a narrative based show while JLU had episodic storytelling. JLU fit a bit of character development and a good story into 24 minutes introducing multiple characters like Huntress and Shining Knight. That’s mainly why everyone complains about the expanded cast.
Young Justice's best work is in the first season when it focused on the 6 main characters. That season holds up to this day. Can't say the same for Seasons 2, 3 or 4 for this show.
The show kneecapped itself by being a character driven show. Later seasons focused on telling more stories and developing characters related to that season’s plotline while maintaining fair focus on the OG cast. Although why they focused on Rocket( a character that barely had any significance before) eludes me.
It's stuff like this that makes me question how good of a writer Greg Weisman is because all I'm getting is a lazy man who has no idea how to write a coherent story and would rather make shortcuts, as well as alienate viewers with his blood and guts, and would rather make excuses for his bad writing skills
I feel sn 2 shouldn't be in this category. The twists and turns were executed really well and the plot was great and at the very least wasnt a convoluted mess like Sn 3 and 4
The worst part, they can't even keep the focus on the Light anymore. The Light were established early on as the true villains of the story. But nearly every new season is about some new villain that has nothing to do with them and all the heroes focus on getting rid of them instead.
s4 was soo bad, i could only watch maybe 2 eps back to back, unlike the previous seasons which were more entertaining, s4 was damn boring, after every episode of s4 i was questioning whether i was wasting my time with the show still i made it to s4 episode 14 and quit
Personally for me (and I know that there are many people that would disagree with me) one of the biggest problems of this series (except for the plenty of characters who we don't really know) is the huge amount of issues including religion, politics, social media, LGBT, depression, autism etc. Some of them are needed and are written good, but others are just there because... Well, I don't know why. They feel unreal, I can't really be connected to them. Like they simply wanted to teach me some social norms stuff instead of telling me an interesting story. That's disappointing.
The hell are you Talking about, every lgbt representation here was Just casual normal stuff That would be mo diffrent if it was hetero stuff, And i really liked The religion motive like zataras Faith keeping him sane. Its not common theme in popular media.
i agree. like is aqualad's struggles and conflict n tht he is son of villain automatically solve bcuz he has a boyfriend now n not to mention he was hetero in the first season but tht is okay buz tht happens in real life too. n wht does lagoon being in a polyandry hav anything to do with the plot. or atlantis
@@zgredczwartyniesamowity363 I think they mean how they don’t implement it cleanly with the characters. It just happens, and we’re supposed to accept it. Like Aqualad is bisexual, but when did that happen? Or Lagoon boy is in a polyamorous relationship? I don’t mind that, but when the heck did that happen? What happened between all the time skips?
I had initially been interested in Young Justice because it felt like I was getting the more mature version of Teen Titans, one my favorite childhood cartoons. Then the timeskip happened I couldn't follow the story anymore. There were bits and pieces of later stuff that looked cool, like the episode with the Harpers and Dick, that was entertaining, but in general I wasn't as interested in the later stuff.
I think the show is literally a copy of the original teen titans show we all loved with a mix of justice league unlimited. Since the elephant in the room always was where the hell is are the big superheroes in that. Teen titans was right at some point we as people need to just grow up and become adults. All things need an End and if you dont you are stuck in a childhood in adulthood becoming worse and worse.
YJ season 1 is still one of my favorite seasons of a superhero show, I was obsessed with it when it was first airing. I can't express just how disappointed I was when I found out about the 5 year time jump. The best thing about the show, in my opinion, were the characters in the original Team. I loved how they interacted with each other, as well as members of the JL. I was very attached to the original Team and I just felt/feel like the show was ruined as soon as s2 started and it wasn't the same cast anymore with a whole bunch of new characters I didn't care about. I did watch s2 the whole way through when it came out but I was pretty much done with it as soon as Wally died. I haven't seen any of the other seasons because I could tell the direction the creators were going in. I don't like how they're introducing all these characters just to do it. So yeah, I think the 5 year time jump was the worst decision the show made. I rewatched s1 recently and every time I think about it, I get kinda mad all over again and can't help but think that this show could have continued to be amazing if it went another way. It's a shame really.
Bro same watched season 3 first couple episodes and bounced mid season like how did the writing devolve so fast it was a completely different show lol 😂. Sad to see it did not improve. It could have been a perfect successor to the 2000s justice league animation series 😩
the only reason I check in on the show is to see if Wally returns, and even if he did I’m sure it would only be underwhelming with the direction the show has been going
One thing with Lor-Zod is that if you've read the good comics with him, as in his original appearances and not his Nu52 appearance, is you going... why? What? Because if you want to know how different the character is here; the names he goes by in that run are Chris Kent and eventually Nightwing. So it's a appearance only a fan would care about, but if your a fan of Chris Kent as a character you end up being annoyed. Because it's not a adaption of Lor-Zod, of Chris Kent. Its just a character with his name. It's probably do with the fact that character is being adapted now, when the Nu52 reintroduced him as a character akin to this version. He doesn't even have his special powers in this version. One character that ends up suffering from the shows overall direction is probably Jason Todd. I feel like we're supposed to care whenever he pops in and go "Hey, do you know this person. Will he do something?" but they kind of skipped over introducing him as a character, as Robin or even as Jason Todd, so that he's Red Hood already. But not adaption of Red Hood from the comics either. But one that works for Talia in a non-speaking role. And he was introduced two seasons ago, which is like what ten years ago in-universe at this stage? And nothing is done with other than wink at the audience. We skip characters getting attached to him, we skip him growing into Red Hood. We've basically been popped into the time period where he's Red Hood, so that they can have Red Hood. But not do anything. Rocket's arc in this was very miss-managed and the way they handled Orion was... pretty pretty bad. Its not as if they really tried to, but they're basically comparing being Austistic to being... the son of the Devil, in a a sense Darkseid is a devil-ish character to New Genesis. And I know they don't mean to make that connectoin, but it's the parrell they end up drawing themselves. Sure the sounds message is nice, but it's still. "Even if they've got bad genes, they deserve respect and etc." Which is... problematic. Honestly, they were should've made a large effort to separate Orion's issues with his connection with DarkSeid but instead they put them together. Its a rather large reason why this is the accidentally becomes the message.
Another thing that made me lose interest, aside from the narrative itself, was the characters they chose to focus from season 3 onward. Forager, that little edgelord prince and Violet were the reason I stopped watching. They got way too much focus, If you like the characters they then it might be a good time, but personally I only got to see my favorite characters being sidelined. Did we get to see Bart dealing with having to fill Wally's shoes after he sacrificed himself? Tim Drake and his brotherly relation with Dick, wich could expand on Nightwing having to be a mentor? Wonder Girl could explore a Themischera plot, that I dont remember of we got to see anything. Static? Blue Beetle? Why wouldnt you introduce a character like Raven for example?
Yeah why have all those cool iconic comic characters when we can make this new character and have her give 20 minute lectures about the importance of Islamic culture and what it means to be non binary.
@Rudolph Schmidt If the show was good you wouldn't care. You're so nakedly transparent lmao. Apparently you don't respect Muslims or non-binary people if you keep whining
I really wish Aquaman (Aqualad) would have had some kind of breakdown. For seasons he was shown to be the stoic leader, always stowing his feelings for the greater good. And now, this season every character told him something needed to change or he would break. Then, he spends the entire season ignoring their advice.... but then nothing happens. Imo, he should have had a mental breakdown as a result of stress and ignoring the advice of the others. I don't think I've seen him show weakness in the entire show and this was the PERFECT opportunity to make it happen.
I think your criticism near the end perfectly encapsulates how the show has changed over the years Seasons 1 & 2 were more focused on being their own thing and being accesible to people who have never read the comics Whereas season 3 and 4 are more focused on hardcore DC fans who have dipped their toes in other stories, but that results in alienating people who haven't. Razor is a perfect example. He was arguibly the best character in Green Lanter: The Animated Series and was completely original to it to boot Both shows aired and were cancelled roughly at the same time after their 2nd season. And when Razor returned in Young Justice, I was personally ecstatic as I thought that his story would never get a proper conclusion (as his fate was left realtively vague, with the Blue Ring of Hope going after him being the last we saw of him) But ,then I realised that most people weren't as excited, because how COULD they be when he had only previously existed in one show that was cancelled a decade ago And the way he was brought back was with the assumption that everybody knew why he was important, resulting in most viewers being confused and left out of the loop
You really hit the nail on the head for most of not all of the reasons I felt so disconnected from season 4, and season 3 as well. It's so sad to watch one of my favorite shows fall so far from what I originally loved it for. You put it all together really eloquently and well articulated. I really agree
Remember Justice League Unlimited? I feel like season 3 was trying to emulate that. The problem is that Justice League Unlimited came after the Justice League, which focused on the original team. It had 2 jam packed seasons( each episode was basically an hour) and that served it well. It also did the smart thing of focusing on certain characters for certain episodes, and not jumping around all over the place or cramming them all together. Only in real unifying events they all came together. S4 kinda picked up on this but it still felt off. Probably the pacing. Young Justice only had one season before it started introducing new team members, and had a big time skip. We never got to slow down and digest anything! So everything feels like a game of ping pong. You start to not invest, and just watch for the sake of watching. And that's not good when the show has a diminishing animation and dialogue quality. I'm serious, I know that Cartoon Network probably gave the show more funding in 2010, but Jesus. Thats no excuse for poor color scheming and design choice. Now the show is starting to be reduced to: ooooh look such and such from the comics! Do you remember this from issue 536373737? Oh my god guys, it razor from GL! Ya know, the show you may have watched from DC Nation 12 YEARS AGO. It's the equivalent of a parent jingling keys in front of their toddler.
This show is written like a comic, a good idea that is tossed aside for random or just dumb stuff. Writers losing focus on their own plot threads and then magical fixing every via two minutes of sudden enlightenment. Its basically key jangling the tv show. God i hope they dont try to do Red Hood/Jason Todd. They just haven't earned it!
@@christopherbennett5858 given they leap frogged him, its less 'hinted' and more 'key jangle'. Ohhh look viewer, it Jason... Ohhh clap for us, member utrh!!. They gonna force feed the viewer some stunted flashbacks about 'how much he ment to Dick, such sad,' like thats an acceptable route of story telling?
@@jim-bob3093 Unfortunately, the remaining fans are ones who either want headcanons validated or have sunk so much time into this that its not funny anymore.
Brushing aside Zatanna in her own arc for Savage's stunted flashback was the red flag for this season, but that Razer episode out of nowhere in Rocket's arc was truly the killshot for me in finally giving up Young Justice
The moment I saw Razor, I was ECSTATIC. Mainly because I watched Green Lantern TAS. However, it was only after the season did I realize "Wait... That show was from a near decade ago, do certain fans of YJ know about it?" I appreciate the follow up, especially since there was never a follow-up since the show was cancelled due to poor toy sales (see the pattern??). Had YJ been like on-going rather than a brief hiatus between seasons, I think the development of all the old and new characters would have been done well. They try to make the season based on the current year it was released but the timeskips cause the show to suffer. Heck, I had to look up on the wiki page on Cassie and Tim's relationship only to find out they broke up. Off screen. I was surprised they became a couple in the 2nd season, but I was excited to see their dynamic. Sadly, like with Zatanna and Dick, we don't see much of it. I know the show isn't always about romance, but the way the relationships are handled as so messy. I mean, look at Lagoon Boy! No offense to those w/ that relationship, but that was a literal bombshell when he had a wife AND a husband.
Young Justice taught us all a valuable lesson. Sometimes an ending, even if it still remains open is better than a continuation. We all wanted Young Justice to continue and what we got? Dissapointment, boring story, unlikable new characters, old characters ruined, bad writing etc etc. We should just let Young Justice go and enjoyed it while it lasted.
Maybe it’s your age. Especially when a criticism is “they focused on social media ,” like yeah, it’s 2022. Get with the times. Me and my friends LOVE season 3&4! It hit on so many great points and introduced so many new people for us to TH-cam their comic book origins which is always an exciting time with friends.
@@stiletteleray1326 Oh ok, you and your friends liked it so it must be good right? My age is 27, I'm young enough to know all the modern tropes but still old enough to know a thing or two about storytelling and character development. Something that the the latest seasons of YJ were clearly lacking. "It's 2022, get with the times" You say that as if 2022 is somehow the pinnacle of literature and all stories are so much better than they were before. This of course couldn't be further from the truth. We not only have reached new lows with stories and characters but we have went even lower than rock bottom in terms of stories and characters. There is not a single franchise that is at better state than they were 10-20 years ago. They have all gone downhill.
@@georgehouliaras7239 wow it definitely sounds like you just have a problem with modern times. “Story telling” is not a hard science with testable measurements so you nor i get to dictate what is “better” or “rock bottom.” If you seriously think things were better in the past then maybe you don’t have the shorter attention span that most people now a days have. That’s fine, there is media that still exist for you, but that does not make fast paced media “bad.” Just different.
@@georgehouliaras7239 especially for you to say 20 years ago, that’s a big ouchie. So much media in the early 2000’s was ableist, sexist, homophobic, and racist. “Cheap jokes” are NOT good story writing in my opinion. But again, literature, like all art, is subjective so neither of us get to say what’s “better” story telling.
@@stiletteleray1326Apparently it is science for the writers nowadays because they suck at it. You kinda do, when you had 10 good cartoons like Spiderman TAS, Batman TAS, Spectacular Spiderman, Xmen TAS, Superman TAS, Justice League etc etc while now you barely have only 1 or 2 good cartoons, you can see the difference. We are the fans, we determine such things like what is good and bad and while I have seen mixed critics with Young Justice now when it was only 2 seasons, the show's reception was far more positive. Fast paced? Spiderman TAS is way more fast paced than Young Justice so I don't think thats the problem. I don't have a problem about the times and modern cartoons but It's difficult to say now they even compare to the older cartoons.
Couldn't agree more. Season 1 was like wow, the DCAU has returned in new form. Then 2 was like, wow, that was a big jump. Season 3 was like wow, it's barely even the same show now. Very odd creative decisions with what very well could have been one of DC's greatest achievements.
i loved season 1 and was really confused when season 2 aired because of like the major timeskip. i was so confused i essentially forgot about season 2 and never watched anything after it. to me the only good Young Justice is the first season, and when i think about it its the only season i really acknowledge. i think this show had a ton of potential....but it lost that potential pretty early on.
The funniest thing about Razer is that hes not even a character from the comics he originated form Green Lantern the Animated Series which is soooooo obscure. Razers arc in Young Justice basically continues off of his story in that show which makes no sense.
I hate to say this, but I feel like Young Justice gets worse and worse as the seasons progress. A part of me wants a 5th season, where they hopefully fix the issues I had with the 4th season, but... I said the exact same thing after season 3. My biggest issue with this season was the fact that we were promised that the story would remained largely focused on the original team. I do admit that they did in fact focus a lot on them, but I thought it meant we'd get the original team working together as a team, instead of them running in different directions, with a couple of uninteresting plot points tying it all together. There was also so much left over from the previous season that I wanted to be explored that just... wasn't. I might not have liked season 3, but I did like what they did with Geo-Force, and I was hoping for some proper follow up to that. Instead he shows up like 3 times in the entire season, and one of those was just an illusion. And I miss when this show could be mature, without needing to resort to blood and gore (When Victor got turned into Cyborg in season 3 being a good example), because it just feels jarring going from the first two season to this. It feels disconnected, like they're two entirely separate shows.
My most hated moment of this season was the flashback that showed how Batgirl became Oracle. I'm not surprised that they changed how it happened since the original source material is pretty controversial, but the way they went about it here made Barbara look like a reckless idiot.
@@clintn.kildepstein1656 The story where that happened (Batman: The Killing Joke) was inherently cruel to Barbara as a character. Not only was she shot, but was also stripped and photographed by the Joker to humiliate her and cause further torment to her father. Though Barbara's paralysis is a big plot point, she's barely relevant to the story and is only used as a plot device. It's a very controversial story that gets argued about ad nauseam, especially in the Batgirl vs Oracle debate that happens a lot in the comic community.
