Hi! Welcome to my episode-by-episode recap of, and reaction to Justice League. There will be no spoilers beyond the current episode. As is my custom with recaps, I will give you a short summary recap followed by a long and unnecessarily helpfully detailed version. My reaction will follow at the end if you just want to scroll past all of the recap.
If you want to see my prior Justice League episode reviews, click HERE:
THE QUICK AND CLEAN SUMMARY:
After Earth is attacked by a Gordanian battleship, the League is aided by soldiers from Hawkgirl‘s home planet of Thanagar. The Thanagarians offer to build a shield to defend Earth against the Gordanians, but Batman discovers that this is a ruse: the Thanagarians intend to build a portal to attack the Gordanian homeworld, which would destroy Earth. Hawkgirl finds herself torn between her allegiance to Thanagar and her commitment to the Justice League, as well as between her betrothal to her commander Hro Talak and her love for Green Lantern.
THE EXTRA DUSTY RECAP:
The episode opens with Batman, MM, Flash, and WW providing security for the delegates form Kaznia visiting D.C. Batman says that his sources inform him that terrorists have targeted the summit. Superman is inside, posing as Clark Kent. We see him on the phone talking to Lois Lane, who is angry that he has this assignment and she doesn’t.
We see HG and GL flying together high over the event. They greet each other in a flirty way.
HG: Aren’t you supposed to be patroling the north end?
GL: I thought I saw trouble over here.
HG: There’s no trouble.
GL: Sure there is. And I’m looking right at it. [He kisses her.]
HG: You’re bad.
GL: You should know.
HG: And you should get back to work.
They quickly plan their date for after the event.
The episode cuts away to an unnamed woman talking to General Wells about an unidentified bogie flying toward Washington and not responding. The U.S. scrambles intercept fighters who cannot see it. The call is made to fire at where it’s supposed to be, but isn’t visible. They hit it directly and reveal a giant alien ship.
HG immediately recognizes the ship as a Gordanian Class 7 cruiser and she warns GL to watch out for the plasma cannon. They are both struck. Flash catches them as they fall. In the chaos, Clark becomes Superman and the JL attacks the ship but they fail.
Before they try attacking the ship again, HG convinces them to wait. We see the larger ship release a smaller, which then lands on the lawn. A Thanagarian is visible as the door opens on the smaller vessel.
HG welcomes the male Thanagarian to earth, calling him Lieutenant. He thanks her, calling her Commander. We learn his name is Hro Talak, but he tells all of them to save introductions for later because the fate of earth is in the balance. He requests a meeting with world leaders immediately.
Hro informs the world that Thanagar sent a spy, HG, five years earlier to scout Earth’s defenses. He adds that she discovered Earths’ defenses are sorely lacking. He tells them that they are unprepared for what is about to come – the Gordanians. We them see a montage of the history of Thanagar and the Gordanians, with Hro explaining that his people have been at war with those monsters for generations. He says that they have committed atrocities across the galaxy and that the world is doomed without Thanagarian help.
Later, and privately, GL confronts HG about why she never told him. She says she wanted to, many times, but could not bring herself to do so she was on a military mission and had sworn an oath of secrecy. GL asks what else she has not told him, but before she answers that question is answered. We learn she is betrothed to Hro. Hro kisses her. GL excuses himself and HG looks sad.
Later, we see the JL meeting with high level military command. They are debating whether to believe the Thanagarians. GL walks away to gather his thoughts from that meeting and finds both Batman and MM waiting for him outside. Batman immediately confronts him about HG to make sure his mind is right. MM does as well, but more softly than Bats did. Flash overhears and is completely surprised by the GL/HG relationship. MM then reminds GL and the others to keep in mind how difficult the situation must be for her as well. GL tells MM that he should have read her mind, and MM confesses that he cannot read any of the Thanagarian minds.
Privately, Hro and HG try to reconnect romantically. He brought several of her favorite foods. As they are getting close, they are interrupted. Superman informs Hro through a video call that Earth has accepted Thanagarian assistance. He replies that they will begin immediately. Hro asks HG to come with him to act as a liaison with the natives and she agrees. She goes, but Hro hangs behind to discuss that decision with another Thanagarian officer. The other man asks Hro whether it’s advisable to have to take on this role before she has been debriefed or psychologically assessed. Hro informs the other man, Krager, that he will be watching her very closely.
