4x22 Rescue and Search

[7.3/10] This played like a table-setting episode, but not a bad one necessarily. It focuses on both the Young Justice crew and the House of Zod gathering information the audience already knows. Knowing everything revealed here limits the urgency and excitement of these discoveries, but it’s a necessary evil to get the characters themselves up to speed.

I do wish the vaunted detective work of Dick and company could be a little more clever. He and Zatanna do piece things together about Superboy and Bart Allen. Still, it’s mostly hacking, facial recognition software, and psychic powers doing most of the work, rather than any clever sleuthing or fitting of the puzzle pieces together. It does turn into an excuse for a “getting the team back together” routine though, which has its own bit of excitement.

That said, the fight against Klarion felt like a shoe-horned in excuse for a fight. The fight itself wasn’t especially memorable, and the whole thing is a dead end. Still, I can appreciate Zatanna wanting to try to leverage the Witch Boy to get to the Phantom Zone since he’d been there before, and honestly, it’s mildly refreshing to see one of the team’s plans completely fail like that. The magic schoolbus tease is amusing for anyone who grew up with Miss Frizzle, and I’m curious where they’ll go with it.

The back and forth between Conner and the Zods is more of a dull affair. Zod finding out that Krypton is destroyed and Conner is genetically affiliated with the family of his mortal enemy is necessary information, but it’s all pretty perfunctory and doesn’t tell the audience anything new beyond the tease with Phantom Girl. Likewise, it’s good to check in on Zod Jr. holding the Legionnaires and Kid Flash hostage, but it doesn’t move the ball much.

Overall, this is more of a prelude to interesting stuff than anything thrilling or compelling in and of itself, but this “getting the main players up to speed” had to happen sooner or later, so I suppose it’s fine for it to happen here.