I feel like the more plot driven it becomes the less I care for it. I want to like the new characters in the new seasons, but they don't give those characters the emotional time growth and development that they gave the og cast. It really sucks. And it keeps getting worse and worse in my opinion.
Its like with Mary Marvel. She shows up, acts utilitarian when a literal cosmic threat comes into play and everyone just goes "You're out because you're addicted to getting stronger... in a story where Darkseid is banging on the door". You care less about Mary and more about how Zatanna's behaving. So when you see BM- I mean Baby Mama-I mean Black Mary being introduced in the epilogue as affiliated to Darkseid you go "Werk. Mary, use Kyle as a bat again to whack Zatanna."
17:49 I ABSOLUTELY agree! I never cared about Forager's character. He doesn't play much of a role in the story, and I was basically sick of his "forager talk" about five episodes after he was introduced. I really, honestly, believe he should have been one of those characters that joins the cast for, like, one episode, or a single story arc before going back to his own world. Or at the very least, he should have decided to stay behind with his new "mate" in the episode he met her, rather than subject us to yet more of the overcrowding Young Justice has been suffering from. Speaking of overcrowding, it really annoys me how they start or set up story elements, then seemingly completely forget about them. We're still waiting to see the conclusion to what happened to Kid Flash. He very obviously went into the speed force, and we've had multiple hints and references drop about him in the following seasons, and they even introduced time travel into the mix. The story is still open there, but instead the writers seem to be way too busy involving themselves in adding new stuff with every episode on the revolving door of new characters and villains they've turned the show into.
Apparently, he was in a Justice League episode, but the YJ version was so different in the design and speech pattern. I couldn’t recognize him and grew really annoyed with the character overstaying his welcome.
When did they hint he was in the speed force? I literally have never seen any hints that it even exist. I wish he was alive but I doubt it. We don’t even know if the speed force exist in young justice.
I’m a big comics fan, and yeah it’s cool to see comic stuff and comic characters, but there has to be a story based reason for bringing those things in. You can’t just add something some audience members might know for its own sake. And you can’t rely on an audience having pre-existing knowledge of a thing you introduce that has never been established in the piece itself. You the viewer should not have to do homework to understand a story. The writer(s) have to put in the leg work to properly introduce characters and concepts. To expect the audience to know extraneous information that has never before been established in any part of their story is just hackneyed and lazy and they should always have a narrative based reason for bringing something or someone new into the story
In the case of Razer, they plucked him from his show(a show that had no indication of being in the same universe as Young Justice up until this point, mind you), back peddled on his 26 episodes of character development and for what? Just for a cameo that has no story significance what so ever. There was no story reasons to bring him into the show.
Thats literally been their thing since s3. Remember back when characters appeared as an actual cameo for the objective of the episode and didnt need to develop? Maybe its simply the times nowadays because alot of shows back then, didnt just have characters drop out of the sky with no setup just for fkcus sake. Dont know whos bright idea that was.
If this was like Batman B&B or Justice League Unlimited where most episodes where meant to be stand alones, I think quick 1 episode cameos could be done fine. Even if you don’t care for a cameo character’s appearance, it doesn’t feel like they’re wasting that much time because most episodes are supposed to be self contained anyway and there aren’t that many active story arcs that need resolving. The problem with Young Justice though is that it’s a very serialized show with a crap ton of characters and storylines that still need to be resolved. Even if each cameo was limited to just one episode, it feels awful because there are so many more characters and plot lines that people are already deeply invested in and want to see more of. As much as I love Razor and seeing him become a red/blue lantern is cool, every second he is on screen is a second that could have been spent on progressing one of the many open-ended plotlines that still needs resolution.
@@lordquaz7154 they had the ship, the justice league uses the exact ship from that show for all their galactic travel, they also shows multiple green lanterns from that show. There was hints prior to his appearance.
My biggest problem was the Wally fake out. I want Wally so bad. I’m still convinced he’s trapped in the speed force but every episode that passes it seems less likely that he’ll come back. Maybe he should come back but I think the stories they can tell with Wally coming back from the dead as the status quo is completely different and all of his friends have gotten over his death would be really interesting. Especially with how he’s been treated in comics for the last decade Wally deserves better
Lmao, Well as long as he is dead, people will come back to see him. That is why they always tease like he will be back the next season with some red hering,etc. Quite smart assholes.
Kinda bummed out that Tim Drake only gets like very little dialogue and spotlight when the show is called Young Justice which is originally based on his team. S1 was magic and the best but after the time skip I kinda lost interest in it and had struggled to finish the whole S2 and 3. We need to see the blank years ugh. Can't believe they skipped Robin Jason.
The time skip was a bad decision. Even it was just a year it would've been ok. But damn we just got to the end of everyones arcs I was so excited to see how everyone developed and then bang 5 years. New characters. Some of them I was confused and shit. Then even worse in season 3. I was confused who people everyone was. Like I couldn't tell you how many times I had to Google who someone was cause they talked as if I should recognise them to then realise this is the first time im seeing them. Even season 2 genuinely felt like I had missed an entire season. If it was flipped so that season 2 was season 3 and then we could've atleast seen how my actual favourite characters.
Remember when Bumblebee went and did some weird genetic things with her baby? Neither did I till I reminded you :D wondered why the rocket side plot reminded me of something...cause her and bumblebee barely had any screen time they were basically the same character but this season we HAD to focus on rocket for some reason even though she's hardly the main cast people cared about .....I don't get why they brought Statc shock into the series and never use him. This show is really wasted potential post season 2
I've thought about Bumble Bee, and was wondering if we were going to get a follow up on that. NOPE! We get subplots for characters that don't need them.
Omg i completely forgot about her. She was pretty forgettable in s2 and I didn’t know why her character was getting some attention. Same thing for Rocket and how I felt like she wasn’t there enough to be considered a member of the original team. At least s4 tried to do something with her.
@@doctorcorgi3134 @TotoTats16. At this point, these aren't even characters so much as they are walking plot points we can't follow because they aren't on screen so they need to explain their plots to the audience again Kinda why we get SOOOO many flashbacks and exposition dumps
One of the biggest problems was the show was trying to be an line of comics in a single series. It felt like they mashed 3-4 series into a single show.
To me, it wasn't focused enough. They put random characters with arcs I didn't care. And the characters I did care about had terrible arcs or no arc at all.
The issue with young justice now is it's like the CW, focusing on interpersonal drama as opposed to a character's purpose and the bigger world. They brought in tons of relationship drama, character depression drama, it feels like I'm watching a CW show with characters resolving problems in one season and then repeating them the next.
You didnt even talk about my biggest gripe which is all of halo's unnecessary character building. The one character they really focused on in seasons 3-4 just felt so irrelevant to the major events of the show and it feels like everytime shes trying to come to understand who she is theyre just slowing down the pacing of the show to make it fit.
It’s so unfocused now. Trying too much and creating a ton of tonal whiplash. As well as having plot lines that simply do not matter and connect. The Garfield depression sub plot was literally, “he had depression, and he’s getting over it”. It doesn’t tie in or expand something else. It just invades episodes and pulls focus away from cooler stuff. I feel the writers thought that they would get praise for dedicating time to the subject, but then forgot to make it relevant. It’s all surface level.
Yeah, I agree with pretty much all of your critiques. Those time skips and the times they skipped over character development have been really bizarre. It's weird because it seems like they've got writing skills but they just want to move onto the next big story. Oh boy, and the animation?!! I guess, they just don't have the budget anymore? In their defense, I do remember a pretty decent fight scene that took place in the dark - with occasional flashes of the fighters when they traded blows. It was actually really creative and a smart use of their limited resources. Regardless of all the problems, I still enjoy the show, though. There's no other serialized animated high-stakes superhero stuff 😞Something I've enjoyed with season 3 and 4 is the villains and the episodes dedicated to Savage.
S1 of YJ is one of my favorite shows ever, but the rest...it just gets worse and worse. The show suffers from way too many characters taking up the main space and loose plotlines. I REALLY dislike how they treated the main cast of s1, especially post-hiatus. They just brush them aside, as if you're old and haggard in your 20s and it's time to let the next generation of teens take over...??? The characters change so drastically, in a way that doesn't feel satisfying but feels like they lost their personalities instead. It's such a shame.
I was so excited for this season because I thought it would go back to the main cast. It tricked the fans really because the main cast had to share the screentime with more than half the characters in the DC universe! No one got the time they needed for the story to sink in!
I might be a rare case in that I watched the show _purely_ because it featured a comic character I knew about, but I encountered a lot of the problems you had trying to get into the later seasons. Seasons 1 and 2 really make it feel like an Elseworld, in the sense that it's far disconnected from mainstream universes in an arguably good way. It borrows material from the source to ask, "What can _I_ bring to this new iteration?" instead of saying, "What can these various lores do for _me?"_ But I agree with Seasons 3 and 4 being purely comic spectacle with very little substance for what it brought previously. If you're not a DC fan, you're not going to have any idea why you should care about any of these people. They truly fumbled what could have been a more natural introduction to the world they've built, instead warping it into a melting pot of comic book plots and disconnected lores / mythos. and if anyone is reading this far, the character I came for was Klarion the Witch-Boy, and knowing he played a part in Zatanna's arc was the only motivation that had me watch the entire show. I'm not even kidding 💀
Someone online somewhere I can't recall said that the writers didn't actually know how to write development, which is why every season has a time skip and new characters. And I can see that in the change from S1 to S2 and S2 to S3. They had good short term development but very short term that was mostly learning about how they were at that point.
I think what’s funny is a show that talks about things like death and the aftermath we never know what it was like for Dick to lose what amounts to a brother in Jason.
@@creed8712 Yeah. It gets by mostly on relying on other stuff where the same stuff was done better. Effectively, its getting the fans to write a better show in their heads and praise the writers for that.
Am I the only one who watched that intervention scene with Beast Boy and Robotman talking to him and was like "Wait a minute... who are you!?" Like not who is he (because of course he's from doom patrol) but as far as this show is concerned? Nah.
And I think they were kind of leaning on the fact that Khary Payton was voicing Robotman like TT Cyborg was giving Beast Boy an inspiring speech. Or maybe they weren't thinking that, they have Payton voice so many characters in YJ in general. But yeah using Robotman was a neat easter eggs I guess but since we have spent barely any time with this universe's Doom Patrol it doesn't really leave an impact. Maybe they wanted the viewers to feel as apathetic about this as Beast Boy did? If they did, it worked.
@@SketchCartoonGuy Yeah. This series loves using offscreen stuff as a crutch. I mean, for goodness sake, Jason Todd's tenure as Robin was all in those 5 years and we're just bored waiting for him to do something.
As someone who actually enjoys the comics, I hated season 3 and had no interest watching anymore of it. It had the exact problems you described and the new characters did not appeal to me because there was no set up. New people were just shoved into our face and we had to roll with it. I remember we spent an entire episode following characters that hadn't been integral before and it wasn't even focused on them, their life and motivations or any internal conflict to get to know them. Instead it was just on the plot of going from Point A to Point B. I was incredibly disappointed. A character from the comics appearing doesn't have enough weight to make me excited and keep me interested if its done poorly. It's just going to make me upset.
Oh my god thank you for this... I agree with literally everything, I don't want to literally Google character names to learn who they are and their relationships with others. This isn't how a tv show should work
I actually really enjoyed Phantoms as a season, but even I can admit it had some glaring issues. You did great work with this video and made some good points! Keep up the amazing work Lowart!!
I feel like you hit the nail in the head with the issues surrounding YJ right now, even speaking as someone who enjoyed the previous two seasons. I remember really enjoying watching S1 when it was airing, but I'm also a big super hero and comic book fan, so seeing a lot of the characters they included in the show was honestly pretty fun and a big selling point to me, even though I totally understand how it could feel alienating for people who enjoyed the show more for what it is. IMO it seems like the team behind this season actually tried to adress a lot of the problems people had with the previous season, but it still missed the mark in actually solving the three main ones: 1) the animation is still way worse, which reeks of budgetery issues to me; 2) even though they tried to bring the season back to its roots with the OG characters specific arcs, like you pointed out they failed to adress a lot of lingering plot threads surrounding them from previous seasons; 3) and once more they still keep adding and bouncing back between multiple new characters and their storylines; Overall, I don't think it's the worst show or anything, but I complety understand the disappointment a lot have felt with it, especially when there was so much hype surrounding its revival. To conclude, just two things I wanted to add really quick. The martian getting the planet is actually supposed to be a sort of "plot twist", that's actually adressed in the show somewhat. The planet he recieves is the same one Chameleon Boy says his species lived in originally, implying his species descends from the white martians. It doesn't add up to much, but it at least explains the purpose of this scene. Also, I said "oh no" out loud when they mentioned Sanctuary in the final episode, a reaction I assume a lot of comic fans might've had too, specially when this is a story with Wally West in it lol.
Oh I totally agree. They want to continue showing they know mental health issues... and they bring up Sanctuary? That's like saying that, as a way of showing your understanding of systemic racism, you say you're going to remake the movie Crash.
@@christopherbennett5858 right? If they adapt that story faithfully for this, imagine if they decide to bring Wally back by having his return killing everyone in the mental health facility lol
@@masterdhegamer6661 And, if they don't,, they're either going to throw Harley and Booster in as last minute additions or throw another character as the villain. If you lay clues that the Butler did it, hear that people have figured out that the Butler did it and change it to the maid last minute to throw people off, y'all wasted everyone's time.
@@christopherbennett5858 god that story was so messed up. It killed a lot of the good momentum Rebirth had going foward. It's also weird that they haven't introduced Harley yet, they even had a Suicide Squad episode and she wasn't there.
finally someone is talking about how bad this season was. So many people were blindly saying how good it was and I would watch it and be so confused what show they were talking about.
@@guillesuperior This season seemed alot more preachy on trying to make me accept Islam and understand what it means to be non binary. Only problem is I don't care I already accept Islam and know what that is show me nightwing fighting clayface or literally anything but that. Also this is a genuine question. Did I have a fever dream or did the show have an entire arc showing how polygamous relationships are okay?
I remember when we as a community fought to get Season 3 and we were so excited when we were finally gonna get it. But my love for this show just died out after season 3 came out. That's how bad it was. Season 4 is better than 3 but it's still a terrible season. Season 1 was a grounded story centered around interesting characters and their interpersonal dynamics. Season 2 was superfluous in the sense that there were more characters than needed but it was still an extremely cool story and it tied itself together at the end. But Season 3 and 4 are such garbage, I can't believe that they butchered my favorite show.
Completely agree with everything you said. My biggest issue is the time skips and the bloated cast. I dont want you to tell me development happens SHOW ME! They need to reduce the cast back to the originals and then make separate shows for everybody else.
Season 1 was the only really good season of the show. Season 2 lost a lot of points because of that timeskip and Wally's death but it still had a good level of quality. Season 3 and season 4....grabage.