The episode shows us a montage of Thanagar setting up defenses for Earth, with the JL helping them set up.
On Watchtower, Batman shares his suspicions of the Thanagarians with WW.
“Think about it, a single ship attacks a city, and coincidentally the Thanagarian armada shows up to save us. I don’t believe in coincidence.”
Next we see that Batman has the corpse of a Gordanian on Watchtower. He explains to her that the crew of the ship was dead long before the Thanagarians shot them down and took their ship. He thinks Earth is being set up.
Later we see Earth’s leaders getting a tour of Thanagarian operations. The newcomers have highly advanced technology, though not beyond the understanding of MM. The Thanagarian tour goes somewhat awry when one of the visitors makes an unauthorized visit into the comms center. We see that it’s Batman in disguise. He communicates to WW that he was right and that he’s learned the Gordanians are nowhere near Earth. Before he can say more he is captured.
Hro is informed that security was breached, so he orders that contingency forces are to be deployed immediately. WW communicates Batman’s findings to Superman. As she’s talking, the Thanagarians arrive at the Watchtower. They can open the landing bay because they have an access code via HG. WW is attacked and subdued. Superman orders the others to get to the javellin, but they are stopped by a force of Thanagarians.
HG sees this and is stunned. Hro tells her that he cannot let her friends risk their mission. Earth’s military realizes they’ve been double-crossed and launches an attack, but it fails. A Thanagarian officer warns human ground troops to surrender or die, as the remaining JL fights more of them in the sky. The JL puts up a good fight but is overpowered by the superior Thanagarian technology.
Trapped in a forcefield, HG tells GL that this is for their own good and that he has to trust her. He asks whose side she’s really on and she asks, “don’t you know” with big sad eyes. Then he gets punched and knocked out, but he says awake long enough to hear her say that she’s sorry.
to be continued
[PART 2]
The episode opens with Earth’s military comms talking to each other, and finding out that the entire planet’s defenses have been taken down and defeated. Their comms call is interrupted by Hro Talak, who tells the entire planet that it has been claimed as a garrison and that they have instituted martial law. He says again that the planet faces a crisis from which only they can protect them, but adds that they need to be able to act and move quickly and without local interference.
“Cooperate, and our stay will be brief and without incident. Stand against us and our wrath will be unforgiving.”
Hro asks HG if she thinks Earth’s leaders will cooperate and she tells him that he made his point clearly. She then asks about the JL and he tells her that for special guests he’s made special arrangements. She later tours their confinement cells. The Thanagarian officer mocks them, while saying in their hearing that she aided their swift defeat with her analysis of their weaknesses. She advises him not to underestimate them, and he agrees, handing her a weapon, and suggests that she get rid of them. She rebuffs him and reminds him that the point of the operation is to keep peace while they finish the mission. She points out that killing Earth’s heroes won’t do that.
We see Wonder Woman tied up, as a Thanagarian brings her a meal. She asks him how he is supposed to eat while tied up. After he says that’s not his problem, she reminds him that it will be if HG finds out that he disobeyed orders. The soldier aggressively stabs the food with a large knife and holds it near to her face. She then somehow jerks the knife away from him with her mouth, grabs the man with her legs, and then knocks him out with a head-butt. Knife in mouth, she throws it at the keypad holding her technologies ties in place, hard enough to turn off her cuffs.
She fights them and frees Batman, advising him to free the others. A large prison break fight ensues, with the JL successfully freeing themselves and crashing the prison ship they’re being held inside. Elsewhere, Hro is informed that they escaped. He asks how this happened and HG tells him that they’re the Justice League and that’s how it happened. Hro orders a thorough search for them.
We see the JL running block to block, still in their bright colored costumes, evading the Thanagarians. Inside a warehouse, the JL realizes they need to ditch their costumes. Flash protests, not wanting them to know his real identity. Then he finds out that Batman already knows it, as Batman introduces all of them by their real names to each other.
WW: [to Flash] Red hair? It suits you.
