Young Justice Finale

For once I was planning on showering something with praise, but that’s not going to happen. You see, Young Justice has a lot of strong points, but it doesn’t cover so much as it touches on as many characters in the DCU as possible. In fact, it’s a little upsetting that there haven’t been more episodes delving further into some of these characters. Young Justice is the show that helped me get into DC comics. It’s well made, it’s got some great characters, and it gives some neat insight into the world. It’s a show with a lot of personality. But I do wish that it would spend more time with certain characters. It has a lot of interesting people and relationships that should be further explored.

The second season has finally come to a close. Unfortunately, one thing I noticed right away with the season finale is that it seemed a little rushed. It was in a hurry to tie up as many dangling plot threads as possible, while leaving others open for the next season. And I’m all for leaving dangling plot threads as long as they’re eventually taken care of. And from this last episode “Endgame”, I can say that the show was definitely building toward a third season.

I say ‘was’ because Young Justice will not be renewed.

This can very much explain why Young Justice felt the need to wrap up as many storylines as possible, albeit they still felt really rushed. But if that is the case, then I have to say that the creators knew full well that the show was going to be cancelled and decided to end it on a cliffhanger anyway. There’s nothing I hate more than a good show being cancelled right after a cliffhanger—I’m looking at you too, Clone Wars—but I can’t say that I’m too surprised that this happened. I suspected something was wrong when the episodes this season kept being delayed over and over again, and even now I’m not too clear on why that happened. Just as I’m not clear on why the show had to be cancelled.

According to this post, Weisman had this to say on the issue:

I’m not writing an epitaph here. But the nature of the business is that you never know if you’re going to be picked up for more episodes or issues. So whether it’s Captain Atom, Gargoyles, W.I.T.C.H., The Spectacular Spider-Man or Young Justice, I always try to end each season or run at a good place to stop, with what I like to call open-ended closure. So with the Young Justice book and show, Brandon [Vietti] and I tied up enough threads that the audience/reader can feel satisfied, but we’ve left some questions unanswered, some threads dangling intentionally, so that we have the chance to come back. And I would love to come back to this world, these characters. Believe me.

Well, I’m going to disagree that the threads they tied up will keep me satisfied. Static Shock joining the team doesn’t eclipse Savage making a deal with Apokolips after stealing the War World. Static might be one of my favorite characters, but that was just another rushed storyline. Young Justice spent plenty of time building him and a few others up, just to have his friends refuse to join off-screen with a few flippant lines given as a reason. But at least those few flippant lines are more explanation than why Static didn’t turn down the offer with them. I recall Static pretty much telling Nightwing to STFU earlier in the season when presented with the same opportunity.

There was a lot happening in these twenty minutes, and I didn’t feel as though that was nearly enough time to talk about these issues. Wally dies, Nightwing quits the team, Lex is nominated for the UN Chairman position, the Justice League’s trial is resolved, the world almost ends, etc. But the issues of the Light are never completely dealt with, and that’s been the driving plot for both seasons. Kaldur’s storyline with his father is far from over, same as the relationship between Conner and M’gaan. And I didn’t feel as though this season finished the storyline involving Arsenal and his clone. His clone, a hero, fell in love and had a child with a known villain, and she obviously cares for him back.

It does give me hope that Weisman says he would love to revisit this world. But… as for my thoughts on that, here’s a quote from a commenter:

I hate when people do this the “We’re purposely leaving things unanswered because we essentially want to blackmail the studios into finding a way for us to continue due to hopeful fan demand”. It rarely works. And it just feels like an ugly move from the EP, especially it being Weisman who’s seen this happen time and time again especially on his shows so he should know better.

I may not agree with all of that, but it does feel like blackmail, or at least a very asshole-ish move. Fan demands don’t always make studios pick shows back up. In fact, I’d argue that it rarely happens. There are still people waiting impatiently for an Eragon movie remake. Joss Whedon is so overworked with Avengers that he cannot continue with Dr. Horrible or Firefly. And Disney will not be renewing Clone Wars despite numerous letters begging them for it, because they want to do other Star Wars-related work, instead of finishing what they already have.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the end of Young Justice as well. I hope I’m wrong.