I feel you're right on the money. Young Justice has moved so far away from what made the first season so good and has decided to leave most character development off screen and focus more on building an expansive and frankly convoluted universe. I was talking to someone the other day who had never seen Young Justice and they asked me to describe what was happening in the show and I gave up trying to make sense of the narrative. They spend so much time on the grieving process of characters but don't actually do all that much with it. The fact that we didn't even get a scene where Beast Boy finds out Conner isn't dead? That's kind of unbelievable. Obviously his trauma goes beyond Conner's death but we still should have seen when he found out he was alive. When they want to tackle a social issue they sure talk about it for a bit but they don't give it the time it needs to breathe because they're too busy with everything else. Razor is from Green Lantern: TAS specifically and while I appreciate the follow-up I don't think it benefits YJ at all to include that continuity into it's already messy DC universe. It was nice to see him again and it was cool to see him use the power of both of his rings but you're thoughts on the inclusion more than sum up why that fanservice for GLTAS isn't going to resonate with YJ viewers that aren't familiar with that other animated series or some comics or characters. They keep dangling characters that are underutilized in prior animated and live action series and films but don't really DO anything with them. It seems like they just want to include them either because they're fans or because they don't want anyone storming in to complain that some character in the DC universe isn't around. Yet it took until now to introduce Supergirl. The time skip after season 1 already turned Young Justice into a different show from the first season and it lost its focus as more and more characters were introduced, barely used then sidelined till they are needed in a particular moment. What even IS the plot anymore? How has this show gone nearly 100 episodes without delivering on storylines from the first season? It makes me wonder if TSSM would have become such a bloated mess and honestly based on season 2 some would argue it was already heading that direction. Is there no hope for a Greg Weisman show? They either end early without satisfaction or they get padded out to the point where they can never come to a coherent ending that is adequate payoff for people who were watching it from the beginning. I will give them credit for giving us more with some season 1 characters particularly Zatara, Zatanna, Artemis, Cheshire, Superman, Superboy, Miss Martian, Klarion and Savage. But even in their own arcs Rocket, Aquaman and Nightwing were somewhat brushed aside. But so much of those character's growth was simply not shown. I also want to give them credit for showing Miss Martian and Beast Boy dealing with Conner's death in different ways but in BB's case its still hard to say that all those constant looks into his status amounted to much. You'd think more would have been accomplished in 26 episodes but evidently, no.
My main issue is that we only go one season of the original cash I feel season two should have been around the season 1 cast including rocket ( and maybe they add wonder girl in mid season 2 but if they don’t then keep for season 3) to me the show now has two many characters and the characters we knew before have been sidelined for no reason at all
My issue was they tried to do too much. What made Season 1 and Season 2 work was there was a single conflict that tied into many character flaws that resolved as the conflict went on. You didn't need to leave the main story for Connor to become more human, to establish that a fourteen year old should not be fighting crime, that Mind Powers are a human rights violation waiting to happen, etc.... Season 3 and ESPECIALLY Season 4 have relied on Filler to attempt to flush out characters and keep you interested. Razor only exists to pander to people like me. Aqualad being Gay only exists to Pander to people who want to see gay characters. etc... etc.... and what pisses me off more is how viscerally the fans and creators attack people with a dissenting opinion. It's so infuriating.
Season 3 and 4 were so unfocused that's the simplest way I would describe what the show became, I really expected a big pay off from beast boy depression arc but literally nothing came out of it...
5:54 My friend and I had a running gag in Outsiders where we'd constantly point out and laugh at all of the scenes the characters had masks or other things concealing their mouths so the animators didn't have to animate lip flaps. XD
They really did mcomm dirty He represents magan's biggest mistake, a mistake she did in S1 when she was a naive girl She left him behind in an oppressive environment
It honestly feels like they're just focusing on the wrong things. Which reminds me that it seemed like they were gonna have something about Miss Martian & her sister and have her help get through the loss of Superboy. But then she just disappears until the end of the season.
I actually found myself overall enjoying the season more than season 3. especially the latter half. and where it ends up with the stinger certainly has me curious but I can understand and respect these criticisms
I’m not the biggest comic fan, I don’t read any comics nor watch other DC shows but something I liked about the first seasons was that I didn’t need to know. I didn’t need to know the comics or watch anything else to know what was going on. It was more of a deep and thoughtful show that happened to have DC characters in it and that really helped a lot of people connect, people like my parents could have no problem watching it and fully understand what was going on. But the newest season just had me lost, I don’t know most of these new characters or why they were there, I don’t know how all of sudden all the characters I had spent years growing and dissecting were just gone, they were in the intro sequence so I had hoped that maybe they would be in it but all the characters were all so far from eachother. This show isn’t young justice anymore, just young DC I guess.
Gosh you put it all into words. I was truly disappointed in the last season. It dragged in so many things that didn't have ANYTHING to do with the show
The show has had an issue with exposition ever since season 2, and just slightly eh in season 1. But it became bad in 3. It's been my most consistent problem with the show. Dialogue often feels very unnatural as a consequence
Finished the video, and lemme tell you: I'm a HUGE YJ and DC fan. And I think all your criticisms are absolutely valid. Dialogue aside, the first 7-8 episodes were Awesome imo. But Zatanna and Kaldur were not the protagonists of their own arcs. Too much focus was given to lore, worldbuilding and side characters which, during season 1 and 2, was relegated to the canonical comics. I love seeing Rath again, but you're absolutely right about him coming out of nowhere with no context. Season 4 was clearly rushed and underfunded. The arcs feel like they were written by different people. They needed to focus on the main crew and their shared grievance. Imagine how much better it would be if, after the fourth episode, the team gets back together and actually showed up in each other's arcs, if not went through them together. Then when Zatanna and Nightwing figure out Conner's alive and choose not to tell M'Gann, the psychic, it feels way more dramatic.
Honestly, I could write an entire dissertation on Young Justice. As a long-time fan who read the tie-in comics, checks in Greg Weisman's online forum where he answers questions and likes DC as a whole, I have a lot to say. Your videos actually make many great points and express similar opinions that I have. For example, the show prioritizing plot over character development, the unnecessary characters and plot lines and the wretched timeskip. I know the creators had planned the 5 year jump pretty much as soon as S1 was released, but it still feels like the worst decision the show ever made in terms of storytelling. I don't like that they glossed over so many important events in the character's lives and I feel like YJ would have been a lot better if they had stuck with the Team from where they left it in S1 and continued their arcs from that point in time. I'm not against them aging, but I hate that we missed 5 whole years of potential development. Miss Martian and Nightwing's stories, in my opinion, could have been super interesting and it's a shame that the creators didn't utilize that potential. I would have loved to see Nightwing grow into his own person and figure out how to lead in a way where he can stay true to himself, and see Miss Martian master and utilize her abilities in the best way possible, perhaps even including ethical discussions that I know the writers are capable of nailing. There are so many great possibilities, and I'm saddened that we got a watered down version of these things at best, and a complete erasure of their character arcs at worst. This may be a really unpopular opinion, but I still enjoyed S4 more than S2 and A LOT more than S3. I wish there weren't so many new characters in the show, but I feel like they were utilized relatively well in S4. Most of it was focused on the OG Team (especially Conner) and when new people appeared, it was mostly to further the plot or assist with character development. There definitely was a lot that could have been cut, especially during Zatanna's and Raquel's arc, but overall, I'm not mad at this season. There are many things I enjoy, like the fact that the creators are more free to address social issues, the interesting world building in Mars and the way they worked in some comic references and callbacks from S1. Re-watching S1 makes me nostalgic and wonder about how amazing could have been with all the ambition, talent, and creativity from the writers, artists and voice actors, but I'm able to enjoy the show for what it is.
@@21quepasa Completely agree! There is a lot of room for improvement here, at least in my opinion. But of course, we can't retroactively change anything that's already been released so I'm doing my best to be happy about the good parts of the season and skip the episodes that I don't enjoy when I'm watching it. I'm still hoping for a S5 so I'll definitely keep streaming YJ on HBO Max and using the hashtags on social media.
Honestly, the social issues in s4 didn’t fit in the story. The meta human trafficking in s3 was kind of interesting, but the way they kept on showing mental health in s4 was a bit bothersome, especially Beast Boy. Sometimes, there would be a fight scene going on, but then it cuts to BB feeling depressed. The way they kept on mentioning mental health felt ham fisted when the execution was better in s1. And Violet being a Muslim was random along with that annoying blue girl simping for her. The Lagoon Boy centric ep was also unnecessary since he doesn’t contribute anything to the story. You could cut out all of these characters and nothing would’ve happened. The cast is too overstuffed and old characters have to be pushed to the background in order to introduce more boring new characters.
I think they should of refocused after the invasion. I don’t mind Blue bettle and his team being included. But it should of ended their introducing all these groups when we all really only care about the core from season 1. YJ just became their outlet to make this crazy DC universe.
I honestly don’t think I would’ve noticed any of the problems with season 4 if beast boy’s arc wasn’t left like it was. Beast boy has been my favorite hero for a long time so seeing him struggling like that was really emotional for me and when they didn’t show anything after super boy came back, I was more than a bit annoyed.
The issue with YJ as a whole is that it’s a merge of the characters from young justice comics and the teen titans comics. Issue is that both series have their og characters and lore so mashing it together will cause issues. Then you have character bloat which gets worse season to season along having other backfilled content in comics. Sorry to say this to the people that make the show is that people who watch the won’t often read the comics as this show is a mashup of two different comic teams. So like the guy in the video stated he doesn’t know most of these characters as he doesn’t read dc comics like that. And finally stop using milestone characters if they are just going to be background characters.
It's so sad because Young Justice, next to Avatar and Ben 10 Classic, is one of my all-time favourite shows and to see it go down the drain (like A:TLOK) is heartbreaking. I advocated with other fans for years to get another season and when season 3 was announced I was so excited ... if I only knew then what was coming :( I still wonder to this day what season 3 would have looked like if the show wasn't canceled, because it sure as hell wouldn't have been what we got now. S3&4 did have some good moments and some new characters that I liked, the problem is how they handled those moments and characters. A lot of times things felt rushed at times where they should have taken things slow. They also put too much attention on moments that weren't relevant to the story and should never have been included in the first place. I totally felt disconnected from all the characters from S1&2 and the plot twists in S3 felt underwhelming, it was almost a recap of S2. The story in S3&4 is just all over the place and isn't focused at all. And don't even get me started on the pandering towards social justice, that's also a major factor in its downfall. Young Justice has always been diverse without trying or pandering toward "the message", in S3&4 it's taken a lot of screentime and just sucks and feels forced. People didn't watch Young Justice for social justice, I wish they'd let go of that idea and go back to the core of Young Justice and what it really is about. It just saddens me every time I think about what we could have gotten versus what we actually got because they had some very good ideas and if they were handled properly it would have been epic. I also hate the new art style! PS. S2 originally had 26 written episodes but they couldn't include them all because of their cancelation and cuts. I still wonder what those extra 6 episodes would have been.
Even though the show introduces new characters, they're never significant. New YJ fails at what the old DC animated series did great: building a world that feels believable, and in that world exists characters that all feel compelling. Heck, that's what Season 1 did. You might not know EVERY character, but even if they show up for just one episode, they leave a lasting impression on you. JL and JLU and YJ S1 were prime examples of having a core cast of characters that were set up, allowing for others to bounce of them.
Damn, this hits some great points of things that bothered me for season 4, I was really sad to see a bunch of waisted moments and new characters I didn’t know beyond “huh they looks familiar”. There was no emotional fallout or consequences for hard hitting moments, things kept moving and progressing, and random things just happened. I really grew to like the outsiders in seasons 3, and the idea of the youth center and static shock coming back, but I felt like we saw nothing of them beyond Garfield being mean to them or them in the background, the intervention seen was so weird because I didn’t know half of the character S in the room! The main point here is like you said, they did to much, threw to much on screen and had to many random arcs that made everything feel like a mass of puzzle pieces all out of place and missing pieces
For me, the first season of Young Justice is up there with Batman: The Animated Series. Watching that for the first time, I truly felt like a little kid and it made me want more of those characters. I'd give that season an A+. Season 2, while the 5 year time jump was initially jarring, I quickly came to like the new change to the status quo and liked the new characters. I really enjoyed Blue Beetle, Impulse and others. At the same time though this is truly where a lot of YJ's problems start. We keep getting hints and references to events that happened off screen during that 5 year period but we're just TOLD about them, we never see them. Also, all the character development and growth that would have taken place, again we don't get to see that, we just know that they've changed because they're acting a bit differently. However I look back at that and think, "I would have loved to have seen the story where Conner discovers Megan is abusing her powers and she tries to mind-wipe him. I would have loved to see Dick Grayson become Nightwing. I would have loved to have seen what prompted Wally & Artemis to retire from being heroes. I would have loved to have seen Jason Todd. [I'll get to him later.]" There were also some problems with the length of the season. Season 2 had only 20 episodes while the first season had 26 so we weren't able to flesh out all of the new characters. For example, Tim Drake and Wonder Girl are revealed to be dating at the end of season 2. But all throughout season 2, there's never any indication of attraction between the two of them. You don't see Tim acting nervous around Cassie or Cassie trying to tag along on his missions because she wants to be around him. I don't think there's any scene where they even exchange dialogue; heck, we actually see Cassie kiss Arsenal before we're TOLD (This show loves to tell and not show) she kissed Tim. Greg Weisman kept insisting that a lot of the stories that we didn't get to see told he planned to tell in a tie-in comic where all those stories would be canon to the show. That's quite a problem because: A) DC has trouble getting people to read their comics as it is and barely promotes comic that don't star Batman as a main character. B) I shouldn't have to read a comic to understand what's going on in a TV show. However, despite all of that I still really enjoyed season 2 of Young Justice and I'd give that either an A or an A-. Season 3 comes along after 6 years and all the promos are teasing, "The Heroes You Demanded Are BACK!" They're showing images of new heroes like Arrowette, Spoiler, Cassandra Cain. Too bad they never DO anything with them because we had to follow around: -Brion, who was just European Conner without anything interesting. -Halo, who was really written more as checklist than an actual character (Something they worked on s4 to correct) -Forager, who quickly became the most annoying character in the whole series. In s3 it seemed like they had no idea who or what the series was about anymore. They kept focusing on dumb things like social media and occasionally having Luthor parrot Donald Trump quotes. And if you go back and watch that, a lot of the fight scenes involve focusing on someone holding up their camera phone and then showing us what they're filming on their camera phone instead of just the fight itself. You can just tell that it was written by two old men who don't really understand social media (Something Weisman's said about himself in the past). There's also the problem of gearing the show towards an older audience by having their be more violence and blood. I thought that was a TERRIBLE move. YJ used to be a show everyone could watch, now it became a show that everyone (at a certain age level) could watch. Smart move. Also...there had to have been some budget cuts for season 3 because there are so many scenes where characters are using the psychic link for no real reason, they're not on a mission, they're just sitting together, or episodes where a character will APPEAR and a character or characters will speak to them but they won't respond. They did this in the episode where Dick Grayson was really sick and then the team found out what Batman was really doing behind the scenes. Beast Boy is yelling at Tim Drake that Cassie will never forgive him but Tim says nothing in reply, just looks dejected. In that same episode we see that Conner & Megan are also having an argument but doing it over the psychic link. That way you can have the characters APPEAR in an episode but since they don't TALK, you DON'T have to pay voice actors for reading lines and in some cases, you don't have to pay royalties to creators. If you feel brave enough, go back and watch season 3 and look for that because once I noticed it, it was impossible not to keep noticing. And of course, the use of still images for animation shortcuts is very noticeable. I can be a bit forgiving in regards to using it in flashbacks but only to a point and there are times where it was used not in flashbacks where I just kept wondering what had happened. Weisman has said they have a bigger budget compared to the first two seasons but I want to know where it's going. The best grade I can give season 3 is a C-. Season 4...I actually enjoyed quite a bit more than season 3. Not as much as season 1 or 2 but still more than season 3 so I'll take that. While the idea of giving characters focused arcs was interesting, a problem was a lot of times it would drag on and on. Superboy and Miss Martian's arc at times felt like a Martian travelogue and was starting to remind me of that farm from the second season of The Walking Dead; I kept wanting to go somewhere else. Artemis' arc was interesting but...a bit predictable. Zatanna's arc was interesting and I thought it strange that despite being with them only a short time, I found her three students more interesting than Brion, Halo & Forager. Aqualad's arc felt kinda slow and sluggish up until the final part which I really enjoyed. Rocket's arc, I felt it did have potential but the problem was I pretty knew what her conclusion was gonna be by the end of her first episode. Also, she felt like a SUPPORTING character in her own arc. I mean, I knew who Razer was but I felt his presence actually away from this being Rocket's story. And unless you watched the Green Lantern animated series, you're gonna have no clue who this guy is and therefore you don't have a reason to care. That's problem with this show, it expects you have to have the same level of understanding as the writer does but they often don't give you a true reason to care unless you're familiar with the lore. It's why I'm very nervous about when it's revealed that Jason Todd is still alive; there's probably going to be all sorts of gasps and faces of shock and disbelief but...the problem is, we never SAW Jason Todd join the team, we never saw how he got along with others and we never saw them grieve his loss when he was killed. So why are we supposed to care unless we're already aware of his comic history? Nightwing's arc...well it didn't really feel like HIS arc, just more of an arc to wrap up the series that happened to feature Nightwing. However, I felt the final episode really wrapped up the season well despite all of it's flaws and in effect, could have been a good SERIES finale as well. Overall, I'd probably give season 4 a B grade. As of this writing, a fifth season of the show has yet to be greenlit, the only future YJ content out there is a comic miniseries that's taking place after the s4 finale but other than that, that's all. I hope if a fifth season does happen that they get a bigger budget to the point where the animation is like how it was in the first two seasons and also, no time skip this time. At this point, more of Young Justice has been unseen than seen. I really agree with your point about how there's no real follow-through to Beast Boy and I didn't even realize that. A big part of his story WAS his guilt over Superboy's apparent death and it would have made sense that they have this big emotional reunion with Garfield getting the chance to apologize for something he felt was his fault and Superboy telling him that there's nothing to apologize for. Instead Beast Boy was just like, "I've got a dog now, I'm getting better." I'm still on board with Young Justice, probably always WILL be. But for the past two seasons it at times has felt more like because I want to see it return to it's former glory instead of because it's a great show and I want to see what happens next.
