- Title: Young Justice – Princes All
- wiki: link
Two years have passed since the end of the show’s Second Season and “Princes All.” In that time Nightwing (Jesse McCartney) has left the team, Aqualad (Khary Payton) has been promoted to a leadership role in the Justice League, and Miss Martian (Danica McKellar) is now the leader of the expanded teen heroes. There’s quite a bit of set-up in the season premiere including several members of the Justice League resigning feeling hamstrung by politics and current world affairs and introducing the idea of meta-humans being kidnapped, harvested, and sold around the galaxy as soldiers in galactic wars. The later brings a toned-down Nightwing back into the story on the trail of a new lead on the trafficking which opens the door to old friends (a few of whom he enlists on his latest mission).
The episode features plenty of cameos, but with the focus continually shifting from the team, Nighwing’s recruiting mission, the dissolving Justice League, Black Lightning (Khary Payton) struggling with the death of transformed meta-human at his hands, and the state of royalty in Markovia (by far the slowest of the plot lines), nobody is given much time to shine. While the Markovian set-up will no doubt bear fruit, it’s glacial pacing certainly doesn’t help an episode already struggling with a hefty amount of set-up and restructuring the world two years following our last glimpse of it. There are also a few fan-friendly moments thrown in for longtime fans of the show including a proposal and a somewhat heartbreaking end credit sequence reminding us of the show’s missing hero.
