Young Justice: Invasion - Episode 14 Recap and Review

Runways

Recap: The episode begins at STAR Labs, where the abductees are being tested to see what kinds of powers that they have. The lab techs apparently have been treating the kids more like test subjects than people, which naturally doesn't sit well with them, what with them being the survivors of involuntary medical testing themselves. As they get their lunch break, they hear one of their number getting into an argument with his dad, who coincidentally is one of the people working here. The kid says how he and the others are sick of all the testing, but his dad says that they have to find what the triggering factor in the meta-gene is, as he himself was doing experiments with teleportation and his son suddenly developed teleportation powers. His son isn't happy with this though, and demands that his dad cure him of his powers.

His dad says that his son only has himself to blame for getting kidnapped, due to him running away from the school(?) he'd been sent to. This naturally makes the kid, Eduardo, storm off, only to bump into the other abductees in the corridor. They begin complaining about how this is as bad as the Reach, despite Neutron (the exploding guy from earlier in the season) points out that is more than a slight exaggeration. Ty, Jaime's friend, says he's not sure how much more they can stand this place, when Virgil says that he doesn't have to, because he's planning their escape that very night.

Title sequence

Later, STAR recieves a load of crated up Amazo body parts from the League, salvaged from the ruined Hall of Justice. Wow, can't see that becoming important to the plot. And back with the Abductees, they're told to call it a night with their testing, only to begin promptly the next day at six in the morning. Interestingly the only girl in the group, apparently called Asami, only seems to speak Japanese, so it seems that the Reach might not have been just kidnapping folk from continental North America for their experiments. Can't remember any Japanese villains or heroes called Asami though... Anyways, Neutron is trying to talk Virgil out of his escape attempt. He says that the last time he was outside he nearly blow up a city, and that although his powers are deactivated now they might return at any moment. He goes on to point out that the others can't control their powers either, and that for the time being STAR is keeping them safe from anyone that might want to hurt them, as well as preventing them from potentially hurting others. Virgil blows this off and tries to leave anyway, resulting in Neut pulling the emergency alarm to stop them leaving.

They try to escape via a fire exit, only to find out that the alarm has sealed the entire building. Wow, that seems like a tragically bad design flaw. Anyways, the guards try to stop them from leaving, only for the Abductees to flip out and beat them up. And it seems that Asami's powers involve being able to creative concussive blasts at things, which she can use to fly or at least crash into people like the guards. Suddenly STAR experiences a power outage, with unseals the doors and they all run off. Shortly afterwards, Nightwing calls Jaime to tell him about the escape, and talks him into convincing them to return to STAR, until the Reach are dealt with properly at least.

Meanwhile, at a bus station, Ty is annoyed the Virgil called his parents, asking why he'd want them to get involved. Virgil says that he's actually on good terms with his family, and that the Reach made a mistake when they abducted him, as he wasn't running away, he was waiting at a train station for his sister. He asked his parents to wire them some money so they could buy a train ticket to his home town, Dakota City, so he they have somewhere to crash for the meantime. Ed asks how are they meant to get a cure in Dakota City, and Virg says he doesn't know. But since he seems to be kind of cool with his powers, he doesn't really mind not getting a cure, at least for the moment.

Asami, who seems to be the most on the ball out of the group, notices something outside. But her inability to speak English and their lack of understanding of Japanese isn't helping matters. It turns out to be the STAR tech that was dealing with the Abductees and a security team, and their appearance causes Ty's powers to activate. His powers being projecting a giant energy form of himself, which first lifts the roof off of the bus station, before grabbing the Abductees and running off, punching the just appear Jaime into the ground as he goes.

They don't get far though, and Jaime quickly catches up with them. The Abductees say that they know that he's one of the good guys, and that he helped save them from the Reach, but they're still not going to go back to STAR to get experimented on some more. Jaime reveals his secret identity to them, and says that he knows what they've been through, and gives them the low down on the Scarah. He tells them that they can't just run around until the Reach catches them again though. Virgil brings up his plan to go and hide at his parents, which causes Jaime to shout at him that this idea could result in his parents being hurt or killed trying to defend him from the bad guys. They come to the compromise of taking them to where Green Beetle is living so they could hide with him, as he's apparently near to where ever they are at the moment.

Back at STAR, Ed's dad is going spare about how the search for his son has been called off. Suddenly a wall explodes, revealing my favourite evil robot from the show: Red Volcano! Apparently having recovered from his melting the previous season. He destroys the zeta pad to prevent the League from teleporting to their location, and demands that they tell him where the bodyparts of Amazo are. News of this is relayed by Nightwing to Jaime, who is pretending to still be on the search for the Abductees. Dick says to put that off for now, as the only other people who can get to STAR faster than Jaime at the moment are Impulse and the Flash, and they're helping tsunami victims in Rheelasia at the moment, so he has to go there before Red Volcano incorporates Amazo's power-duplication tech into himself. Jaime apologises to his friends, but doesn't have to explain as Virg says that the volume on Jaime's phone is maxed out (convenient, heh). He flies off to help STAR, and Ed and the others decide to follow to save Ed's dad.