This entire comment is actually the best. Most people are just criticising it with “It got woke”. Fr though Brion got hella interesting after he roasted his uncle. He was just a Season 1 Superboy upto that point.
One of the problems with the show is how much the creators approach the show as a fully formed universe. Sure if they were in charge of the monthly line of the DC Universe comic books they would be perfect but in a tv show format things are different. They do not have the luxury of assuming that the show is just going to stay in production. When Justice League/Unlimited was on the air that crew treated every finale as a potential series final, but this show just baits for another season every finale. But all the talk of it being an ensemble show the creators really only care about Conner and M'gann someone did a screentime chart and they have the highest amount of screentime. Like no matter how many characters they add it stops being important because they are all reduced to background NPCs. Hopefully My Adventures with Superman and Batman Caped Crusader are better and a return to form for DC Animation.
I'm also hoping for the potential animated revival of Smallville to be good. It's garbage like this that make me wonder why Greg Weisman is put on such a high pedestal when it's clear he has no idea what he's doing. If the new people at WB told him that Young Justice won't continue after season 4, I wouldn't shed a tear.
![ลองสุ่มไอโฟน 990 โกงมั้ย? [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.101 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfsWe0j492k/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm probably not going to watch this show, buuuut when you said "Razor..." I got a little excited. It looks like he was not well introduced, but he was a popular character in Green Lantern: The Animated Series that was airing (I think like back-to-back) with Young Justice back during season 2. From what you said, it looks like this episode pretty much just picked up where that series ended. So there WAS a buildup, just not, ya'know, in the same show lol. Which is obviously a problem, because I imagine most viewers are like you and have NO clue who this guy is. Like, I don't actually think he's from the comics at all, so they're casting an even smaller net than usual for who will recognize this guy.
Wow. I had no idea. I just assumed he had to be from the comics. Thanks for the correction and elaboration though. That's really interesting.
Yeah, this guy fell in love with a robot that looked like his wife. His story arc was kinda weird.
@@diehard7517 AYA. She killed the Anti-Monitor. The Green Lantern Animated Series was laying groundwork for a Blackest Night Event near the very end.
No Razor is that guy and it seems that they are using the episodes he showed up in as follow ups to the animated series... which is the most braindead choice because 1. that continuity has never been established and 2. no one should have to sit through a plot getting interrupted like that for a plotpoint in another show most people probably didn't even watch.
@@NintendoHighSchool I remember AYA, though I haven’t watched the entire show. Last thing I remember was Hal meeting Guy. Apparently, the show was cancelled because the Green Lantern movie bombed.
I loved how I called the forager thing as soon as he was kicked from the hive in season 3. I literally said "oh well since everyone else gets a romance, they'll probably just introduce a girl forager at some point. She'll be like pink or something." AND THEN THEY DID! AND THEY GAVE HER THE SAME NAME! THEY DIDN'T EVEN TRY!!
To be fair I think they're all called forager
@@dragonwings123456789 Maybe if they have the same role in their separate hives. But the green one that turned evil has a different name. On a meta level though they could have at least given her a different name. But no they stuck with the "give the creature a girl version of itself as a love interest" to the letter
@@kcpugh5601 Well, she is a loose adaptation of the character from the comics, also named Forager. And Mantis does seem to have a different role in the Hive, as he seems to be the one that led that group of Foragers.
They just keep teasing things but they never actually happen. Jason Todd, Wally’s return, Apokolips invasion
And they continue to do so I hope these events will happen but who knows
They haven’t teased Wally’s return at all. They just include him in this show mostly for fan service and at least the fan service makes sense storywise since he’s mostly just illusions that other characters see. Them bringing him back for real would probably make me stop watching. That would be the final nail in the coffin that the writers have given up.
@@yungdre4500 they teased it by saying Artemis wasn’t actually talking to Wally’s dead spirit. If it really was Wally, we would all know he’s dead. But by saying it wasn’t, that leaves the door open to him still being alive
@@dynaguy3 It wasn’t Wally because Zatana in the same episode admits that she can’t summon souls. He’s dead.
@@yungdre4500 but why not just give Zatanna the ability to summon souls? There’s no good reason why Artemis had to talk to an imaginary Wally if they didn’t intend on bringing him back
Season 1 did everything right. Plot was generally tight, and you could really focus on the core group of characters. Every season since has moved away from this. Bloated cast, disjointed plot, and weak animation have really hollowed out the show.
Season 2 had a tight plot and knew how to make a story with a cast so big tho
It reminds me a lot of long-running shonen anime
Also this constant need to be gruesome and edgy Has gotten annoying as hell from DC.
When you spend most of your budget on bloated cast (voice actors), you wind up skimping on the animation budget, which is a bad idea for a cartoon.
Does it seem like the budget has been cut compared to the first two seasons? Greg Weisman says they have a bigger budget but I'm not seeing it. The animation looks choppy at times, they rely on static images a lot more and rely on characters speaking telepathically so they don't have to animate lip movements
You can tell the budget decreased when they overused telepathy because they were too cheap to animate their mouths moving.
in Invincible, in season 2 they have a joke about animation and how animators will try to find every avenue to not animate a characters mouth moving. my brain IMMEDIATELY jumped to young justice
edit: theres nothing wrong with animating this way, its pretty clever.
The time skip was unnecessary and stupid. Things I wanted to see were.
1.Jason Todd before he died as Robin
2. Superman and Superboy resolve their conflict and see how they grow
3. m'ganns power growth and so much more but we didn't get that.
Plus I don't like the art style I don't see why they had to change it.
also dick's character growth n ultimately turning to into nightwing also his conflicts with batman.
Well, what's to expect from Greg Weisman, whose writing is so lazy that Steven Universe has a better and more cohesive story than this pile of goo
@@hirarana93him becoming Nightwing was so odd especially since he had that talk with Black Canary where he claimed he didn’t want to be “The Batman”, in so far he didn’t want to develop Bruce’s drive to sacrifice whatever it took for the mission.
@@thomasraines1396 exactly. Thts why a proper story is required rather thn keep introducing characters to sell toys
@@hirarana93 exactly it’s crazy.
One thing that annoys me that doesn't get brought up a lot, didn't Superman and Superboy's conflict resolve offscreen?
I was so interested in how they were going to resolve that conflict... and then we get a timeskip and "they worked it out". Why the hell aren't you showing us that? What was the point of all the scenes about the conflict then? I'd rather spend time with that than with freaking Lagoon Boy.
It was pretty much set up with the last episode of season 1. You could say it resolved or at least showed the beginning of Clark being more comfortable then.
@@armaggedon390 The Lagoon Boy centric episode will forever be my prime example of "why the fuck are you showing me this!?"
For that matter, S2 ended with Megan being set up to be the next big villain, like in the comics, but offscreen, that seemed to just disappear.
Bro, a lot was done off-screen, the writers are more woke than ever. (woker if you will, yes I invented that word right now)
Can we talk about how Nightwing, arguably the Batfamily in general got the short end of the stick this season. Nightwings arc wasn’t even his this season, it was just the finale, he had barely any character development whatsoever. Robin(Tim Drake) was given the same treatment DC gave him which is just shafting him completely. They still haven’t even done anything with freakin JASON TODD being alive again.
How much more Bat Family do you want? (i agree with nightwing being ignored though) You got BTAS,TNBA, Batman Under The Red Hood (the co-developer actually works on Young Justice), not to mention a very developed Gotham TV show. Then Titans which basically became a Bat Family TV show in Season 3.
@@Volatik2006 maybe I’ll want more of the other character when they start doing something interesting and so far the only characters that still hold up are Dick and Wally, and Wally is dead
What is the fascination with Jason Todd?
@@Volatik2006 I mean sure, there’s a lot of Batfamily content already; however, especially relating to Jason, you can’t just name drop him twice in the show as such a tragic death people were affected by and then NEVER talk about it. Maybe the writers didn’t feel the need to given how popular Jason and the Batfamily are, but it’s like why even mention him if we never elaborate? Id rather you just left him the background as an easter egg for fans to pick up. To someone who isn’t all that familiar with Jason, it would probably make them feel like they missed something. Exactly the problem with Raizor.
@@idkanymoretbh5452 same reason they don’t elaborate on characters like fire and hardware. It’s easter eggs for comic book nerds. Other DC shows do this as well. JLU literally name dropped black adam in season 3.They’ll probably do this storyline in season 9(never gonna happen) after darkseid is gone. They’re just setting up a threat in the form of leviathan and protagonists through the super sons and jason
Razor is pure 100% fan-service. He's an original character from the cg Green Lantern cartoon that was loved by fans but only lasted 1 season. If you didn't watch that show you'd have no idea who Razor was or why he was important.
So... yeah, it's dumb. I mean I loved the GL show too but If I never saw it that episode in YJ would be a complete waste of time.
Thanks for the info. I haven’t read a lot of DC comics and have been only starting on Batman ones. Seeing Razor randomly appear made me really confused on why he was in the show. The whole time I was watching that ep made me think why I should care since YJ really loves to bring in new characters and push old ones into the background.
I watched GLTAS and it was still a waste of time for me! None of the effort they put into Razer’s GLTAS development was present in his YJ version.
@@DakotaCityRag I mean a fast rehash for people who dont know him would be fine. To make it less "who the hell is that" for a lot. And razor very much could have been relegated to cool cameo.
@@marocat4749 to lowart’s point (which I agree with) a fast rehash would not have been fine. Razer earned our emotional investment in GLTAS by taking the time to develop him properly. If they did a fast rehash in YJ, it’s too quick for investment. If they put in the time and effort, it’s a distraction from everything else they setup.
By contrast, I appreciated Kilowog’s inclusion because he has a clear function in the story already being told rather than requiring us to step away from it.
I've never watched the Green Lantern show, and I had no idea that Razer was a new character and not just some random dude from some GL comic. It didn't reduce my enjoyment of those Season 4 episodes at all. There's so much universe that these characters could be coming from, why nitpick about it?
I think Beast Boy's arc was ended way abruptly. While they have been building up his depression for entire arc, yet when they finally showed his recovery, it ended with him saying he gets better by simply having a dog. Even his argument with his sister and teammates was revolved off-screen. I highly doubt the actual recovery of the depression would be that easy.
The show itself says he's still recovering, and that's why he still didn't come back to acting or the Outsiders. Even in the newer comic tie-in, he's still recovering and just ready for his first new mission back as a hero.
@@GamerSlyRatchet1 Which does make sense.
Still, it could have been nice to have scenes showing the recovery process.
Its not as bad as Steven Universe future's six month timeskip but it would be good to show that recovery, whilst not easy, isn't scary.
I felt the same way. I would’ve liked to see Beast Boy reunite with Conner, considering how his “death” deeply affected him.
@@halloweenfriday Yeah. Whilst it could be a generic happy reaction, you could have Gar relapse a little since his grief was, technically, for nothing,
Dang they did that? I don’t like when shows showing characters getting “better” after going therapy, or getting meds. As someone who suffers with mental health it does not get better that fast, I had relapsed a lot.
Rocket was done dirty. We only got introduced to her at the finale of season 1, being the newbie to the team of character we got to know earlier in the season. I thought at the time when season 1 ended we were going to see how she would meshed with this established team of characters in the next season. However the time skip in season 2 happened, Rocket moved on to the League and we never got much of anything other quick snapshots of her life in season 2 and 3. By the time the writers/creative team of Young Justice decided to dedicate an arc to Rocket in season 4, she STILL had to share the spotlight. And even with the time she did get in the arc, I did not have the same feelings for Rocket that I did for other original team members. Even Zatanna who was a slightly later addition to season 1 herself, had more development throughout the series than Rocket ever did.
I think the biggest issue outright is that they tried to make too much of an intricate plotline for the series. They got way too deep into the hidden war and story with that instead of focusing, as you pointed out, on the characters. Let alone the passage of time element.
Razer is SUPER cool. . . but only because he's actually an original character from a completely different series that got cancelled before that character finished it's plotline. They pulled in a fan favorite from a completely different series just to continue his arc. And it's RLY fking cool for the people who saw the other show.
The series is called "Green Lantern: The Animated Series", and it's FULLY CGI/3D animation. It's a rlly gud show.
It was cool, but I don't think it fit. Razer is a fantastic character in the green lantern TV show, but him showing up out of noware, resolving his character arc in a 20 minute eppisode, when in the original show, he was just starting to accept his new identity, and then fucking off to find Aya is just so disrespectful to him. Like, he didn't even have the chance to interact with Hal.
@@lordquaz7154 no, they didn’t resolve it, just progressed it.
I watched it and loved it. I love razer's arc in green lantern, but if it gets in the way of making another story put it up until you can tell it.
I'm honestly loved young justice and I'd honestly rather it've ended in season 2 than become this trainwreck.
@@Hadeks_Marow They back peddled on his development, and in the story of young justice, Razer's presenc was not needed. If he comes back in season 5 or they bring back the Green lantern TV show, then I'd be happy with what they did here, but as it stands now, I wish they didn't bring him back at all.
@@lordquaz7154 Then he would have died as a character in GL:TAS. When speaking in terms of concepts, a concept only dies when they are no longer used in the hearts, minds, and works of art of others.
I'm just glad he's still around.
The fundamental mistake of Young Justice was the time skip. In my opinion, one season should've been one year in the team's life. So, we could see all plot threads slowly getting resolved and some heroes stepping down while others would organically take their place. Another issue is that the show, in real time, has been going on for too long (2010-). That hiatus made everything muddled and with "modern issues" taking 60% of the story in this season, the show simply isn't Young Justice anymore.
I think, at the end of the day, everyone would've been happier with that.
To me, as mentioned in my comment, the time skips were like the gory violence, a crutch for the sloppy and messy writing of the show
Yeah but idk I give the show a lot of grace going from Cn to DC to Hbo max with 4 seasons spread out over 12 years. Even with the production nightmares they've been through Young Justice is still one of the most ambitious young adult/teen cartoons out. lt's said but its really slim pickings for animated series in this vein.
Halo: *I'm lesbian and that's the most important part of me. Defiently not the fact that there's a MotherBox living inside of me or anything*
This show sucks now
The fact that we spent like 6 months on Beast Boys Depression when there are so many unexplored arcs is amazing to me
What they did to his character so sad
i always thought of him as MEH but young justice really did the impossible and made me absolutly hate a fictional character i actually hoped he would off himself cause his sad boi phase got really tiring
@@flapjack6495 I'll take teen titans carton beast boy over this one any time.
I will never understand the show's obsession with him.
Look, I like the idea of Beast Boy being a more mature character and not being held back as Comic Relief, but they didn't need to have him be depressed and sad for an entire season.
