Plot summary: The League really get stuck into the war effort as they try to help the allies resist Vandal Savage’s march towards seemingly inevitable victory.
For background on the creation of Justice League and info about how I’ll be covering it, check out the Series Primer.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 25 (S1.E25)
Original Air Date: November 9th, 2002
Directed: Dan Riba (13)
Written: Stan Berkowitz (10)
Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD (25)
Music: Kris Carter (10), Michael McCuistion (11) and Lolita Ritmanis (11)
These are some of the only episodes to feature the entire Justice League in Season One, though Batman is absent from Part II for obvious reasons.
More wartime DC characters here with The Blackhawks, greatly expanded roles for Sgt. Rock & Easy Company, and one of the wounded resembles The Unknown Soldier. Also Superman flying around briefly on fire is a nod to Marvel’s original Human Torch, Jim Hammond.
Vandal Savage references the Nietzschian concept of Ubermensch, or ‘Superior Man’, sometimes translated as ‘Superman’. Lois Lane made a similar reference in the opening three-parter of STAS.
There is an implication that Diana used the powers of the Lasso of Truth on a German solider, but we’ll later find out this power is dormant, so it appears she just used good old fashioned intimidation here.
Recap
The League continue saving allied troops and fending off the Nazi assault, with the Blackhawks helping Superman & Hawkgirl to shoot down a squadron of attack planes.
The Blackhawks inform the heroes of a heavily fortified factory building… something for Savage, recruiting the League to help blow it up.
John Stewart is assumed dead by both sides, but ends up linking up with Sgt. Rock and Easy Company on their mission to take out a secret enemy airbase.
Unfortunately John doesn’t slip back into his old military days as easily as he hoped and his hesitation gets one of the unit shot while ‘Bulldozer’ constantly berates his performance.
Vandal Savage has J’onn J’onnz tortured for information, revealing that he didn’t travel back in time, but rather sent his past self information and technology to tip the balance.
J’onn is able to escape and destroy Savage’s laptop. Savage orders they commence ‘Operation Endgame’, but is told they cannot because of Steve Trevor’s theft in the previous episode.
Speaking of Trevor, he and Wonder Woman arrive at his spycraft rendezvous point and sparks fly, but the Germans got to his codebreaking contact, Ernst.
Diana is able to fight them all off and get Ernst’s location out of one of them. She flies Trevor there, but Ernst warns them it was a trap, as a much larger squad surround them…
To Be Continued…
Best Performance
Once again, a pretty solid ensemble episode with most actors playing multiple roles as there are plenty of soldiers on both sides that need bringing to life. Always nice to hear Ted Levine’s unique marble-mouth, even if only for a few lines as Easy Company’s ‘Bulldozer’. I think Maria Canals-Barrera stood out most among the main cast, as Hawkgirl took so naturally to the wartime setting, and having a very heated argument with Flash.
Phil Morris is exactly who I hear in my head whenever I read Vandal Savage dialogue. He just gets the character and fits him like a glove. I talked about it before, but his calm, almost aloof nature while occupying the role of an actual conqueror is a great choice for an immortal. He’s not rubbing his palms together and doing a big mwahaha laugh, he’s not a tweaked nut job, and he’s not even really an overconfident/cocky rich dude. He is just operating on a different level to most characters and Morris’ work helps sell that.
I fear Patrick Duffy isn’t quite right for Steve Trevor, sounding a little too old for the part. I get the thinking there, as the character hails from a bygone era, but he can’t quite find the balance of charisma and optimistic introspection. This may just be a personal hangup, but I hold Steve Trevor performances to a high standard as to me one of the least realistic things in the world is Wonder Woman falling for… well, basically any man, so you’ve got to give me somebody pretty special for me to buy it. Worse is Fred Dyer who is simply far too dry for Sgt. Rock.
Episode Ranking
A lot of my comments from ‘Part I’ still apply, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say the same will be true for ‘Part III’. The creative team are able to do a shockingly good job of threading the needle blending these bombastic cartoon superheroes with the real-world gravitas of World War II. Seeing Superman, Hawkgirl and Flash carry a dozen or so troops to the safety of American ships as the Nazis shell the beach is just undeniably compelling.