Dressed as civilians, they split up with plans to meet at Bruce Wayne’s house in Gotham City.
Aboard the Thanagarian ship, Hro and another commander discuss the necessity of using humans as slaves to complete their mission. Hro tells HG that they’re on an unforgiving schedule and that they need to get the hyperspace bypass finished on time.
HG: Bypass? I thought we were building a force field.
Hro tells her that was the cover story. She angrily asks why he did not tell her the real plans and asks if he doesn’t trust her. They stare at each other and he takes her to see the real plan. He explains / narrates that a chain of hyperspace bypasses will allow the Thanagarians to jump behind the Gordanian defenses so that they can make a direct assault on the heart of their empire. He tells her that Earth is the last link in the chain.
HG: But if we open a hole in hyperspace it will destroy this entire planet.
Hro: Sadly, yes. For Thanagar to live, Earth must die.
The search for the JL continues and we see that the Thanagarians have discovered the discarded costumes. They realize the JL is trying to pass themselves off as civilians. They then tighten the search.
Bats and WW walk together through the city and see the civilians being abused by the Thanagarians. She wants to fight back but he tells her no, pointing out they can’t risk a confrontation yet. But things escalate and they intervene to save lives and cause themselves to be identified. Civilian see them running and pull them inside a restaurant. They immediately sit them at a booth and put food in front of them. When the Thanagarians enter looking for a dark haired man and woman, they find a roof of such people. Nobody rats them out and they hide each other by making out.
“The love birds? They’ve been here for hours.”
WW apologizes once they leave but Batman tells her not to be sorry.
Flash and GL are together and Flash is still stunned that Bats is Bruce Wayne. GL is stunned at how quickly and easily the Thanagarians took over. They run into Thanagarians checking identifications and don’t know what to do. Supes and MM are nearby. Just as Flash is about to be questioned, “Clark Kent” runs up as a reporter, asking questions of the Thanagarian. MM starts taking bright pictures. As the Thanagarian tells MM to get the contraption away, Flash and GL go beyond the checkpoint while his back is turned.
HG and Hro discuss the plan. She’s clearly upset and says there must be another way. He is sympathetic but says rerouting will set the effort back by five years and that every single moment of delay is paid for by the blood of their people.
HG: That still doesn’t give us the right. There are billions of lives down there.
Hro: We are at war. Have you forgotten why we fight?
He asks if she’s forgotten his long years rotting in the Gordanian prison camps and he shouts that he hasn’t. He then takes off his hawk helmet and reveals a brutally scarred face. She says she’s forgotten nothing but adds that the war is no excuse. He shouts that he’s her commander and that she will not question him. HG tells him that she doesn’t know him anymore.
They are interrupted by a report that they’ve lost the JL and that they’ve blended with the populace. The officer giving the update says it will be hard to find them unless HG knows where they are. She throws him down and suggests that he treads lightly, just before storming out. He tells Hro that she didn’t answer the question after she’s gone.
The JL gathers at Bruce Wayne’s house. As they discuss what the Thanagarians might actually be building, HG emerges from the shadows offering to tell them. They are furious with her, but she plows forward, explaining the plan is to build a hyperspace bypass that will destroy the planet. She gives them everything she knows and apologizes, saying she didn’t know Hro Talak’s plan. Batman tells her that they’ll check it out and then points her toward the door. Everyone walks away except GL. He notes that the last time he turned his back on her she sucker punched him. She says she did what she thought was right, then, and that is what she’s doing now. She then gives him back his ring before leaving.
Elsewhere, we see that the Thanagarians followed her.
to be continued
[part 3]
When HG returns to the Thanagarians, she is placed under guard. We cut to Hro and learn that the bypass is almost complete. As we hear this report, HG is taken to him and he is told that she’s guilty of high treason. He then shows footage they took, from a camera planted on HG, of her telling the JL what the real plans are. Hro orders that HG be taken out of his sight. Hro punches the commander who planted the camera on HG, and then orders him to assemble a strikeforce to deal with the League. He orders him to not bother taking prisoners.
The JL, now in possession of the plans, makes a plan of their own to stop them.