Justice League & Unlimited did the smart thing. Introduced new characters to the league little by little, give them a few lines, show their power set. Give them a 2 parter and done. New storyline, YJ on the other hand is a scrambled mess.
Also Unlimited barely focused on some characters, like Blue Devil was in the background of a lot of things but I don’t think they even said his name.
@@yungdre4500that’s because they knew who they wanted to focus on. They had one major plot line and the right amount of characters they wanted to feature and they stuck with it
It used to be that this show could do character AND plot, at the same time, and do it well. Everything... tied together. There weren't tangents and distractions from plot and character arcs, everything was relevant in some way. And even singular character focused arcs felt important because with the way the cast interacted, one character's development would have an impact on everyone. Now things feel... messy. There's too many characters, too many plots, not enough focus on bringing them all together in a satisfying way.
I feel ya but for me the issue isnt to many characters one piece have that yhe issue the story focus and plots are a mess and gives off no clue what tbeh want to do
@@callofseiiki one piece is also, yknow, a long running anime. It has the room to juggle lots of stuff that young justice just... doesn't.
@@marinary1326 that is also a fair point true but it also try to contain in each arc what characters needed in the young jusice they keep adding unneeded cast that make it hard to juggle them all
But again ya not wrong
I completely agree. For Marvel, it would've been like going from the original Avengers to Civil War.
Really? Because I felt the final arc for this season brought most of the characters and elements from the season into the climax. Not to mention some of main characters' arcs since season 1 finally advanced or were resolved. Superboy and Miss Martian got married, Artemis reconciled with her sister, and Zatanna got her father back. Even Beast Boy got to deal with issues he's had since season 2.
“Rescue and Search” should be the standard for the show. It’s probably my favorite episode this season because it is focused, and the characters really feel like people. Even the exposition feels natural. Everyone bounces off each other and synergizes well. Charlotte Fullerton is a great writer.
21:02
Not just Beast Boy. The team has no reaction to seeing Conner in the zone. Nightwing goes “there he is!” and that’s it. This was their best friend of 10+ years, who they mourned for months, and 4/5 of them don’t even react? Have Artemis cry tears of joy or something. Even small body language would’ve been enough.
Pretty sure Artemis is smart enough not to have an emotional break down in the middle a life or death situation. You think it would make more sense for her to start crying when to rescue Superboy?
The Team more or less figured out that Connor was alive. At that point they were just hellbent getting him back. They had plenty of reaction.
@@ShinobiPXO By that point they weren’t sure he was alive though. They were going off Zatanna’s and Rocket’s visions with no guarantees. I mean that’s the whole reason M’gann wasn’t with them.
Also lol I was exaggerating a bit with the crying thing. Even a little tear or smile makes a big difference. Just look at M’gann’s reaction. She’s giddy and lets out a little laugh when she feels Conner’s mind. It’s not anything big, but it really makes the scene more impactful.
@@s.x.1321 They were obviously pretty sure. And the situation did not call for an emotional reaction.
M'gann found out in the Watchtower
The Team found Connor on a stealth mission in a ghost dimension filled with Kryptonian criminals. If Artemis got emotional, they might have been caught so she kept in check until they got to safety
Like in the season one when artimis "died" and Megan and wally had a reaction
@@shawnjohnson2229 Not really the context at all. Wally was pretty happy when he *thought* Artemis was alive again.
I think the shows biggest issue is overcrowding. For a show that shines with its fantastic characters, they’re constantly pushed aside for new characters to show up. Take brion for example, who despite being a major character and the biggest cliffhanger of season 3, he literally just disappears all of season 4 until the very end, and we’re all excepted to still remember and care about his conflict. Its really messy, and makes barely any sense. For me, my favorite characters from the show are tim drakes robin, batgirl, red arrow, and wonder girl, all of whom are essentially unused in season 4, which is really frustrating as a long time fan. The show seems obsessed with bringing in new characters and doing stories with them, when honestly they could just, use preexisting characters and developing them. Take the zatanna arc for example, where they randomly introduce the character of mary marvel; who is revealed to be a former hero who lost her powers and is now learning magic with zatanna. This is such a useless character to bring in. Why not use an existing hero like wonder girl instead? Have her lose her powers and seek out new magical ones with zatanna. Storywise it fulfill the exact same role, a former hero looking for new purpose in life, who struggles with that role. This even enhances the reveal in the finale that mary has joined darkseids team because if its wonder girl leaving the train instead of a complete stranger, theres actual drama there between the team. Another example is that jay garrick, (the old man flash) is one of the justice league members who goes to new genesis with rocket. Why???? He’s never been important before, and you could’ve just as easily used barry allens flash, or literally any preexisting hero, especially since they later admit this character is over 100 YEARS OLD, so why in gods name is he still going on missions? This is just one example, of how growing the relationships of existing characters instead of introducing new ones would revolutionize the show. I actually disagree with lowart that the issue with the show is relying on the comics, because even as a major comic fan, these random character introductions still seem really random and out of place to me, because they’re written so differently from the comics they still feel like strangers; and the constant time jumps between seasons, make me feel like I just started watching a tv show several seasons in. I honestly think the writers have become lazy. They don’t bother setting up relationships, or building up new characters, they just introduce 20 new heroes all at once, give 10 of them an interesting plotline, and then throw most of them away, only to be used in cameos from now on. Its sad to see this once fantastic show die out like this, but its happened nonetheless.
Agreed. For me, after season 1 they strayed away from character relationships with the main cast. I like the idea of maybe several seasons in you could filter new characters in as old character arcs are fulfilled but they skipped over important points like how robin became nightwing. They waste screen time on characters who will never get that screen time again thus wasting everyone's time.
Mary is a bad example. She was supposed to be in the show severql times during season 2 with Freddie and Donna Troy but the budget kept the 3 of them out. It was only a matter of time before she at least had a cameo like Donna keeps getting
On the Jay part that is mentioned in the arc that he's coming out of retirement to as a member of the League and it's not like he's new, he's shown up multiple times in the other seasons
Overcrowding def is an issue. It seems at some point the series stopped being about the core characters and more about the wider DCU. It stopped really being "Young Justice", especially with all the time jumps.
@@hectichooligan8299 If that's the case, the writers should have just let her go. One less storyline in this show would be very much alright.
YJ derailed so hard after season 1, they did a massive time skip and put too many characters in for no reason. DC likes to rush things and think they can just speedrun through character developments and create a giant universe with a lot of characters but they tend to forget that it's the slow journey and small amount of characters to focus on is what makes a show great.
FYI marvel is no different and neither is Disney in fact they are both facing a lot of negative criticism both in live action and the comics right now, so next time do your research before you talk shit
@@gilbertmillers4865 who said I thought Marvel was better?
@@gilbertmillers4865 the live action is pretty fine they just don't throw characters you see some type of development for each characters. Look at end game. Each Chacter at the end battle had some show or time center on them before that battle happen.
@@livedhill1640 well since we’ve entered the 2020s the old and new characters that have been brought back + introduced aren’t really that good with the way the production team & staff have been writing them lately
@@gilbertmillers4865 Marvel still spends time with their new characters regradless the script unlike YJ where serve as background or standard hero
13:53 Razor is a character from the Green Lantern the animated series (which was cancelled and it's a really good show)he basically starts off as a Red lantern goes through some romantic problems with his girlfriend Ai name Aya and by the end of the show he becomes more at peace with himself and becomes a Blue Lantern. He actually has a pretty similar arc as Zuko both personality and aesthetic.
Which is cool.
@@itsblitz4437 Right!😆
I forgot about green lane the animated series, I need to get around to watching it in full
Razor is the realist nigga in the world I almost cried when I was him in young justice
@@lorkrian13 I SCREAMED SO HARD WHEN I SAW HIM AGAIN AND JUST HIS PRESENCE ALINE WITH HIS BLUE LANTERN RING FILLED ME WITH SO MUCH HOPE!
My problem with every season after seasons 1 is the floodgate of characters and the constant use of deus machina to resolve storylines.
I think another part of the issue of Young Justice characters is that aside from time skipping important events/character moments, some of the moments mentioned in the show happened in other sources of media. Tula’s death and Aqualad’s motivation to join the light happen in a video game no one played or even heard about, which at the end gave Robin his drive to step up to become a leader. Allot of the comics go into plot points from the 1st and 2nd season, what happen to superboy’s clone (which ended up becoming bizarro superman) how beast boy joined the team, clay face origin and a few other plot points . There’s even a new comic coming out that deals with beast boy and Markovia. The issues you mentioned started happening as early as season 2 but didn’t get bad until season 3, and while season 4 it is a step up it still has its problems. This show suffers from bad pacing and an ever expanding cast. And this is coming from a casual fan of both the comics and the show.
Damn, that's a lot of stuff to put in the comics and games. Thaen again, the show was canceled after season 2, so I kinda get it. Yet, it's a shame they never showed what happened to that clone.
@@alexandersolodovnikov4840 the comic came out while the show was still running. So there's no excuse for them resolving the clone story off screen
Expanding cast was something JLU did as well. Feel like most people are more annoyed by it here because it’s a more linear as opposed to JLU that did more one and done stories other than Cadmus and Darkseid. The creators are trying to do the same thing while keeping focus on the OG cast.
@@Volatik2006 the problem is that they are failing
@@balsasjekloca9308 They’re a narrative based show while JLU had episodic storytelling. JLU fit a bit of character development and a good story into 24 minutes introducing multiple characters like Huntress and Shining Knight. That’s mainly why everyone complains about the expanded cast.
Finally someone that agrees, I have been saying that Season 1 was perfection and every Season after that got worse and worse
Young Justice's best work is in the first season when it focused on the 6 main characters. That season holds up to this day. Can't say the same for Seasons 2, 3 or 4 for this show.
The show kneecapped itself by being a character driven show. Later seasons focused on telling more stories and developing characters related to that season’s plotline while maintaining fair focus on the OG cast. Although why they focused on Rocket( a character that barely had any significance before) eludes me.
@Volatik They should have focused on the original team, and occasionally devote an episode to a new reruit
It's stuff like this that makes me question how good of a writer Greg Weisman is because all I'm getting is a lazy man who has no idea how to write a coherent story and would rather make shortcuts, as well as alienate viewers with his blood and guts, and would rather make excuses for his bad writing skills
I feel sn 2 shouldn't be in this category. The twists and turns were executed really well and the plot was great and at the very least wasnt a convoluted mess like Sn 3 and 4
The worst part, they can't even keep the focus on the Light anymore. The Light were established early on as the true villains of the story. But nearly every new season is about some new villain that has nothing to do with them and all the heroes focus on getting rid of them instead.
yj season 4 drinking game: take a shot when the show focuses on characters you've never seen before
You're on
you trying to kill me?
s4 was soo bad, i could only watch maybe 2 eps back to back, unlike the previous seasons which were more entertaining, s4 was damn boring, after every episode of s4 i was questioning whether i was wasting my time with the show still
i made it to s4 episode 14 and quit
Took a shot when forager was said man I was gone
@@minatodroger7890 lmaooooo rip to your liver
Personally for me (and I know that there are many people that would disagree with me) one of the biggest problems of this series (except for the plenty of characters who we don't really know) is the huge amount of issues including religion, politics, social media, LGBT, depression, autism etc. Some of them are needed and are written good, but others are just there because... Well, I don't know why. They feel unreal, I can't really be connected to them. Like they simply wanted to teach me some social norms stuff instead of telling me an interesting story. That's disappointing.
you're right. the show feels like it's just trying to preach and show off way too much without any actual development
The hell are you Talking about, every lgbt representation here was Just casual normal stuff That would be mo diffrent if it was hetero stuff, And i really liked The religion motive like zataras Faith keeping him sane. Its not common theme in popular media.
@@IcyCrystalStar Superhero media is the definition of preaching dude
i agree. like is aqualad's struggles and conflict n tht he is son of villain automatically solve bcuz he has a boyfriend now n not to mention he was hetero in the first season but tht is okay buz tht happens in real life too. n wht does lagoon being in a polyandry hav anything to do with the plot. or atlantis
@@zgredczwartyniesamowity363 I think they mean how they don’t implement it cleanly with the characters. It just happens, and we’re supposed to accept it. Like Aqualad is bisexual, but when did that happen? Or Lagoon boy is in a polyamorous relationship? I don’t mind that, but when the heck did that happen? What happened between all the time skips?
I had initially been interested in Young Justice because it felt like I was getting the more mature version of Teen Titans, one my favorite childhood cartoons. Then the timeskip happened I couldn't follow the story anymore. There were bits and pieces of later stuff that looked cool, like the episode with the Harpers and Dick, that was entertaining, but in general I wasn't as interested in the later stuff.
I think the show is literally a copy of the original teen titans show we all loved with a mix of justice league unlimited. Since the elephant in the room always was where the hell is are the big superheroes in that. Teen titans was right at some point we as people need to just grow up and become adults. All things need an End and if you dont you are stuck in a childhood in adulthood becoming worse and worse.
YJ season 1 is still one of my favorite seasons of a superhero show, I was obsessed with it when it was first airing. I can't express just how disappointed I was when I found out about the 5 year time jump. The best thing about the show, in my opinion, were the characters in the original Team. I loved how they interacted with each other, as well as members of the JL. I was very attached to the original Team and I just felt/feel like the show was ruined as soon as s2 started and it wasn't the same cast anymore with a whole bunch of new characters I didn't care about.
I did watch s2 the whole way through when it came out but I was pretty much done with it as soon as Wally died. I haven't seen any of the other seasons because I could tell the direction the creators were going in. I don't like how they're introducing all these characters just to do it.
So yeah, I think the 5 year time jump was the worst decision the show made. I rewatched s1 recently and every time I think about it, I get kinda mad all over again and can't help but think that this show could have continued to be amazing if it went another way. It's a shame really.
Well you know they had to jump ahead into progressive land.
Because they're more interested in turning characters gay and cucking BATMAN
Bro same watched season 3 first couple episodes and bounced mid season like how did the writing devolve so fast it was a completely different show lol 😂. Sad to see it did not improve. It could have been a perfect successor to the 2000s justice league animation series 😩
the only reason I check in on the show is to see if Wally returns, and even if he did I’m sure it would only be underwhelming with the direction the show has been going
Similar to Teen titans to be honest. Young justice is literally a copy of that with a mix of Justice league unlimited.
WHERE is WALLYY@@kirrei
One thing with Lor-Zod is that if you've read the good comics with him, as in his original appearances and not his Nu52 appearance, is you going... why? What? Because if you want to know how different the character is here; the names he goes by in that run are Chris Kent and eventually Nightwing.
So it's a appearance only a fan would care about, but if your a fan of Chris Kent as a character you end up being annoyed. Because it's not a adaption of Lor-Zod, of Chris Kent. Its just a character with his name. It's probably do with the fact that character is being adapted now, when the Nu52 reintroduced him as a character akin to this version. He doesn't even have his special powers in this version.
One character that ends up suffering from the shows overall direction is probably Jason Todd. I feel like we're supposed to care whenever he pops in and go "Hey, do you know this person. Will he do something?" but they kind of skipped over introducing him as a character, as Robin or even as Jason Todd, so that he's Red Hood already.
But not adaption of Red Hood from the comics either. But one that works for Talia in a non-speaking role. And he was introduced two seasons ago, which is like what ten years ago in-universe at this stage? And nothing is done with other than wink at the audience.
We skip characters getting attached to him, we skip him growing into Red Hood. We've basically been popped into the time period where he's Red Hood, so that they can have Red Hood. But not do anything.
Rocket's arc in this was very miss-managed and the way they handled Orion was... pretty pretty bad. Its not as if they really tried to, but they're basically comparing being Austistic to being... the son of the Devil, in a a sense Darkseid is a devil-ish character to New Genesis. And I know they don't mean to make that connectoin, but it's the parrell they end up drawing themselves.
Sure the sounds message is nice, but it's still. "Even if they've got bad genes, they deserve respect and etc." Which is... problematic.
Honestly, they were should've made a large effort to separate Orion's issues with his connection with DarkSeid but instead they put them together. Its a rather large reason why this is the accidentally becomes the message.
