At the heart of it, something - maybe the thing - that really hurts me about what became of the animated Young Justice show is the way later seasons are contemptuously cynical-bordering-on-hateful towards the ideals of heroism set out by its own first season.

In Season 1, Superman states that the Justice League of Earth-16 upholds the ideals of Truth, Liberty and Justice.  And yet, the thing the characters from Season 2 onwards can be most reliably expected to do is lie.  

They lie constantly, for ill-justified, often-selfish reasons, with the intent to control and manipulate their peers (and civilians), in ways that betray and endanger people who trust them.  And when confronted they refuse to hold themselves accountable, at best giving lip-service apologies that are rendered meaningless by them continuing the same behaviours in later episodes/ seasons.

That is mind-numbingly awful.  The S2+ iterations of these characters have not only failed to embody their own series’ stated ideals of heroism, but have so consistently acted antithetically to them that, if placed into almost any other hero story (or even their own first season), they would at best be tragic dire-warning fallen heroes, and at worst be insidious Justice Lord-style villains.

Not only that but later seasons seem almost personally vindictive towards the specific ideals and aspirations of the individual characters:

The Dick Grayson of Season 1 was openly afraid to become someone who would sacrifice others for the sake of the mission.  And yet the Nightwing of S2 onwards is forcibly re-written as a compulsively dishonest manipulator who pointlessly conceals information and concocts callous sacrifice-plans by default.  (‘Dick Grayson is a pathological liar’ becoming a fandom meme.)

The Bruce Wayne of Season 1 openly admitted that he didn’t want Dick to become too like him, and was invested in the emotional wellbeing of the proteges. And yet the Batman of S2 onwards is rewritten to actively enable Nightwing becoming exactly that; an approving co-conspirator who praises him for the ‘respect’ he now commands.

The Kaldur’ahm of Season 1 was concerned that he behaved too much like a soldier to be an effective leader, while worrying about the possible damage he might do by forcing that mantle onto Robin too soon.  And yet the Kaldur of S2 onwards is rewritten to be unfit for every leadership position the show arbitrarily hands him, specifically because he consistently enables Nightwing to use him as a soldier in plans that go against every principle the Team once stood for.

The M’gann M’orzz of Season 1 was terrified of creating a situation where her powers would hurt the people she cares about.  And yet the Miss Martian of S2 onwards is re-written to intentionally misuse and abuse her powers; violating Conner’s boundaries, manipulating him, Garfield, Artemis and others, and destroying the minds of people she has decided are her enemies.

The Conner Kent of Season 1 wanted to know what it meant to be Superman while not wanting to be treated as a weapon.  And yet the Superboy of S2 onwards is never given a meaningful personal or professional relationship with Superman on screen, while being used as a pawn and a tool by teammates who constantly lie to him, with the writing putting the burden on him to accept and forgive this mistreatment.  (The show itself being unable to fully pretend that his and Miss Martian’s rewritten relationship isn’t abusive).

The Artemis Crock of Season 1 was desperate to become her own hero and define herself by something other than her criminal family.  And yet the Tigress of S2 onwards is forcibly narratively separated from her ‘new family’ and defined primarily by her relationship to her biological family and brother-in-law, while being narratively punished for and written to regret every show of agency that doesn’t involve retiring from heroism to become a subservient trad-wife to either Wally or Red Arrow (because Greg Weisman is a misogynist).

The Wally West of Season 1 was a character who questioned the objectivity of others and learned to appreciate that the value of heroism was helping people. And yet the Kid Flash of S2 onwards is rewritten to be a jaded cynic who decides heroism isn’t worth it (in order to remove him from the narrative), is rudely dismissed by Nightwing when he attempts to question the plan, has his cynicism validated when he is killed in a twist to hurt the audience, and after which is only grieved in superficial ways as the others use his death to justify actions he would never have stood for.

The Zatanna Zatara of Season 1 was insecure about living up to her father’s legacy, especially after losing him to the Helmet of Fate.  And yet the Zatanna of S2 onwards is never allowed to heal from that loss or grow into a magician in her own right, instead being relegated to a support character who is arbitrarily handed whatever magical abilities are needed to solve plot problems, uses her powers to manipulate others, and is primarily defined as either Nightwing’s ex-lover or by her Father (because, again, misogynist).

The Roy Harper of Season 1 was a proud character driven to prove his worthiness for League membership, only to be shaken by the reveal that he was a Cadmus sleeper agent.  And yet, the Red Arrow of S2 onwards is never allowed a satisfying on-screen arc about identity or self; instead being used first as a prop to introduce Arsenal and then as a surrogate-Wally for Nightwing and strong-male-provider for Tigress to fall into the arms of (oh right, the misogyny).

Even the Team as a unit, the bonds between them, the themes of trust and communication, and everything they worked to achieve in Season 1 is systematically torn apart and undone across Invasion and Outsiders in a way that feels almost intentionally cruel.