At this point, the Thanagarians attack the Wayne Manor with their strike force. Alfred is violently shoved to the ground. They then tear the place up looking for the JL. A fight ensues inside the Batcave. The JL wins convincingly. When they get upstairs, Alfred is back on his feet, sweeping up the glass on the floor.
The JL splits up, with some using a Thanagarian ship to retake the Watchtower. The others go to shut down the man Thanagarian generator. In order to learn how to fly the Thanagarian ship, MM has to try to read the mind of one of their captured strikeforce. He has extreme difficulty, but eventually succeeds.
HG is now in a holding cell, similar to those the JL were held in previously. Hro comes to her and asks why she would do this. She says she’s trying to save lives and they debate the value of the human lives vs. the Thanagarian ones. He tells her that war makes for hard choices, and she retorts that the man she fell in love with would have found another way.
Hro: Are you talking about me or Green Lantern?
She puts her head down and he begins to rage, asking her to tell him that she was lonely and that it was a meaningless flirtation. He tells her he could even forgive her treason and make it go away, provided she loves him. She tells him that she is his, provided that he spares Earth. He refuses.
Hro: Perhaps you’ll forget him once Earth is nothing but a memory.
MM, Batman, and Flash reboard Watchtower and attack. Meanwhile Superman, WW, and GL attack the Thanagarian ship. Batman tells the others, now that they have Watchtower, that he plans to drop it onto the Thanagarian “science project.” He orders everyone be placed on the escape pods. Once that is done, Batman presses a button, locking MM and Flash on an escape pod with the Thanagarian prisoners.
Bats: I can’t risk having the Watchtower burn up on reentry. I’ll have to guide it in manually. Gentlemen, it’s been an honor.
The battle down on earth is going well, with Superman, GL, and WW succeeding against the Thanagarians. Hro wants to fight GL himself so he belays a security protocol. Hawkgirl watches in confinement as the fight happens. WW finally finds her and says she should leave her to burn, but frees her instead.
GL and Hro fight. GL wins, but as he starts to take down the generator, Hro returns, and strikes his ring, knocking it from his hand. Hro is about to kill him as HG arrives. She tells him he’s a soldier, not a murderer, but he answers that he’s a fool for ever loving her. She then begins to fight him.
Batman communicates to Superman that they’re cutting it close and asks if they’ve shut down the generator and the force field. Superman says they’re working on it and asks where he is. Batman tells him he’s on the Watchtower and is guiding it in manually. Superman realizes that Batman is going to die even if he succeeds.
While they fight, HG pleads with Hro not to kill these innocent people and to find another way. He clobbers her and throws her body to the ground. GL is back up, but without his ring. He attacks Hro with a pipe. GL baits Hro into attacking him, while he’s in front of the generator powering the force field He does and Hro takes down the forcefield by accident.
WIth the forcefield down, Batman is almost there with the Watchtower. We see him pass out just as Superman arrives to pull him from the falling craft. Everything explodes as Supes flies him to safety.
Superman: Always have to be the hero, don’t you?
Batman: Right back at you.
GL and Hawkgirl are surrounded by Thanagarians just a a sword wielding Wonder Woman arrives. She slices through them ans asks who’s next, causing those still standing to back down. Hro then stands and orders his troops to stand down and explains that the mission is a failure, so there is no more reason to fight.
Hro: I hope you are pleased with yourself. It will take years for us to rebuild elsewhere.
HG: Then you better get started.
We cut to a report from Snapper Carr, who says the Thanagarians have ended their occupation of Earth and are leaving to locations unknown.
HG is at Bruce Wayne’s house, talking to Alfred. She notes to him that the others have been in there a long time (meaning a meeting without her.) Alfred tells her that without the great sacrifices she made, the two of them wouldn’t be there to share a nice pot of tea.
Alfred: Whatever they decide in that room, in my eyes, you’ll always be a hero.
The JL takes a vote regarding HG’s continued membership in the League. We don’t see the results of that vote but she is called in to hear the results. When she enters, and before they can tell her anything, she explains herself to them. She says she has spent five years torn between her feelings and her duty and that she won’t ask them to do the same thing. She then resigns from the Justice League. Before she goes, Flash hugs her.