Another thing that made me lose interest, aside from the narrative itself, was the characters they chose to focus from season 3 onward.
Forager, that little edgelord prince and Violet were the reason I stopped watching. They got way too much focus, If you like the characters they then it might be a good time, but personally I only got to see my favorite characters being sidelined.
Did we get to see Bart dealing with having to fill Wally's shoes after he sacrificed himself? Tim Drake and his brotherly relation with Dick, wich could expand on Nightwing having to be a mentor? Wonder Girl could explore a Themischera plot, that I dont remember of we got to see anything. Static? Blue Beetle? Why wouldnt you introduce a character like Raven for example?
Yeah why have all those cool iconic comic characters when we can make this new character and have her give 20 minute lectures about the importance of Islamic culture and what it means to be non binary.
@Rudolph Schmidt If the show was good you wouldn't care. You're so nakedly transparent lmao. Apparently you don't respect Muslims or non-binary people if you keep whining
I really wish Aquaman (Aqualad) would have had some kind of breakdown. For seasons he was shown to be the stoic leader, always stowing his feelings for the greater good. And now, this season every character told him something needed to change or he would break. Then, he spends the entire season ignoring their advice.... but then nothing happens. Imo, he should have had a mental breakdown as a result of stress and ignoring the advice of the others. I don't think I've seen him show weakness in the entire show and this was the PERFECT opportunity to make it happen.
I think your criticism near the end perfectly encapsulates how the show has changed over the years
Seasons 1 & 2 were more focused on being their own thing and being accesible to people who have never read the comics
Whereas season 3 and 4 are more focused on hardcore DC fans who have dipped their toes in other stories, but that results in alienating people who haven't.
Razor is a perfect example. He was arguibly the best character in Green Lanter: The Animated Series and was completely original to it to boot
Both shows aired and were cancelled roughly at the same time after their 2nd season.
And when Razor returned in Young Justice, I was personally ecstatic as I thought that his story would never get a proper conclusion (as his fate was left realtively vague, with the Blue Ring of Hope going after him being the last we saw of him)
But ,then I realised that most people weren't as excited, because how COULD they be when he had only previously existed in one show that was cancelled a decade ago
And the way he was brought back was with the assumption that everybody knew why he was important, resulting in most viewers being confused and left out of the loop
You really hit the nail on the head for most of not all of the reasons I felt so disconnected from season 4, and season 3 as well. It's so sad to watch one of my favorite shows fall so far from what I originally loved it for. You put it all together really eloquently and well articulated. I really agree
Remember Justice League Unlimited? I feel like season 3 was trying to emulate that. The problem is that Justice League Unlimited came after the Justice League, which focused on the original team. It had 2 jam packed seasons( each episode was basically an hour) and that served it well. It also did the smart thing of focusing on certain characters for certain episodes, and not jumping around all over the place or cramming them all together. Only in real unifying events they all came together. S4 kinda picked up on this but it still felt off. Probably the pacing. Young Justice only had one season before it started introducing new team members, and had a big time skip. We never got to slow down and digest anything! So everything feels like a game of ping pong. You start to not invest, and just watch for the sake of watching. And that's not good when the show has a diminishing animation and dialogue quality. I'm serious, I know that Cartoon Network probably gave the show more funding in 2010, but Jesus. Thats no excuse for poor color scheming and design choice. Now the show is starting to be reduced to: ooooh look such and such from the comics! Do you remember this from issue 536373737? Oh my god guys, it razor from GL! Ya know, the show you may have watched from DC Nation 12 YEARS AGO. It's the equivalent of a parent jingling keys in front of their toddler.
This show is written like a comic, a good idea that is tossed aside for random or just dumb stuff. Writers losing focus on their own plot threads and then magical fixing every via two minutes of sudden enlightenment. Its basically key jangling the tv show. God i hope they dont try to do Red Hood/Jason Todd. They just haven't earned it!
It feels like something off the CW.
They've been hinting at it for 2/3 seasons.
So you'll probably wait until season 7 for something to happen.
@@christopherbennett5858 given they leap frogged him, its less 'hinted' and more 'key jangle'. Ohhh look viewer, it Jason... Ohhh clap for us, member utrh!!.
They gonna force feed the viewer some stunted flashbacks about 'how much he ment to Dick, such sad,' like thats an acceptable route of story telling?
@@jim-bob3093 Unfortunately, the remaining fans are ones who either want headcanons validated or have sunk so much time into this that its not funny anymore.
It is written like a comic because it is based off of a comic.
Brushing aside Zatanna in her own arc for Savage's stunted flashback was the red flag for this season, but that Razer episode out of nowhere in Rocket's arc was truly the killshot for me in finally giving up Young Justice
The moment I saw Razor, I was ECSTATIC. Mainly because I watched Green Lantern TAS. However, it was only after the season did I realize "Wait... That show was from a near decade ago, do certain fans of YJ know about it?" I appreciate the follow up, especially since there was never a follow-up since the show was cancelled due to poor toy sales (see the pattern??). Had YJ been like on-going rather than a brief hiatus between seasons, I think the development of all the old and new characters would have been done well.
They try to make the season based on the current year it was released but the timeskips cause the show to suffer. Heck, I had to look up on the wiki page on Cassie and Tim's relationship only to find out they broke up. Off screen. I was surprised they became a couple in the 2nd season, but I was excited to see their dynamic. Sadly, like with Zatanna and Dick, we don't see much of it. I know the show isn't always about romance, but the way the relationships are handled as so messy. I mean, look at Lagoon Boy! No offense to those w/ that relationship, but that was a literal bombshell when he had a wife AND a husband.
Young Justice taught us all a valuable lesson. Sometimes an ending, even if it still remains open is better than a continuation. We all wanted Young Justice to continue and what we got? Dissapointment, boring story, unlikable new characters, old characters ruined, bad writing etc etc. We should just let Young Justice go and enjoyed it while it lasted.
Maybe it’s your age. Especially when a criticism is “they focused on social media ,” like yeah, it’s 2022. Get with the times. Me and my friends LOVE season 3&4! It hit on so many great points and introduced so many new people for us to TH-cam their comic book origins which is always an exciting time with friends.
@@stiletteleray1326 Oh ok, you and your friends liked it so it must be good right?
My age is 27, I'm young enough to know all the modern tropes but still old enough to know a thing or two about storytelling and character development. Something that the the latest seasons of YJ were clearly lacking.
"It's 2022, get with the times" You say that as if 2022 is somehow the pinnacle of literature and all stories are so much better than they were before. This of course couldn't be further from the truth. We not only have reached new lows with stories and characters but we have went even lower than rock bottom in terms of stories and characters.
There is not a single franchise that is at better state than they were 10-20 years ago. They have all gone downhill.
@@georgehouliaras7239 wow it definitely sounds like you just have a problem with modern times. “Story telling” is not a hard science with testable measurements so you nor i get to dictate what is “better” or “rock bottom.” If you seriously think things were better in the past then maybe you don’t have the shorter attention span that most people now a days have. That’s fine, there is media that still exist for you, but that does not make fast paced media “bad.” Just different.
@@georgehouliaras7239 especially for you to say 20 years ago, that’s a big ouchie. So much media in the early 2000’s was ableist, sexist, homophobic, and racist. “Cheap jokes” are NOT good story writing in my opinion. But again, literature, like all art, is subjective so neither of us get to say what’s “better” story telling.
@@stiletteleray1326Apparently it is science for the writers nowadays because they suck at it.
You kinda do, when you had 10 good cartoons like Spiderman TAS, Batman TAS, Spectacular Spiderman, Xmen TAS, Superman TAS, Justice League etc etc while now you barely have only 1 or 2 good cartoons, you can see the difference. We are the fans, we determine such things like what is good and bad and while I have seen mixed critics with Young Justice now when it was only 2 seasons, the show's reception was far more positive.
Fast paced? Spiderman TAS is way more fast paced than Young Justice so I don't think thats the problem.
I don't have a problem about the times and modern cartoons but It's difficult to say now they even compare to the older cartoons.
Couldn't agree more. Season 1 was like wow, the DCAU has returned in new form. Then 2 was like, wow, that was a big jump. Season 3 was like wow, it's barely even the same show now. Very odd creative decisions with what very well could have been one of DC's greatest achievements.
i loved season 1 and was really confused when season 2 aired because of like the major timeskip. i was so confused i essentially forgot about season 2 and never watched anything after it. to me the only good Young Justice is the first season, and when i think about it its the only season i really acknowledge. i think this show had a ton of potential....but it lost that potential pretty early on.
yeah that was really confusing to the like...9 year old me....it didnt feel right
The funniest thing about Razer is that hes not even a character from the comics he originated form Green Lantern the Animated Series which is soooooo obscure. Razers arc in Young Justice basically continues off of his story in that show which makes no sense.
I hate to say this, but I feel like Young Justice gets worse and worse as the seasons progress. A part of me wants a 5th season, where they hopefully fix the issues I had with the 4th season, but... I said the exact same thing after season 3.
My biggest issue with this season was the fact that we were promised that the story would remained largely focused on the original team. I do admit that they did in fact focus a lot on them, but I thought it meant we'd get the original team working together as a team, instead of them running in different directions, with a couple of uninteresting plot points tying it all together.
There was also so much left over from the previous season that I wanted to be explored that just... wasn't. I might not have liked season 3, but I did like what they did with Geo-Force, and I was hoping for some proper follow up to that. Instead he shows up like 3 times in the entire season, and one of those was just an illusion.
And I miss when this show could be mature, without needing to resort to blood and gore (When Victor got turned into Cyborg in season 3 being a good example), because it just feels jarring going from the first two season to this. It feels disconnected, like they're two entirely separate shows.
My most hated moment of this season was the flashback that showed how Batgirl became Oracle. I'm not surprised that they changed how it happened since the original source material is pretty controversial, but the way they went about it here made Barbara look like a reckless idiot.
How did it originally happen?
@@clintn.kildepstein1656 In the source material? Joker shot and paralyzed Barbara during a home invasion in an attempt to make her father go insane.
@@juanddg4737 thanks, why is that controversial tho?
@@clintn.kildepstein1656 The story where that happened (Batman: The Killing Joke) was inherently cruel to Barbara as a character. Not only was she shot, but was also stripped and photographed by the Joker to humiliate her and cause further torment to her father. Though Barbara's paralysis is a big plot point, she's barely relevant to the story and is only used as a plot device. It's a very controversial story that gets argued about ad nauseam, especially in the Batgirl vs Oracle debate that happens a lot in the comic community.
@@juanddg4737 ah got it thanks!
I feel like the more plot driven it becomes the less I care for it. I want to like the new characters in the new seasons, but they don't give those characters the emotional time growth and development that they gave the og cast. It really sucks. And it keeps getting worse and worse in my opinion.
Its like with Mary Marvel. She shows up, acts utilitarian when a literal cosmic threat comes into play and everyone just goes "You're out because you're addicted to getting stronger... in a story where Darkseid is banging on the door".
You care less about Mary and more about how Zatanna's behaving.
So when you see BM- I mean Baby Mama-I mean Black Mary being introduced in the epilogue as affiliated to Darkseid you go "Werk. Mary, use Kyle as a bat again to whack Zatanna."
17:49 I ABSOLUTELY agree! I never cared about Forager's character. He doesn't play much of a role in the story, and I was basically sick of his "forager talk" about five episodes after he was introduced. I really, honestly, believe he should have been one of those characters that joins the cast for, like, one episode, or a single story arc before going back to his own world. Or at the very least, he should have decided to stay behind with his new "mate" in the episode he met her, rather than subject us to yet more of the overcrowding Young Justice has been suffering from.
Speaking of overcrowding, it really annoys me how they start or set up story elements, then seemingly completely forget about them. We're still waiting to see the conclusion to what happened to Kid Flash. He very obviously went into the speed force, and we've had multiple hints and references drop about him in the following seasons, and they even introduced time travel into the mix. The story is still open there, but instead the writers seem to be way too busy involving themselves in adding new stuff with every episode on the revolving door of new characters and villains they've turned the show into.
Apparently, he was in a Justice League episode, but the YJ version was so different in the design and speech pattern. I couldn’t recognize him and grew really annoyed with the character overstaying his welcome.
Wally is dead; you’re just in denial.
@@tototats16
Wally West is the Flash in Justice League but he's not the same one as from YJ
@@mikemorro140 oh I was talking about Forager
When did they hint he was in the speed force? I literally have never seen any hints that it even exist. I wish he was alive but I doubt it. We don’t even know if the speed force exist in young justice.
I’m a big comics fan, and yeah it’s cool to see comic stuff and comic characters, but there has to be a story based reason for bringing those things in. You can’t just add something some audience members might know for its own sake. And you can’t rely on an audience having pre-existing knowledge of a thing you introduce that has never been established in the piece itself. You the viewer should not have to do homework to understand a story. The writer(s) have to put in the leg work to properly introduce characters and concepts. To expect the audience to know extraneous information that has never before been established in any part of their story is just hackneyed and lazy and they should always have a narrative based reason for bringing something or someone new into the story
In the case of Razer, they plucked him from his show(a show that had no indication of being in the same universe as Young Justice up until this point, mind you), back peddled on his 26 episodes of character development and for what? Just for a cameo that has no story significance what so ever.
There was no story reasons to bring him into the show.
Thats literally been their thing since s3. Remember back when characters appeared as an actual cameo for the objective of the episode and didnt need to develop? Maybe its simply the times nowadays because alot of shows back then, didnt just have characters drop out of the sky with no setup just for fkcus sake.
Dont know whos bright idea that was.
So* they didnt need to develop?
If this was like Batman B&B or Justice League Unlimited where most episodes where meant to be stand alones, I think quick 1 episode cameos could be done fine. Even if you don’t care for a cameo character’s appearance, it doesn’t feel like they’re wasting that much time because most episodes are supposed to be self contained anyway and there aren’t that many active story arcs that need resolving.
The problem with Young Justice though is that it’s a very serialized show with a crap ton of characters and storylines that still need to be resolved. Even if each cameo was limited to just one episode, it feels awful because there are so many more characters and plot lines that people are already deeply invested in and want to see more of. As much as I love Razor and seeing him become a red/blue lantern is cool, every second he is on screen is a second that could have been spent on progressing one of the many open-ended plotlines that still needs resolution.
@@lordquaz7154 they had the ship, the justice league uses the exact ship from that show for all their galactic travel, they also shows multiple green lanterns from that show. There was hints prior to his appearance.
My biggest problem was the Wally fake out. I want Wally so bad. I’m still convinced he’s trapped in the speed force but every episode that passes it seems less likely that he’ll come back. Maybe he should come back but I think the stories they can tell with Wally coming back from the dead as the status quo is completely different and all of his friends have gotten over his death would be really interesting. Especially with how he’s been treated in comics for the last decade Wally deserves better
Lmao, Well as long as he is dead, people will come back to see him. That is why they always tease like he will be back the next season with some red hering,etc.
Quite smart assholes.
@@majormononoke8958jokes on them we have google and we can type in “is wally back” see that he isnt and proceed to watch none of the new seasons
Kinda bummed out that Tim Drake only gets like very little dialogue and spotlight when the show is called Young Justice which is originally based on his team.
S1 was magic and the best but after the time skip I kinda lost interest in it and had struggled to finish the whole S2 and 3. We need to see the blank years ugh. Can't believe they skipped Robin Jason.
The time skip was a bad decision. Even it was just a year it would've been ok. But damn we just got to the end of everyones arcs I was so excited to see how everyone developed and then bang 5 years. New characters. Some of them I was confused and shit. Then even worse in season 3. I was confused who people everyone was. Like I couldn't tell you how many times I had to Google who someone was cause they talked as if I should recognise them to then realise this is the first time im seeing them. Even season 2 genuinely felt like I had missed an entire season. If it was flipped so that season 2 was season 3 and then we could've atleast seen how my actual favourite characters.
