This Young Justice: Phantoms review contains spoilers.
Young Justice: Phantoms Season 4 Episode 24
It’s not possible for the Young Justice: Phantoms team to be reading what’s published on this little ol’ site and responding to it in almost real time. The lead time on animation is usually massive: what we see on HBO Max was probably written a year or more ago. That said, it certainly feels like the writers were thinking the same thing I was after last week: holy cats there’s a lot left to do.
And this week they started crossing stuff off their list.
GENERAL ZOD
By my count, we’ve got three episodes left, and three villains that the story is orbiting around. The first is General Zod, who along with a Phantom Zone-brainwashed Conner Kent, spends much of the episode kicking the asses of the original team minus M’gann.
M’gann, meanwhile, gets word from a returned Phantom Girl (accompanied by Prince J’emm J’axx) that Conner is still alive as Green Lantern Forager returns the Kaizer Thrall to Earth. We find out that the Kaizer Thrall is a character named Danny Chase. Danny is an ultra powerful telekinetic (and, oddly enough, nephew of Peacemaker’s Vigilante in the comics). In a real “Jesus Christ, dude” moment, we find out that Danny was trafficked to Apokolips after his metagene was forcibly activated, where Desaad carved out his brain and dropped it in the Kaizer Thrall. Danny, however, still retains his personality, and when Phantom Girl keeps missing the Phantom Zone while trying to save Conner, he offers to interface with a Motherbox and open a boom tube into the Zone.
That goes to hell when Ma’alefa’ak and Lor Zod head them off on Trombus, the barren planet with a red sun where Orion agrees to open the portal from. Ma’alefa’ak wipes Danny out of the Thrall and Lor Zod sets it to shake the hell out of the good guys as Zod leaves the zone, followed by Conner and his new earthly wounds – the cuts from the Phantom Zone beasts turn from imaginary gashes in his chest to giant, seeping wounds the second Conner becomes corporeal again. And that’s where we leave off.
SAVAGE AND MARKOVIA
The episode only glancingly touches on Vandal Savage and Markovia’s significance to the endgame. Last week’s Infinity Inc. and meta-gathering operation (spearheaded by Savage’s lackey, Bad Samaritan) are almost entirely ignored here save for the bank shot from the refresher on the metahuman trafficking. Danny’s fate is generally horrific through the entire story, but he does serve as a reminder of just how messed up Savage is.
DARKSEID AND…KLARION?
We don’t really get anything on the Apokoliptian plan, either. Or at least we don’t get anything confirmed – Danny’s story, again, crosses both of these plot streams, but even that isn’t what I’m curious about.
The credits stinger is Klarion’s new familiar, Teekl 2, sitting on the arm of a throne that looks almost Apokaliptian. This show does Kirby very well, and the design on the chair and on the floor around it felt quite Kirbyesque. Of course, this team up would be one of the weirder ones in DC history.
Darkseid’s whole bit is trying to get and use the Anti-Life Equation, which isn’t quite what it sounds like. The Anti-Life Equation doesn’t erase life; it eradicates free will. The equation allows its owner to completely dominate the people he recites it to.
This is not, at first glance, a particularly chaotic outcome. So why would a Lord of Chaos be teaming up with the God of Evil? My answer would probably be something along the lines of “Why the hell not?” but I don’t write for the show. And they certainly seem to have a clear plan for how to wrap this stuff up, so if I’m right that this was Apokolips, then there’s certainly a reason and judging by the last handful of episodes, it’s probably a good one.