Young Justice: Outsiders midseason finale: Teasers and traitors

Image via Warner Bros. TV

Episode 12 – “Nightmare Monkeys”

The Teen Titans Go! reference that simultaneously promotes Universe’s impending series, Doom Patrol, which debuts on Feb. 15, and spoofs Star Trek (which reference’s Gar’s canon Space Trek career in the comics) almost distracts us from the reopened wound. Please, Young Justice, we’re begging you to stop bringing up Wally West just to remind us that he’s dead. We’ve never forgotten, and it’s cruel just at this point.

Clearly, we aren’t the only one who is still mourning Wally. Thanks to the Goode VR Glasses cloaked as a self-delivery system for meta-humans, some technical difficulties that weren’t advertised in the user manual send Garfield Logan into a psychic fugue state. He might tumble through his life-long history of trauma, from losing his mother, losing his friends, and being exploited by his step-father. However, Wally West is the focal point of Gar’s psyche.

Before Wally’s sacrifice in season 2, he and Gar didn’t have much on-screen time together. Both paying homage to the time these friends lost and the way Gar looked to Wally as a mentor, his subconscious shows that he never got the opportunity to process or grieve Wally’s death, just like he was deprived the same opportunity with his other traumas.

At its heart, episode 12 is therapeutic for Garfield. Despite the nefarious intentions of the Goode Glasses, they help Gar cope with his lingering traumas in ways that we wish a certain hero therapy run would explore. Yes, we’re looking at you, Heroes in Crisis.