Later, a bandaged GL finds HG by herself. He asks where she’s going to go and she says she doesn’t know, but that she wants it to be a place where the fate of the world is not in her hands. She tells him she never lied about her feelings for him and then flies away.
REACTION:
This episode felt like it was an answer to one of those “what if” questions about superhero vs. superhero combat. “How many Hawkgirls would it take to defeat the Justice League?” A lot of them is apparently the answer. However, it seemed very notable to me that GL was beaten one on one against a Thanagarian. If most of them are at that power level, I’m not entirely sure that the JL could have won a prolonged fight against them. The JL really only won because they blew up one large and irreplaceable piece of military equipment. They didn’t actually win the fight – though they did fight better in part 3 than they did in part 1 where they were caught by surprise. If the Hawk People had brought more than one bypass engine, the JL definitely loses. There wasn’t another Watchtower to drop on a second one.
The Thanagarian plan here is pretty similar to the plot from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Earth needs to be destroyed to make way for an intergalactic highway. Nothing personal. They manage to keep it from happening, but only barely, and really only because the Thanagarian commander put his personal feelings ahead of the mission. If he doesn’t insist on fighting GL himself, they probably keep the forcefield up and Batman’s almost-sacrifice both kills him and fails to do the intended objective.
I wonder at what point, if any, Aquaman was going to get involved here? He’s down at the bottom of the ocean with a very large and high tech military. I guess they didn’t need his help? In addition… nobody called the rest of the Green Lantern Corp? So… none of that really made sense. It didn’t make much sense that the various and sundry super-powered bad guys didn’t get involved, either.
Continuity things aside, this was mostly a story about Hawkgirl deciding where her loyalties lie. She ultimately betrayed her own people to save Earth – though I would not be surprised if another Thanagarian Commander (or even most of them) would take her side against her ex-fiance. Hro kind of went insane. Nobody noticed in the planning stages of that bypass plan that they needed to kill a planet inhabited by billions of people?
That also begs the question… why was HG on Earth in the first place, scouting out its weaknesses, if she didn’t know this was the plan ahead of time? What did she think she was there for? She definitely didn’t know or believe that the Gordanians were any kind of imminent threat to Earth (such that it Earth needed a force field.) Alright, so there are a lot of problems with the story.
Story telling confusion notwithstanding, I still mostly liked the three parter here. Hawkgirl’s inner turmoil was compelling. She was torn between her two romantic loves and her two opposite duties. It was also fun to see how the JL acted as a resistance movement. Batman choosing self-sacrifice and then Superman being super and saving him was one of the best moments from this era of DC’s animated offerings.
This story was kind of the series finale for the Justice League animated show. As a series finale, this is a pretty weak one. However, the same characters, and the same story, get picked back up for a new show, “Justice League Unlimited,” which deals with the immediate aftermath of this show. This leaves us kind of on a cliffhanger, but the story keeps going so it isn’t much of one. This three part story works relatively well as a season finale. That’s how I’ve decided to view it.
Note: The three parter opened with a huge meeting in D.C. between the Kaznians and the Americans. These appear to be the two most powerful nations on Earth. I think Kaznia is intended to occupy the role of Russia, vis a vis the U.S., but it’s weird that DC writers would not just say Russia. In fact, I’m pretty sure Russia exists in DC. There aren’t a lot of eastern bloc countries that start with Kaz, at least not in the present day. If you go back a thousand years, there was a Khazeria in eastern Europe (roughly located where European Russia, Ukraine, Crimea, and Romania are today.) Maybe DC just mashed some of these place names together to create a fictional military super power. I don’t understand the choice. If you read into the history of the country, in DC lore, it’s listed as a stand-in geographically for Yugoslavia. I suppose it’s just going to be confusing to figure out geopolitics in a fictional world wherein some places from the real world are present, some are not, and some are added, so it’s a fool’s errand on my part to make sense of it. Anyway…
Overall, this was just a so-so finale. I enjoyed its emotional elements and it had a few really good moments. The story failed to make a lot of sense once I started putting more thought to it. As a result, I’m a little torn. It’s not awful. It’s not great, either.
Hopefully Justice League Unlimited picks up from here and does a good job moving forward.