Remember when Bumblebee went and did some weird genetic things with her baby? Neither did I till I reminded you :D
wondered why the rocket side plot reminded me of something...cause her and bumblebee barely had any screen time they were basically the same character but this season we HAD to focus on rocket for some reason even though she's hardly the main cast people cared about
.....I don't get why they brought Statc shock into the series and never use him. This show is really wasted potential post season 2
I've thought about Bumble Bee, and was wondering if we were going to get a follow up on that. NOPE! We get subplots for characters that don't need them.
Omg i completely forgot about her. She was pretty forgettable in s2 and I didn’t know why her character was getting some attention. Same thing for Rocket and how I felt like she wasn’t there enough to be considered a member of the original team. At least s4 tried to do something with her.
@@doctorcorgi3134 @TotoTats16. At this point, these aren't even characters so much as they are walking plot points we can't follow because they aren't on screen so they need to explain their plots to the audience again
Kinda why we get SOOOO many flashbacks and exposition dumps
You would think tampering with her baby’s DNA would have some serious consequences but it didn’t go anywhere.
@@thomasraines1396 She didn't tamper with her kid's DNA. The show never answers on whether she did or not. We only saw her fix her heart.
One of the biggest problems was the show was trying to be an line of comics in a single series.
It felt like they mashed 3-4 series into a single show.
To me, it wasn't focused enough. They put random characters with arcs I didn't care. And the characters I did care about had terrible arcs or no arc at all.
The issue with young justice now is it's like the CW, focusing on interpersonal drama as opposed to a character's purpose and the bigger world. They brought in tons of relationship drama, character depression drama, it feels like I'm watching a CW show with characters resolving problems in one season and then repeating them the next.
Don't forget the identity politics that is also present in the show.
@@lionbolt2136 oh yeah that's last of it
Because I know when I watch super heroes I want to see autism in children and Bug love.
Totally makes sense.
@@thehippie3610 I guess you haven't watched superhero shows before 2012-13 then
@@thehippie3610 Have you read a comic past the 50s?
You didnt even talk about my biggest gripe which is all of halo's unnecessary character building. The one character they really focused on in seasons 3-4 just felt so irrelevant to the major events of the show and it feels like everytime shes trying to come to understand who she is theyre just slowing down the pacing of the show to make it fit.
It’s so unfocused now. Trying too much and creating a ton of tonal whiplash.
As well as having plot lines that simply do not matter and connect. The Garfield depression sub plot was literally, “he had depression, and he’s getting over it”. It doesn’t tie in or expand something else. It just invades episodes and pulls focus away from cooler stuff. I feel the writers thought that they would get praise for dedicating time to the subject, but then forgot to make it relevant. It’s all surface level.
Yeah, I agree with pretty much all of your critiques. Those time skips and the times they skipped over character development have been really bizarre. It's weird because it seems like they've got writing skills but they just want to move onto the next big story. Oh boy, and the animation?!! I guess, they just don't have the budget anymore? In their defense, I do remember a pretty decent fight scene that took place in the dark - with occasional flashes of the fighters when they traded blows. It was actually really creative and a smart use of their limited resources. Regardless of all the problems, I still enjoy the show, though. There's no other serialized animated high-stakes superhero stuff 😞Something I've enjoyed with season 3 and 4 is the villains and the episodes dedicated to Savage.
S1 of YJ is one of my favorite shows ever, but the rest...it just gets worse and worse. The show suffers from way too many characters taking up the main space and loose plotlines. I REALLY dislike how they treated the main cast of s1, especially post-hiatus. They just brush them aside, as if you're old and haggard in your 20s and it's time to let the next generation of teens take over...??? The characters change so drastically, in a way that doesn't feel satisfying but feels like they lost their personalities instead. It's such a shame.
I was so excited for this season because I thought it would go back to the main cast. It tricked the fans really because the main cast had to share the screentime with more than half the characters in the DC universe! No one got the time they needed for the story to sink in!
I might be a rare case in that I watched the show _purely_ because it featured a comic character I knew about, but I encountered a lot of the problems you had trying to get into the later seasons.
Seasons 1 and 2 really make it feel like an Elseworld, in the sense that it's far disconnected from mainstream universes in an arguably good way. It borrows material from the source to ask, "What can _I_ bring to this new iteration?" instead of saying, "What can these various lores do for _me?"_
But I agree with Seasons 3 and 4 being purely comic spectacle with very little substance for what it brought previously. If you're not a DC fan, you're not going to have any idea why you should care about any of these people. They truly fumbled what could have been a more natural introduction to the world they've built, instead warping it into a melting pot of comic book plots and disconnected lores / mythos.
and if anyone is reading this far, the character I came for was Klarion the Witch-Boy, and knowing he played a part in Zatanna's arc was the only motivation that had me watch the entire show. I'm not even kidding 💀
Someone online somewhere I can't recall said that the writers didn't actually know how to write development, which is why every season has a time skip and new characters. And I can see that in the change from S1 to S2 and S2 to S3. They had good short term development but very short term that was mostly learning about how they were at that point.
I think what’s funny is a show that talks about things like death and the aftermath we never know what it was like for Dick to lose what amounts to a brother in Jason.
@@creed8712 Yeah. It gets by mostly on relying on other stuff where the same stuff was done better.
Effectively, its getting the fans to write a better show in their heads and praise the writers for that.
Am I the only one who watched that intervention scene with Beast Boy and Robotman talking to him and was like "Wait a minute... who are you!?" Like not who is he (because of course he's from doom patrol) but as far as this show is concerned? Nah.
when i first saw that scene i haven't heard of doom patrol yet so i had no idea at all
And I think they were kind of leaning on the fact that Khary Payton was voicing Robotman like TT Cyborg was giving Beast Boy an inspiring speech. Or maybe they weren't thinking that, they have Payton voice so many characters in YJ in general. But yeah using Robotman was a neat easter eggs I guess but since we have spent barely any time with this universe's Doom Patrol it doesn't really leave an impact. Maybe they wanted the viewers to feel as apathetic about this as Beast Boy did? If they did, it worked.
It felt so weird it took me a minute to figure out who he was.
@@SketchCartoonGuy Yeah. This series loves using offscreen stuff as a crutch.
I mean, for goodness sake, Jason Todd's tenure as Robin was all in those 5 years and we're just bored waiting for him to do something.
Nightmare Monkeys gave backstory to Doom Patrol
As someone who actually enjoys the comics, I hated season 3 and had no interest watching anymore of it. It had the exact problems you described and the new characters did not appeal to me because there was no set up. New people were just shoved into our face and we had to roll with it. I remember we spent an entire episode following characters that hadn't been integral before and it wasn't even focused on them, their life and motivations or any internal conflict to get to know them. Instead it was just on the plot of going from Point A to Point B. I was incredibly disappointed. A character from the comics appearing doesn't have enough weight to make me excited and keep me interested if its done poorly. It's just going to make me upset.
They bring in these characters and expect big reactions with zero set up in show while they also look next to nothing like their comic counterparts
Oh my god thank you for this... I agree with literally everything, I don't want to literally Google character names to learn who they are and their relationships with others. This isn't how a tv show should work
I actually really enjoyed Phantoms as a season, but even I can admit it had some glaring issues. You did great work with this video and made some good points! Keep up the amazing work Lowart!!
I feel like you hit the nail in the head with the issues surrounding YJ right now, even speaking as someone who enjoyed the previous two seasons. I remember really enjoying watching S1 when it was airing, but I'm also a big super hero and comic book fan, so seeing a lot of the characters they included in the show was honestly pretty fun and a big selling point to me, even though I totally understand how it could feel alienating for people who enjoyed the show more for what it is.
IMO it seems like the team behind this season actually tried to adress a lot of the problems people had with the previous season, but it still missed the mark in actually solving the three main ones:
1) the animation is still way worse, which reeks of budgetery issues to me;
2) even though they tried to bring the season back to its roots with the OG characters specific arcs, like you pointed out they failed to adress a lot of lingering plot threads surrounding them from previous seasons;
3) and once more they still keep adding and bouncing back between multiple new characters and their storylines;
Overall, I don't think it's the worst show or anything, but I complety understand the disappointment a lot have felt with it, especially when there was so much hype surrounding its revival.
To conclude, just two things I wanted to add really quick. The martian getting the planet is actually supposed to be a sort of "plot twist", that's actually adressed in the show somewhat. The planet he recieves is the same one Chameleon Boy says his species lived in originally, implying his species descends from the white martians. It doesn't add up to much, but it at least explains the purpose of this scene.
Also, I said "oh no" out loud when they mentioned Sanctuary in the final episode, a reaction I assume a lot of comic fans might've had too, specially when this is a story with Wally West in it lol.
Oh I totally agree.
They want to continue showing they know mental health issues... and they bring up Sanctuary?
That's like saying that, as a way of showing your understanding of systemic racism, you say you're going to remake the movie Crash.
@@christopherbennett5858 right? If they adapt that story faithfully for this, imagine if they decide to bring Wally back by having his return killing everyone in the mental health facility lol
@@masterdhegamer6661 And, if they don't,, they're either going to throw Harley and Booster in as last minute additions or throw another character as the villain.
If you lay clues that the Butler did it, hear that people have figured out that the Butler did it and change it to the maid last minute to throw people off, y'all wasted everyone's time.
@@christopherbennett5858 god that story was so messed up. It killed a lot of the good momentum Rebirth had going foward.
It's also weird that they haven't introduced Harley yet, they even had a Suicide Squad episode and she wasn't there.
@@masterdhegamer6661 No Booster Gold either despite Ted being dead and Jaime just being part of the Outsiders collective.
finally someone is talking about how bad this season was. So many people were blindly saying how good it was and I would watch it and be so confused what show they were talking about.
It was an improvement over season 3
@@guillesuperior Honestly it was even worse
@@rudolphschmidt313 how so?
@@guillesuperior This season seemed alot more preachy on trying to make me accept Islam and understand what it means to be non binary. Only problem is I don't care I already accept Islam and know what that is show me nightwing fighting clayface or literally anything but that. Also this is a genuine question. Did I have a fever dream or did the show have an entire arc showing how polygamous relationships are okay?
@@rudolphschmidt313 this comment is goated
I remember when we as a community fought to get Season 3 and we were so excited when we were finally gonna get it. But my love for this show just died out after season 3 came out. That's how bad it was. Season 4 is better than 3 but it's still a terrible season. Season 1 was a grounded story centered around interesting characters and their interpersonal dynamics. Season 2 was superfluous in the sense that there were more characters than needed but it was still an extremely cool story and it tied itself together at the end. But Season 3 and 4 are such garbage, I can't believe that they butchered my favorite show.
Completely agree with everything you said. My biggest issue is the time skips and the bloated cast. I dont want you to tell me development happens SHOW ME! They need to reduce the cast back to the originals and then make separate shows for everybody else.
Season 1 was the only really good season of the show. Season 2 lost a lot of points because of that timeskip and Wally's death but it still had a good level of quality. Season 3 and season 4....grabage.
I agree it’s so sad to see a show like this fall out 🤦🏻♀️
I feel you're right on the money. Young Justice has moved so far away from what made the first season so good and has decided to leave most character development off screen and focus more on building an expansive and frankly convoluted universe. I was talking to someone the other day who had never seen Young Justice and they asked me to describe what was happening in the show and I gave up trying to make sense of the narrative. They spend so much time on the grieving process of characters but don't actually do all that much with it. The fact that we didn't even get a scene where Beast Boy finds out Conner isn't dead? That's kind of unbelievable. Obviously his trauma goes beyond Conner's death but we still should have seen when he found out he was alive. When they want to tackle a social issue they sure talk about it for a bit but they don't give it the time it needs to breathe because they're too busy with everything else.
Razor is from Green Lantern: TAS specifically and while I appreciate the follow-up I don't think it benefits YJ at all to include that continuity into it's already messy DC universe. It was nice to see him again and it was cool to see him use the power of both of his rings but you're thoughts on the inclusion more than sum up why that fanservice for GLTAS isn't going to resonate with YJ viewers that aren't familiar with that other animated series or some comics or characters. They keep dangling characters that are underutilized in prior animated and live action series and films but don't really DO anything with them. It seems like they just want to include them either because they're fans or because they don't want anyone storming in to complain that some character in the DC universe isn't around. Yet it took until now to introduce Supergirl.
The time skip after season 1 already turned Young Justice into a different show from the first season and it lost its focus as more and more characters were introduced, barely used then sidelined till they are needed in a particular moment. What even IS the plot anymore? How has this show gone nearly 100 episodes without delivering on storylines from the first season? It makes me wonder if TSSM would have become such a bloated mess and honestly based on season 2 some would argue it was already heading that direction. Is there no hope for a Greg Weisman show? They either end early without satisfaction or they get padded out to the point where they can never come to a coherent ending that is adequate payoff for people who were watching it from the beginning.
I will give them credit for giving us more with some season 1 characters particularly Zatara, Zatanna, Artemis, Cheshire, Superman, Superboy, Miss Martian, Klarion and Savage. But even in their own arcs Rocket, Aquaman and Nightwing were somewhat brushed aside. But so much of those character's growth was simply not shown. I also want to give them credit for showing Miss Martian and Beast Boy dealing with Conner's death in different ways but in BB's case its still hard to say that all those constant looks into his status amounted to much. You'd think more would have been accomplished in 26 episodes but evidently, no.
I think TSSM would have been fine because it had ONE main character to focus on.
Moral of the story: if a show is canceled, _don’t bring it back._
“Sometimes, dead is better.”
- Pet Sematary
The clone wars Bro.... is the exception 🥺
Samurai Jack did it
Did it really well infact
My main issue is that we only go one season of the original cash I feel season two should have been around the season 1 cast including rocket ( and maybe they add wonder girl in mid season 2 but if they don’t then keep for season 3) to me the show now has two many characters and the characters we knew before have been sidelined for no reason at all
My issue was they tried to do too much. What made Season 1 and Season 2 work was there was a single conflict that tied into many character flaws that resolved as the conflict went on. You didn't need to leave the main story for Connor to become more human, to establish that a fourteen year old should not be fighting crime, that Mind Powers are a human rights violation waiting to happen, etc....
Season 3 and ESPECIALLY Season 4 have relied on Filler to attempt to flush out characters and keep you interested. Razor only exists to pander to people like me. Aqualad being Gay only exists to Pander to people who want to see gay characters. etc... etc.... and what pisses me off more is how viscerally the fans and creators attack people with a dissenting opinion. It's so infuriating.
Season 3 and 4 were so unfocused that's the simplest way I would describe what the show became, I really expected a big pay off from beast boy depression arc but literally nothing came out of it...
5:54 My friend and I had a running gag in Outsiders where we'd constantly point out and laugh at all of the scenes the characters had masks or other things concealing their mouths so the animators didn't have to animate lip flaps. XD
They really did mcomm dirty
He represents magan's biggest mistake, a mistake she did in S1 when she was a naive girl
She left him behind in an oppressive environment
Funny trivia
Greg weisman is open about the fact that he never writes series to end
This includes spectacular Spiderman and Young Justice
I disagree with him
I get why he wants that idea
But sometimes simply having the mcs beat the villain and sail for aventure is better You know?
It honestly feels like they're just focusing on the wrong things. Which reminds me that it seemed like they were gonna have something about Miss Martian & her sister and have her help get through the loss of Superboy. But then she just disappears until the end of the season.
I actually found myself overall enjoying the season more than season 3. especially the latter half. and where it ends up with the stinger certainly has me curious but I can understand and respect these criticisms
I’m not the biggest comic fan, I don’t read any comics nor watch other DC shows but something I liked about the first seasons was that I didn’t need to know. I didn’t need to know the comics or watch anything else to know what was going on. It was more of a deep and thoughtful show that happened to have DC characters in it and that really helped a lot of people connect, people like my parents could have no problem watching it and fully understand what was going on. But the newest season just had me lost, I don’t know most of these new characters or why they were there, I don’t know how all of sudden all the characters I had spent years growing and dissecting were just gone, they were in the intro sequence so I had hoped that maybe they would be in it but all the characters were all so far from eachother. This show isn’t young justice anymore, just young DC I guess.
