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KarrinBlue writes...

So, one of the complaints I've seen come up in discussions about Young Justice is that the villains are too well-prepared for any contingency, beyond what anyone could plan for, and it's hard to root for heroes when they can't make any progress against the villains' plans. And then I realized - well, why are we trusting a bunch of career liars and manipulators to actual say when something's caused them trouble? They'd do everything in their power to make it look like they're in control, always one step ahead, but looking at the actual evidence, we get a different story entirely.

Take Bereft - Superboy escapes capture, the League gets a heads-up that someone in Bialya is messing around with zeta-beams, Sphere is lost, and the Light's top telepath is soundly beaten, and yet none of that matters, because the delivery system was successfully tested... But who ever said the delivery system needed to be tested? It's a boom tube, which the New Gods have been using for centuries, tech that's as tried-and-true to them as anything, and there doesn't seem to be any reason to expect boom tubes to not work if they're being sent to Earth. Saying that it doesn't matter if they lost Sphere because the delivery system works is like saying it doesn't matter if someone breaks into your house and steals your new laptop, because you now know that the postal service that delivered it works fine. But no one in the Light would ever say something like that - they've all been spreading around a reputation of being masterminds, with goals and strategies as inevitable as the tides, so saying anything that would hint at doubt would never happen!

Or, let's look at Downtime and Misplaced. To hear the Light talk about it, getting the entire Starro organism is about the same as getting the sample from the lab, in terms of their plans, so Aqualad didn't really hurt their plans all that much. But looking at it long-term - one member of the Team, on his day off, forced the Light to adjust their plans from 'acquire a nearly endless supply of Starro-samples in one night while no Justice Leaguers are able to interfere, then begin combining it with the Fog, then spend the time until Red Arrow's induction fine-tuning the Starro-tech' to 'wait and plan for months, carry out a massive ritual that draws the attention of every superhero in the world, and in the process bring back the only mystic being that can match Klarion and lose 4 of the Light's top mystic muscle to him, all to acquire a tiny fraction of the original biomass.' Even if in the end they still got the Starro-sample, they still had to go to a lot more trouble and pay a higher price for it.

The Light is a threat, yes, but they're not omnipotent or omniscient, much as they'd like to convince their minions, their enemies, and we the audience otherwise. And I really can't wait to see S3, where they finally have to deal with a Team that can plan and scheme as well as they can.

Greg responds...

Well, I never thought they were omnipotent or omniscient. They're all flawed individuals. But they play a good game, don't you think?

Hope you liked Season Three, and hope that you tune in for Season Four, as well.

Response recorded on July 02, 2021