I’ve heard people compare Young Justice to Dreamwork’s Voltron, and while that is a fair comparison, I think Young Justice is actually worse.  Voltron managed to sustain itself for 3 seasons before gradually falling apart over another 4, and - while it was tragic in the loss of its theme, abandoning of stakes, failure to conclude character arcs and weakening of cast bonds - it never felt like the Paladins were intentionally hypocritical to the point of being toxic for one another, or like they were a threat to the fundamental ideals of the Lion corps.

Meanwhile the core cast of Young Justice have been so consistently re-written to betray each other’s trust and their own explicitly stated values while never taking ownership of or changing their behaviour (no matter how many times they are confronted over it or see it hurt others) that eventually you stop wanting them to succeed and start wanting them to fail just for there to be some accountability.  And when that doesn’t happen (because the showrunners and executives don’t see a problem with selfish, dishonest, unjust behaviour) you almost start wanting them to die, if only because death would be a kinder fate than being forced to exist as a corrupted parody of everything they never wanted to become.

And if Earth-16 is a world where fundamental heroic ideals like compassion, honesty, respect and accountability are sneered at as childish things that cannot survive into adulthood?  If this is their reimagining of Dick Grayson - a character who in many stories is so meant to embody the ideals of heroism that any world in which he is a good person is worth saving?  Then, frankly, Darkseid can have this one and good riddance.

This is what I mean when I say that Young Justice only truly has one season.  Season 1 is a very distinctive and separate product to the rest: a sum total of its entire production and executive team.  To me, it was the last breath of a golden age of DC TV-animation, with heavy creative input from DC/Cartoon Network old-guard members like Jay Oliva and Michael Chang (a pair of directors who were prominently involved in the Teen Titans animated series, and who together directed over 75% of YJS1 - each individually handling more episodes than any of the writers, including Greg Weisman).

And then a change came and we see those old-guard creatives disappear from the credits of S2 onwards.

It feels like the new production/executive teams hated what Young Justice Season 1 was.  It’s kind of an open secret that multiple Cartoon Network shows were cancelled around that time due to a combination of poor toy sales (partially resulting from the low quality/ limited variety of official merchandise) and for having too much ‘four quadrants appeal’, especially when it came to drawing in unexpected numbers of older female viewers.  (There’s this deeply stupid marketing idea that shows which attract an audience outside of their intended demographic are “internally competing” with and drawing profit/ sales away from shows aimed at those other demographics).   That might also explain why Oliva, Chang and other old-guard members dropped from the production, since Teen Titans seems to have been one of the other shows under fire. This is just speculation but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that Young Justice Season 1 was up for cancellation and - instead of just dropping the show and launching a new one - the decision was made to cancel it in all but name; gutting everything that actually made it what it was and repurposing the brand identity and visual aesthetic to take advantage of an established audience.

We never really got a genuine narrative continuation of Season 1.  What we got was a series of In Name Only sequels, designed to sell merchandise, subscriptions and comics, by new production/executive teams that wanted the show to be anything other than itself.  And, in repurposing the title to sell a set of antithetical stories as sequels, those later seasons destroyed any future possibility to actually see that original story continued or concluded.

This is why I haven’t watched Season 4, why I won’t be using any of it in my own fandom stuff (and why I’m low-key kind of offended by its premise).  It’s existence is creatively bankrupt; I’ve talked about it here but the showrunners and production/executive teams have so thoroughly dissembled every piece of narrative mechanics that there simply isn’t a story or stakes to carry it.  And the claims that Phantoms was going to return to the original team or that ‘this has always been their story’ are blatantly exploitative.   This is a show that has had nothing but condescending cynicism-bordering-on-hatred for its own starting point.  Its second and third season have done everything they could to deny these characters their arcs, undercut their values and walk back everything they once worked to achieve.  If the showrunners and new production teams had ever sincerely cared about this story, its themes or its stated ideals of heroism then they would never have re-written them in such a fundamentally contemptuous way.   We would never have been given Invasion and we certainly wouldn’t have been given Outsiders.  So for Phantoms to try to crawl back; to make one final grasp at profit by pretending to care about characters and a season it has done nothing but cynically undermine and misrepresent… it’s emblematic of the kind of bald-faced dishonesty and manipulativeness that has destroyed this show from the inside out.  

From a narrative perspective, Young Justice only has one season: the original Oliva-Chang directed season, by a production/executive team that genuinely seemed to care about who its heroes were, understood the ideals they stood for, and made a sincere effort to tell a good story.

But it has been followed by a corrupted, soulless parody of everything it never wanted to become: full of hypocritical, unjust strangers-wearing-familiar-faces, written to unapologetically do things that they know to be wrong in service of a product which is contemptuously cynical-bordering-on-hateful towards the ideals of truth, liberty and justice.

A show that now hates everything it used to stand for.

And it just about makes you want to cry.