Seasons 2 3 and 4 all feel like a bunch of plot lines fighting each other for dominance.
Gosh you put it all into words. I was truly disappointed in the last season. It dragged in so many things that didn't have ANYTHING to do with the show
The show has had an issue with exposition ever since season 2, and just slightly eh in season 1. But it became bad in 3. It's been my most consistent problem with the show. Dialogue often feels very unnatural as a consequence
Finished the video, and lemme tell you: I'm a HUGE YJ and DC fan. And I think all your criticisms are absolutely valid.
Dialogue aside, the first 7-8 episodes were Awesome imo. But Zatanna and Kaldur were not the protagonists of their own arcs. Too much focus was given to lore, worldbuilding and side characters which, during season 1 and 2, was relegated to the canonical comics.
I love seeing Rath again, but you're absolutely right about him coming out of nowhere with no context.
Season 4 was clearly rushed and underfunded. The arcs feel like they were written by different people. They needed to focus on the main crew and their shared grievance. Imagine how much better it would be if, after the fourth episode, the team gets back together and actually showed up in each other's arcs, if not went through them together. Then when Zatanna and Nightwing figure out Conner's alive and choose not to tell M'Gann, the psychic, it feels way more dramatic.
Honestly, I could write an entire dissertation on Young Justice. As a long-time fan who read the tie-in comics, checks in Greg Weisman's online forum where he answers questions and likes DC as a whole, I have a lot to say.
Your videos actually make many great points and express similar opinions that I have. For example, the show prioritizing plot over character development, the unnecessary characters and plot lines and the wretched timeskip. I know the creators had planned the 5 year jump pretty much as soon as S1 was released, but it still feels like the worst decision the show ever made in terms of storytelling. I don't like that they glossed over so many important events in the character's lives and I feel like YJ would have been a lot better if they had stuck with the Team from where they left it in S1 and continued their arcs from that point in time. I'm not against them aging, but I hate that we missed 5 whole years of potential development. Miss Martian and Nightwing's stories, in my opinion, could have been super interesting and it's a shame that the creators didn't utilize that potential. I would have loved to see Nightwing grow into his own person and figure out how to lead in a way where he can stay true to himself, and see Miss Martian master and utilize her abilities in the best way possible, perhaps even including ethical discussions that I know the writers are capable of nailing. There are so many great possibilities, and I'm saddened that we got a watered down version of these things at best, and a complete erasure of their character arcs at worst.
This may be a really unpopular opinion, but I still enjoyed S4 more than S2 and A LOT more than S3. I wish there weren't so many new characters in the show, but I feel like they were utilized relatively well in S4. Most of it was focused on the OG Team (especially Conner) and when new people appeared, it was mostly to further the plot or assist with character development. There definitely was a lot that could have been cut, especially during Zatanna's and Raquel's arc, but overall, I'm not mad at this season. There are many things I enjoy, like the fact that the creators are more free to address social issues, the interesting world building in Mars and the way they worked in some comic references and callbacks from S1.
Re-watching S1 makes me nostalgic and wonder about how amazing could have been with all the ambition, talent, and creativity from the writers, artists and voice actors, but I'm able to enjoy the show for what it is.
I actually agree this season was much better than the last and at least on par with the second but was still messy to me.
@@21quepasa Completely agree! There is a lot of room for improvement here, at least in my opinion. But of course, we can't retroactively change anything that's already been released so I'm doing my best to be happy about the good parts of the season and skip the episodes that I don't enjoy when I'm watching it. I'm still hoping for a S5 so I'll definitely keep streaming YJ on HBO Max and using the hashtags on social media.
Honestly, the social issues in s4 didn’t fit in the story. The meta human trafficking in s3 was kind of interesting, but the way they kept on showing mental health in s4 was a bit bothersome, especially Beast Boy. Sometimes, there would be a fight scene going on, but then it cuts to BB feeling depressed. The way they kept on mentioning mental health felt ham fisted when the execution was better in s1. And Violet being a Muslim was random along with that annoying blue girl simping for her.
The Lagoon Boy centric ep was also unnecessary since he doesn’t contribute anything to the story. You could cut out all of these characters and nothing would’ve happened. The cast is too overstuffed and old characters have to be pushed to the background in order to introduce more boring new characters.
@@tototats16 Lagoon Boy didn't have his own episode lol. We just had some brief scenes of his family and he joined the final mission to get the crown.
@@GamerSlyRatchet1 oh shit I forgot😂. That’s how much I hate him
I think they should of refocused after the invasion. I don’t mind Blue bettle and his team being included. But it should of ended their introducing all these groups when we all really only care about the core from season 1. YJ just became their outlet to make this crazy DC universe.
I honestly don’t think I would’ve noticed any of the problems with season 4 if beast boy’s arc wasn’t left like it was. Beast boy has been my favorite hero for a long time so seeing him struggling like that was really emotional for me and when they didn’t show anything after super boy came back, I was more than a bit annoyed.
The issue with YJ as a whole is that it’s a merge of the characters from young justice comics and the teen titans comics. Issue is that both series have their og characters and lore so mashing it together will cause issues. Then you have character bloat which gets worse season to season along having other backfilled content in comics. Sorry to say this to the people that make the show is that people who watch the won’t often read the comics as this show is a mashup of two different comic teams. So like the guy in the video stated he doesn’t know most of these characters as he doesn’t read dc comics like that. And finally stop using milestone characters if they are just going to be background characters.
It's so sad because Young Justice, next to Avatar and Ben 10 Classic, is one of my all-time favourite shows and to see it go down the drain (like A:TLOK) is heartbreaking. I advocated with other fans for years to get another season and when season 3 was announced I was so excited ... if I only knew then what was coming :( I still wonder to this day what season 3 would have looked like if the show wasn't canceled, because it sure as hell wouldn't have been what we got now. S3&4 did have some good moments and some new characters that I liked, the problem is how they handled those moments and characters. A lot of times things felt rushed at times where they should have taken things slow. They also put too much attention on moments that weren't relevant to the story and should never have been included in the first place. I totally felt disconnected from all the characters from S1&2 and the plot twists in S3 felt underwhelming, it was almost a recap of S2. The story in S3&4 is just all over the place and isn't focused at all. And don't even get me started on the pandering towards social justice, that's also a major factor in its downfall. Young Justice has always been diverse without trying or pandering toward "the message", in S3&4 it's taken a lot of screentime and just sucks and feels forced. People didn't watch Young Justice for social justice, I wish they'd let go of that idea and go back to the core of Young Justice and what it really is about. It just saddens me every time I think about what we could have gotten versus what we actually got because they had some very good ideas and if they were handled properly it would have been epic. I also hate the new art style!
PS. S2 originally had 26 written episodes but they couldn't include them all because of their cancelation and cuts. I still wonder what those extra 6 episodes would have been.
Almost as if superhero media is about solving societal issues including bigotry
so glad u said atlok sucks, i thought i was the only one who thought tht.
Halo shouldn't have gotten any focus this season. Nothing of value would be lost if she hadn't gotten any screentime.
I agree, Halo is the most boring character in this series.
She is now
After season 2 it went downhill. The writers bit off more than they could chew.
Even though the show introduces new characters, they're never significant.
New YJ fails at what the old DC animated series did great: building a world that feels believable, and in that world exists characters that all feel compelling. Heck, that's what Season 1 did. You might not know EVERY character, but even if they show up for just one episode, they leave a lasting impression on you. JL and JLU and YJ S1 were prime examples of having a core cast of characters that were set up, allowing for others to bounce of them.
Damn, this hits some great points of things that bothered me for season 4, I was really sad to see a bunch of waisted moments and new characters I didn’t know beyond “huh they looks familiar”. There was no emotional fallout or consequences for hard hitting moments, things kept moving and progressing, and random things just happened. I really grew to like the outsiders in seasons 3, and the idea of the youth center and static shock coming back, but I felt like we saw nothing of them beyond Garfield being mean to them or them in the background, the intervention seen was so weird because I didn’t know half of the character
S in the room! The main point here is like you said, they did to much, threw to much on screen and had to many random arcs that made everything feel like a mass of puzzle pieces all out of place and missing pieces
For me, the first season of Young Justice is up there with Batman: The Animated Series. Watching that for the first time, I truly felt like a little kid and it made me want more of those characters. I'd give that season an A+.
Season 2, while the 5 year time jump was initially jarring, I quickly came to like the new change to the status quo and liked the new characters. I really enjoyed Blue Beetle, Impulse and others. At the same time though this is truly where a lot of YJ's problems start. We keep getting hints and references to events that happened off screen during that 5 year period but we're just TOLD about them, we never see them.
Also, all the character development and growth that would have taken place, again we don't get to see that, we just know that they've changed because they're acting a bit differently. However I look back at that and think, "I would have loved to have seen the story where Conner discovers Megan is abusing her powers and she tries to mind-wipe him. I would have loved to see Dick Grayson become Nightwing. I would have loved to have seen what prompted Wally & Artemis to retire from being heroes. I would have loved to have seen Jason Todd. [I'll get to him later.]"
There were also some problems with the length of the season. Season 2 had only 20 episodes while the first season had 26 so we weren't able to flesh out all of the new characters. For example, Tim Drake and Wonder Girl are revealed to be dating at the end of season 2. But all throughout season 2, there's never any indication of attraction between the two of them. You don't see Tim acting nervous around Cassie or Cassie trying to tag along on his missions because she wants to be around him. I don't think there's any scene where they even exchange dialogue; heck, we actually see Cassie kiss Arsenal before we're TOLD (This show loves to tell and not show) she kissed Tim.
Greg Weisman kept insisting that a lot of the stories that we didn't get to see told he planned to tell in a tie-in comic where all those stories would be canon to the show. That's quite a problem because:
A) DC has trouble getting people to read their comics as it is and barely promotes comic that don't star Batman as a main character.
B) I shouldn't have to read a comic to understand what's going on in a TV show.
However, despite all of that I still really enjoyed season 2 of Young Justice and I'd give that either an A or an A-.
Season 3 comes along after 6 years and all the promos are teasing, "The Heroes You Demanded Are BACK!" They're showing images of new heroes like Arrowette, Spoiler, Cassandra Cain.
Too bad they never DO anything with them because we had to follow around:
-Brion, who was just European Conner without anything interesting.
-Halo, who was really written more as checklist than an actual character (Something they worked on s4 to correct)
-Forager, who quickly became the most annoying character in the whole series.
In s3 it seemed like they had no idea who or what the series was about anymore. They kept focusing on dumb things like social media and occasionally having Luthor parrot Donald Trump quotes.
And if you go back and watch that, a lot of the fight scenes involve focusing on someone holding up their camera phone and then showing us what they're filming on their camera phone instead of just the fight itself. You can just tell that it was written by two old men who don't really understand social media (Something Weisman's said about himself in the past).
There's also the problem of gearing the show towards an older audience by having their be more violence and blood. I thought that was a TERRIBLE move. YJ used to be a show everyone could watch, now it became a show that everyone (at a certain age level) could watch. Smart move.
Also...there had to have been some budget cuts for season 3 because there are so many scenes where characters are using the psychic link for no real reason, they're not on a mission, they're just sitting together, or episodes where a character will APPEAR and a character or characters will speak to them but they won't respond.
They did this in the episode where Dick Grayson was really sick and then the team found out what Batman was really doing behind the scenes. Beast Boy is yelling at Tim Drake that Cassie will never forgive him but Tim says nothing in reply, just looks dejected. In that same episode we see that Conner & Megan are also having an argument but doing it over the psychic link. That way you can have the characters APPEAR in an episode but since they don't TALK, you DON'T have to pay voice actors for reading lines and in some cases, you don't have to pay royalties to creators. If you feel brave enough, go back and watch season 3 and look for that because once I noticed it, it was impossible not to keep noticing.
And of course, the use of still images for animation shortcuts is very noticeable. I can be a bit forgiving in regards to using it in flashbacks but only to a point and there are times where it was used not in flashbacks where I just kept wondering what had happened. Weisman has said they have a bigger budget compared to the first two seasons but I want to know where it's going.
The best grade I can give season 3 is a C-.
Season 4...I actually enjoyed quite a bit more than season 3. Not as much as season 1 or 2 but still more than season 3 so I'll take that.
While the idea of giving characters focused arcs was interesting, a problem was a lot of times it would drag on and on. Superboy and Miss Martian's arc at times felt like a Martian travelogue and was starting to remind me of that farm from the second season of The Walking Dead; I kept wanting to go somewhere else.
Artemis' arc was interesting but...a bit predictable.
Zatanna's arc was interesting and I thought it strange that despite being with them only a short time, I found her three students more interesting than Brion, Halo & Forager.
Aqualad's arc felt kinda slow and sluggish up until the final part which I really enjoyed.
Rocket's arc, I felt it did have potential but the problem was I pretty knew what her conclusion was gonna be by the end of her first episode. Also, she felt like a SUPPORTING character in her own arc. I mean, I knew who Razer was but I felt his presence actually away from this being Rocket's story. And unless you watched the Green Lantern animated series, you're gonna have no clue who this guy is and therefore you don't have a reason to care. That's problem with this show, it expects you have to have the same level of understanding as the writer does but they often don't give you a true reason to care unless you're familiar with the lore.
It's why I'm very nervous about when it's revealed that Jason Todd is still alive; there's probably going to be all sorts of gasps and faces of shock and disbelief but...the problem is, we never SAW Jason Todd join the team, we never saw how he got along with others and we never saw them grieve his loss when he was killed. So why are we supposed to care unless we're already aware of his comic history?
Nightwing's arc...well it didn't really feel like HIS arc, just more of an arc to wrap up the series that happened to feature Nightwing. However, I felt the final episode really wrapped up the season well despite all of it's flaws and in effect, could have been a good SERIES finale as well.
Overall, I'd probably give season 4 a B grade.
As of this writing, a fifth season of the show has yet to be greenlit, the only future YJ content out there is a comic miniseries that's taking place after the s4 finale but other than that, that's all. I hope if a fifth season does happen that they get a bigger budget to the point where the animation is like how it was in the first two seasons and also, no time skip this time. At this point, more of Young Justice has been unseen than seen.
I really agree with your point about how there's no real follow-through to Beast Boy and I didn't even realize that. A big part of his story WAS his guilt over Superboy's apparent death and it would have made sense that they have this big emotional reunion with Garfield getting the chance to apologize for something he felt was his fault and Superboy telling him that there's nothing to apologize for. Instead Beast Boy was just like, "I've got a dog now, I'm getting better."
I'm still on board with Young Justice, probably always WILL be. But for the past two seasons it at times has felt more like because I want to see it return to it's former glory instead of because it's a great show and I want to see what happens next.
This entire comment is actually the best. Most people are just criticising it with “It got woke”. Fr though Brion got hella interesting after he roasted his uncle. He was just a Season 1 Superboy upto that point.
0:33 I think that's my favorite episode of the whole show and maybe the episode with the original Roy looking for revenge
Kid Flash transferring the heart episode is based on one of the early comics after Wally became The Flash.
One of the problems with the show is how much the creators approach the show as a fully formed universe. Sure if they were in charge of the monthly line of the DC Universe comic books they would be perfect but in a tv show format things are different. They do not have the luxury of assuming that the show is just going to stay in production. When Justice League/Unlimited was on the air that crew treated every finale as a potential series final, but this show just baits for another season every finale.
But all the talk of it being an ensemble show the creators really only care about Conner and M'gann someone did a screentime chart and they have the highest amount of screentime. Like no matter how many characters they add it stops being important because they are all reduced to background NPCs.
Hopefully My Adventures with Superman and Batman Caped Crusader are better and a return to form for DC Animation.
I'm also hoping for the potential animated revival of Smallville to be good. It's garbage like this that make me wonder why Greg Weisman is put on such a high pedestal when it's clear he has no idea what he's doing. If the new people at WB told him that Young Justice won't continue after season 4, I wouldn't shed a tear.