Young Justice: Outsiders season 3, episode 14 recap: Influence

Young Justice: Outsiders returns for the second half of the season with new members joining the team, and fan-favorite DC characters appearing on the show.

Young Justice: Outsiders is back from its mid-season hiatus with the Justice League investigating an attack on Thanagar. Superman, Wonder Woman, Guy Gardner, Hawkman, and Hawk-Girl are uncertain about the perpetrators, but they are taken aback when the Thanagarians believe humans might have been behind it. Guy does a scan of his own and discovers a trail that could possibly lead the superheroes to the real culprits.

Goode World Studios

Young Justice: Outsiders Episode 14 (Credit: DC Universe)

Aquaman (Kaldur’ahm), co-chair of the Justice League, calls upon the governments of Earth to bring a stop to the trafficking of meta-humans by Goode World Studios. Run by Granny Goodness, she had launched a series of Goode Goggles, VR devices that detected the meta-gene in users and implanted subliminal messages for them to visit a facility where the metas were then captured, enslaved and deployed across the galaxy as weapons.

In the first half of Young Justice: Outsiders, the Justice League were able to shut down these black-market operations and rehabilitate the metas at the STAR Labs Youth Centre. Granny, of course, refutes these claims, placing the blame on one of her colleagues. She intends to launch a new series of goggles for the world, and that is not good news.

Garfield Logan/ Beast Boy, who is an actor at Goode World Studios, is all set to confront Granny, but what good will that do?

The New Young Justice

Young Justice: Outsiders Episode 14 (Credit: DC Universe)

The Outsiders’ mentors, Conner Kent/ Superboy, Dick Grayson/ Nightwing, and Artemis Crock/ Tigress, ask their charges to decide whether they truly want to join the superhero life. These three have faced great losses, the death of Wally West being one of them, and they want Forager, Violet/ Halo, Brion Markov/ Geo-Force to make the decision with their eyes wide open.

Of course, the Outsiders are more than delighted to join Young Justice. Miss Martian welcomes them to the team and is also thrilled that Superboy and Tigress have agreed to re-join as members. Additionally, Beast Boy has returned to the fold so he can take Granny Goodness down with the help of the team and its resources.

Artemis remarks that it is nice to have more women on the team, but Halo tells her that she doesn’t identify as either gender. Irrespective of her physical appearance, Halo wishes to just be herself, and her boyfriend Geo-Force doesn’t even bat an eyelid at her declaration. How amazing is it to have a non-binary, hijabi superhero!

Enter the Fourth World

Young Justice: Outsiders Episode 14 (Credit: DC Universe)

In Young Justice: Outsiders, Granny Goodness may come across as a kindly old lady on Earth, but DC Comics readers are aware that Granny only serves Darkseid. We finally see her don her comic accurate persona, as she tortures Big Barda for stepping out of line. Barda is an interesting addition to the show because she and Mister Miracle have become popular favorites since Tom King and Mitch Gerads’ comic book hit, Mister Miracle.

Granny orders Barda to fire at Guy Gardner, who has traced the source of the Thanagar attack. The Justice League are able to infiltrate Granny’s ship, and when they do, they come face to face with the Furies. As the League battles the Furies, Wonder Woman discovers that Granny is holding the entire repository of meta-humans, but they aren’t able to rescue the children because Granny’s always one step ahead of the heroes.

She engulfs the League and the Furies in a torture chamber, which Superman is able to breach. He rescues Barda along the way and destroys the machine, but Granny teleports the League members into space. Now that Barda has seen another side to her enemies, perhaps she will turn against Granny.

The episode of Young Justice: Outsiders ends with Granny promising to make everything right again. Beast Boy doesn’t believe a word of what she says. Neither do the viewers.