Back at STAR they arrive just in time for RV to beat Blue Beetle unconscious, and then squash him with his earthbending powers. The Abductees scramble to try and save Jaime, which Ty says he'll so while the others go to save the scientists and stuff. And Ty manages it, hurrah! RV meanwhile starts throwing a tantrum, as Amazo's head isn't included amongst the body parts sent to STAR. And he needs the head as that has the power replication unit in it or something. Ed's dad explains that the League sent the head to another location as insurance, which makes RV decide to tear off Ed's Dad's head instead. And considering what he did in his previous episode... that isn't a bluff.

Ed manages to teleport in and save his dad though (even though teleporting someone else hurts both of them), and Asami and Virg try to distract RV with their powers... only bounce off of him. Before he can squish them though, Ty grabs him while in giant form and throws him in the distance, while Jaime tries to blow him up with a plasma blast. This doesn't work though, what with RV having, you know, volcano powers. Jaime starts using his sonic blasts on RV instead, and doesn't seem to care that they're damaging the building behind the robot he's blasting. The Abductees use this time to save the innocent bystanders from being killed by the collapsing building. Once this is done, RV lands next to them and tries to use them as hostages to make Jaime quit attacking him. This... doesn't work as Jaime decides to just keep attacking, leaving the Abductees to free themselves while Jaime defeats RV himself. The Abductees, including Ty, are kind of creeped out by Jaime's new, aggressive personality and decide to sneak off while some reporters decide to interview him, this event having outed him as a public superhero.

Later Jaime is kicking himself over not calling Green Beetle to come and pick up the Abductees while he was fighting RV, but GB says its understandable, he was caught up in battle at the time. Jaime says that the appearance of RV was unfortunate, but GB disagrees, saying that it established his profile as a public hero. And then Black Beetle shows up... saying that GB rebooted Jaime's scarab to control Jaime's body like it was intended to do, and that he's now their mole inside the Team... ah crap.

The Abductees go back to the ruins of the bus station they accidentally trashed earlier, and have no idea of how they're going to progress from there, with the options of home, Green Beetle and STAR all now being off the table. Suddenly, a Lex Luthor appears. After explaining to Mercy that he was the one who sent RV to attack STAR Labs, he introduces himself to the Abductees, saying that he'd been following them for weeks, and even helped them to escape from STAR Labs by arranging the power-outage that unlocked the doors. He even says that he arranged for the timely arrival of the press, which allowed them to escape Blue Beetle, who, as he says they may have guessed, has become an agent of the Reach. Ed points out that Luthor's working with the Reach, making their drink, but Luthor says that he expects that the Reach have actually been using him for their own ends, which he says the Abductees must know how that feels. He says that what he's offering the Abductees is a chance to empower them, not on the superpowered front, but to give them to ability to control their own lives. Luthor says that they're under no pressure to take him up on his offer, but he does have the power to keep them safe from the various factions out to get them...

Review: Luthor, you magnificent bastard! I know that some people don't like it when the villains are too clever in this show, but really I feel that their protrayal of Luthor is one of the shining examples of what the show got right. He's actually written like a man who can take on Superman through his smarts and manipulative faculties alone, and that's awesome.

Other things I liked... I liked the characterisation of the Abductees, Virgil coming off as likable, though  touch settled, and the others not being as annoying as I feared that they could have been. Although I liked the touch of the Reach not just pillaging North America for subjects, not being able to understand most of what she says could be seen as being a touch limiting to the character, though we'll just have to see how things progress. Ed seemingly being a combination of Ed from Cowboy Bebop's design with Jack Knight (complete with the same issues with his dad) was funny, leastways for Ed's actual gender in Bebop.

Red Volcano was a lot of fun, as he was before. It's just a shame that he didn't appear that much within the episode itself. Still, he's so overpowered that he could rapidly become boring (like Black Beetle) so I guess he's better in small doses. Whether he's at his full level of faculties is a puzzler though, considering he's very anti-human him working for Luthor doesn't make much sense, unless Luthor just had him rebuilt and lets slip where Amazo was for RV to attempt his Kill All Humans fetish, or just reprogrammed him to be less genocidal and more controllable.

Things I wasn't so hot on... I guess that Green Beetle's appearance was a touch too convenient and that BB's brainwashing is good for the plot but... I don't know. Doesn't feel right for some reason. Hopefully the pay off will be worth it, though it does explain Bart's scared reaction to Jaime getting GB to fix the Scarab.