Young Justice: Outsiders midseason finale: Teasers and traitors
Still from Young Justice: Outsiders episode 12. Image via Warner Bros. TV
Episode 10 – “Exceptional Human Beings”
The first episode of the midseason finale planned the foundation for the predominate villains in the remainder of the season. As “Exceptional Human Beings” uses Katana, Batman, and Metamorpho’s covert mission to gain intel about the meta-teen trafficking syndicate, it also uses Lady Shiva as a potential decoy for both the more immediate villain and the overarching big bad.
Episode 10 serves as a premeditated ploy to construct some antagonistic narratives. Granted, we won’t see Lady Shiva or any of the other temporary or permanent villains, such as Tara or Darkseid, in their full fiendish potential until the second half of this season. Behind the slow-burn villainy, the series breaks up the grim prefigures with budding love stories, mixed with some comedy — it seems the theme of every DC Universe production is family and love.
Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 10, “Exceptional Human Beings.” Photo Credit: Warner Bros. via DC Universe.
Brion and Violet
We obviously aren’t ready for a break from the Outsiders. However, the hiatus is a necessary evil so that we have time to create multiple Brion and Violet edits, GIFs, and fanart—because they’re seriously adorable.
Though episode 10 foreshadows their official couple status, we already knew that Brion has had a crush on Violet virtually since they first met. Subtlety obviously isn’t one of his meta-human abilities (and neither is impulse control).
Brion has been hyper-protective of both Halo’s physical and emotional well-being since he got over his initial, but totally understandable, angst. Seeing as he tells Halo, “You are more exceptional,” it’s clear that the series writers have constructed a supportive super-romance.
While we agree that Halo is exceptional — because she’s a powerful hero and so positively upbeat despite everything she’s endured — Brion hints aren’t discrete. Detective Dick’s snide retort of, “Speaking of falling…” plays on the predictable romance between the two. (After all predictable doesn’t translate to bad, and Brion and Violet at the evidence for that.) Regardless, we see what you did there Dick, and we appreciate it.
Foreshadowing and homage
What would a superhero production be without foreshadowing? Obviously, it’d still be a super-powered series, but foreshadowing is always a bonus, and us nerds are grateful.
As the series introduces Victor Stone (soon-to-be Cyborg), it also lines his first scene in the animated series with a couple Easter eggs to Cyborg’s other cameos. Not only was Victor’s teammate voiced by Cyborg’s voice actor (Khary Paton, who voiced Jefferson Pierce, FYI) from the Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go! animated series, he also uses Cyborg’s coined phrase, “Booyah.”
Paying homage to other animated iterations of Cyborg isn’t the only comic incarnation who gets a meta-reference cameo in the episode. The locker room scene also plants some seeds for Vibe. You know, Cisco, or Francisco Ramon.
The premonitions of Vic’s rise to his heroic moniker and lifestyle connect with Halo’s continual rebranding of her identity. As her new name (Violet Harper) shows her new resurgence to her new identity, it illustrates the power gesture that she chose to be apart of the Harper family, giving another layer of connection to her found-family.
Her acceptance of her new identity and family name balances out Jade’s self-deprecating dissidence from her biological family. Though distressing, Jade’s dismissal of her family gives her closure (even if we hope she doesn’t continue to purposefully push herself away from her family).
Violet’s refined identity doesn’t just dual as, well, a duality to Jade’s denouncing herself as a part of her family. Her revived sense of self inverses Victor’s forecasts upheaval in his own identity. Granted, Victor’s adjustment to his new life and new body, and the outrage that comes with it, is understandable.