On that note, it was nice that they turned their attention to Normandy-style beach landing warfare, after ‘Part I’ focused entirely on the bombing and occupation of small towns, as well as giving us a brief dog fight. We even get a little bit of sniping and a tiny slice of trench warfare here, and I really appreciate their ongoing efforts trying to communicate the sheer scale of it all. As I said last time, for as powerful as The League are, even they would struggle to fend off an entire army, with or without Savage upgrading their weaponry. I like that the German planes appear to be unaltered, so Superman and Hawkgirl are able to brush off their gunfire and devastate an entire squadron (with help from The Blackhawks) in a super cool – if a little too long – sequence.
They’re having to juggle a LOT in this one as the team are fractured into multiple groups: Superman, Flash and Hawkgirl on the beach, Green Lantern with Easy Company, Wonder Woman off with Steve Trevor, and J’onn getting tortured by Vandal Savage. I think all of these elements worked really well, even if it made it hard for me to coherently recap. This is exactly what you’d expect of a three-parter, setting up the premise, sending everybody off in different directions, and then having their separate paths converge in the climax.
I struggle to point to a weak link among these branched paths, and really enjoyed seeing most of them get really stuck in to their respective arenas. Diana wrecking a platoon by herself was a particular highlight, and hopefully a prelude to an elevated role in the team going forward. It’s also a great episode for Hawkgirl, who throws herself into pitching in everywhere she can more so than anyone else, while also having to defend her difficult decision to ‘abandon’ John. Speaking of which, they did exactly what I expected with John, returning him to his marine corps days to try and prove he’s still highly capable even without his powers. I like that he doesn’t necessarily slip back into that life effortlessly, as he’s able to prove himself in a fist fight but struggles as a support sniper and gets scolded for it. Far more interesting to see him face adversity versus his default mode of ‘super-cop’.
At the risk of cannibalising the villain section, we also get a big info dump about Vandal Savage’s schemes and motivation, and it’s a little more nuanced than you might have suspected from ‘Part I’. Rather than travelling back in time, we learn he instead sent a laptop to his past self, filled with not just modern technology for boosting German weaponry, but also information on key events of WW2 to give a tactical edge. For one thing I find it kind of funny the League could have jumped to their deaths on the assumption Savage went through it himself and survived. But for another, I’m fascinated by his calculation that World War II was the ideal point in history to achieve world domination. I’m no expert, but that does strike me as a pretty plausible plan, given technology was just about becoming sophisticated enough to actually make use of modern knowledge, as well as the whole massive global conflict thing. On top of all of this, they suggest Hitler failed to win the war due to being ‘distracted’ by the Holocaust. The accuracy of that assessment is for far smarter people to debate, but I do think it’s yet another example of them wielding real history to tell a cool story with their characters.
I don’t know if anything here is significantly stronger than ‘Part I’, but at a minimum it maintains the quality level, and is lacking completely in weaknesses. We still have the third part to go, and how well they stick the landing could impact things hugely, but ‘Part II’ is strong enough that I would say collectively this is a better executed story than ‘Injustice for All‘, which had a much weaker second half.
- Legends
- The Savage Time (↑)
- Injustice for All
- Paradise Lost
- In Blackest Night
- The Enemy Below
- Secret Origins
- A Knight of Shadows
- Fury
- War World
- Metamorphosis
- The Bold and the Brave
Rogues Roundup
Vandal Savage (Phil Morris) (second appearance)
I talked a bunch above about Savage’s true plans, so will instead focus here on the interesting wrinkle that Savage condemns Hitler as a madman, while also slapping around his generals, who compare his treatment of them unfavourably to his predecessor. These choices have a two-fold effect: In one sense they’re saying ‘This dude is even worse than the worst guy in history!’, essentially power-scaling evil. But in another way they’re placing Savage – a character with a tonne of baggage if you know his true ‘gimmick’ (which they only vaguely allude to here) – in direct opposition to an abjectly deplorable group of people, using them to achieve his aims. I’m not saying they’re trying to make him look ‘secretly nice’ or anything, he’s still helping tilt the scales to help the Nazi war effort, but it just makes him a surprisingly complicated character.
There’s still a little ways to go for him to compete with the very top villains, as we haven’t seen him fight or learned what ‘Operation Endgame’ is yet, but he can climb several spots for now.
- Lex Luthor
- The Joker
- The Injustice Guild (and Brainwave!)
- The Imperium
- Hades
- Draaga
- Vandal Savage (↑)
- Aresia
- Deadshot
- Orm
- The Injustice Gang
- Simon Stagg (and Java!)
- Felix Faust
- Morgaine le Fey
- The Manhunters
- Kanjar-Ro
- Mongul
- Gorilla Grodd
The Matt Signal 
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