3x01 Princes All

[7.1/10] I get that time jumps between season are part of Young Justice’s DNA. I also get that several years had passed between seasons, featuring cancellation and revival in the interim, making it all the more necessary to reorient audiences. But I gotta admit, as we embark upon season 3, I’m already a little tired of the soft resets.

Who are the new faces? What happened in the interim to change things up? What partnerships grew and dissolved in that time and why? With a few exceptions, season 2 of the show didn’t really dig into those questions. It was too focused on The Reach and Blue Beetle. Instead, we just launched into the new status quo, and that was that.

We do the same thing again this year. The new topic du jour is metahuman trafficking, a new problem both domestically and intergalactically. There’s a lot you could do with that. The idea that it’s an interstellar problem, even with The Reach’s banishment, has merit as another excuse to protect the innocent from mysterious yet malevolent forces.

But we have to spend a lot of this one introducing a brand new country, Markovia, led by a royal family we’ve never met until now, with complex family politics we’re barely introduced to before assassins are taking out heads of state and there’s a tug of war for the line of succession. Every introduction has to start somewhere, but the show was already packed before we started throwing even more onto the fire.

I do appreciate that, of the newer characters, they decide to give Black Lightning more of the spotlight here. The idea that he thought he was neutralizing a monster, and inadvertently killed a fourteen-year-old girl, is treated with the gravity it deserves. That sort of thing would shake even the most steadfast hero, and I appreciate how it prompts him to leave the League and to retire from heroing altogether given the way the grief of it diminished his powers.

I’ll also admit that it’s nice to see Nightwing rounding up many members of the original team to be able to take down a metahuman trafficking ring. Why he doesn't just get the whole crew (sans Wally, of course) to handle it is beyond me, but hopefully the writers have their reasons. I’ll confess, seeing Conner propose to M’gaan and Artemis living with (involved with?) Red Arrow feels like too much too fast, but I guess they want to cover their major bases quickly.

There’s also something to be said for Batman breaking off from the League and forming his own crime-fighting organization closer to the people. Some of the names he brings along are tantalizing, and I’m intrigued by the prospect of there being two major hero orgs (three if you count the Young Justice team as something separate), who won’t always be on the same page and don’t necessarily trust one another after a bad break-up (night literally with Robin and Wondergirl).

Otherwise, this is mainly a big dose of table-setting without much in the way of fireworks or progression. That is understandable after six years off the air. The transition to streaming comes with a few changes -- more blood and brutality than we’re used to, for one, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. And there’s some interesting thematic material here, from a human trafficking analogue to questions about refugees and immigration. All of that is just grazed here. There’s no time for anything else. But once again, there's potential.

On the whole, there’s plenty of interesting places Young Justice can go in its big return. It’s nice to come to the series at a time where I know the adventure continues and don’t have to worry about the story ending with The Reach’s expulsion or the Apokalips teases unfulfilled. But there’s a lot of reintroduction and new additions here, and it leaves me wishing that the show would spend more time building on the ample foundation it’s already established than trying to frantically lay more foundation with each new year of episodes.