Plot summary: Vandal Savage at last reveals his true colours to his new bride, with the Justice League racing to prevent him from carrying out Bond movie world domination.
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: 34 (S2.E8)
Original Air Date: October 18th, 2003
Directed: Dan Riba (18)
Written: Dwayne McDuffie (8)
Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD (30)
Music: Kristopher Carter (14)
Vandal Savage was originally going to be wearing a crown when he revealed his plan instead of just holding a sceptre, but the creative team hated how it looked and removed it, though the original footage survives.
Savage claims to be 25,000 years old, which is only half his comic age.
Kristopher Carter is clearly riffing on the Moonraker score for the space station scenes.
Episode writer Dwayne McDuffie wanted Batman and Wonder Woman’s flirty banter to have come before Audrey’s parting words to Vandal Savage but got overruled. I think that was the correct call.
Audrey is still the ruling monarch of Kaznia in the JLU episode ‘Hawk and Dove’.
Recap
Batman helps Diana recover and informs her of the impending nuptials. They race to Kaznia, fighting their way through the air force and army on route to the royal castle.
Unfortunately, Savage zaps her unconscious and locks her up, allowing the ceremony to conclude. Later that night Diana pleads with Audrey to see reason, but the new Queen won’t hear of it.
However Savage decides to drop all pretence and transmits to the globe that he has turned the international space station into a giant ‘rail gun’, using it to destroy a US Air Carrier.
Audrey is outraged, and he at last reveals the truth: that he was a caveman granted immortality by a radioactive meteorite and has spent millennia amassing power, wishing to rule the world.
Batman frees Diana from her heavily guarded cell, while Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter board the space station to try to disable the weapon.
They don’t manage it, but after raiding Savage’s control room, Bruce is able to change the coordinates of the weapon to the Kasnian castle, ordering an evacuation before it’s destroyed.
In the aftermath, Green Lantern destroys the weapon and Audrey has Savage arrested, pledging to test the limits of his immortality.
Diana casually reveals she’s not stupid and put together that Bruce Wayne is Batman, which he of course denies. She agrees to play along for his sake, but insists they go dancing.
Best Performance
Phil Morris is fighting for his life here, as the material is just so generic and shaky, but he not only manages to keep his head above water, but almost makes the whole thing work. He knew Savage’s ‘deal’ before he was even cast, which helps tremendously. The character fundamentally has a very different perspective to anyone else in the world, and Morris has always been good at that cheeky yet stoic arrogance. They task him with going full 70s campy Bond villain, but to play it dead seriously, and that’s so tough to do, but he does his best. Plus props for the monstrous snarling as he digs his way out of the rubble.
Kevin Conroy and Susan Eisenberg are both doing really good work here, fitting given they are functionally the only two heroes in the two-parter (though we do get a few minutes out of the space trio). Not as good as last time though.
Dan ‘Homer’ Castellaneta did a solid job with the thickly-accented wedding ceremony, which was purposefully drawn out to drive home their fun juxtaposed action scene.
Episode Ranking
Folks, we do a lot of leftist discourse around these parts, but one topic I’ve generally not touched on much is the inherent fascism of the superhero medium. That’s not because I disagree, but rather to me it feels a bit redundant because it’s so baked into the entire premise that you have to refuse to even engage with the stories at all if you’re going to make those criticisms. That being said, Wonder Woman and Batman fully invade a foreign country and fight its military. Not cartoon supervillain Vandal Savage’s personal guard, the actual armed forces of the nation. They obviously make damn sure you see each pilot deploying their parachute so as to not have their heroes committing murders on a children’s television show… but the idea here is pretty plain and clear. Savage is absolutely evil and they absolutely had to stop him… but there was zero hesitation on their part, with Diana outright ignoring Bruce’s warnings of what they’d be doing, and him responding by smiling as he clearly agrees it’s the right course of action.
Oh, and Batman blows up their damn castle at the end, giving the inhabitants barely any time to get to safety. Wasn’t the comatose King in there??? As I say, you basically have to ignore all of this or the entire show falls apart, because even when they’re not launching an international invasion, they’re still a private entity that answers to no governing body, taking whatever actions they see fit. But this is as on the nose as they’ve been about it to date, even with John Stewart giving a speech about them needing to be held accountable for the decisions they make with their superpowers.
ANYWAY!
Once again, the sapphic undertones are on broad display but of course go ignored. Generally in fiction weddings are interrupted because somebody is in love with one of the wedding party. Here we have perhaps the most prominent fictional feminist icon pleading with the bride not to marry the groom after they spent the night together, culminating in them watching the sun come up from the top of the Eiffel tower, and Diana holding Audrey in her arms. Then they go straight into the whole “She’s become quite fond of you”, “I’m fond of her too” thing. Now it’s very possible they did all of this by accident, after all there was constant back and forth on whether Harley and Ivy were just ‘gal pals’, but it’s all right there to be read, and I think doing more with it (while likely outlawed by the network) would have at least been some kind of emotional hook to make these episodes more engaging. Diana finally leaves an island with no men, ostensibly remains a virgin (to the point Hawkgirl teases her about it) only to fall in love with a woman? C’mon! That’s something! (And you thought you were free of my woke agenda!)
It was a good choice to require the rest of The League go deal with the space station, forcing Batman to rescue Diana alone despite saying he would need backup moments earlier. Yet more of the ‘having your cake and eating it’ thing, as we get the mandated number of superheroes doing superhero things (been a while since J’onn terrified me with his powers), and Batman is made to look even more hyper-capable when he achieves the impossible for the millionth time. The two of them kick a lot of ass together. Although Flash surviving in the vacuum of space for so long is total bullshit, no matter how McDuffie tried to justify it, and if you really think about it, it was somewhat pointless as they fail to stop the launch anyway. Though I guess they did destroy it after capturing the Kasnian astronauts.
I liked the organ music and wedding ceremony playing over the muted action sequence, which features heavy gunfire and even the Batwing crashing and exploding. Some nice tonal dissonance and all that.
This is definitely a better episode if for no other reason than it’s actually coherent now that all the cards are laid out on the table. But there’s only so much you can do about how bad ‘Part I’ was, and ‘Part II’ isn’t exactly devoid of issues, so I’m only moving it up one spot. Again, cool moments that are among the most memorable in the series, but we’re looking at episodes of television here and on that front it fails.
- The Savage Time
- Legends
- Only a Dream
- Twilight
- Injustice for All
- Paradise Lost
- In Blackest Night
- Tabula Rasa
- The Enemy Below
- Secret Origins
- A Knight of Shadows
- Fury
- Maid of Honor (↑)
- War World
- Metamorphosis
- The Bold and the Brave
Rogues Roundup
Vandal Savage (Phil Morris) (fourth appearance)
Okay finally! Yes, Vandal Savage is an immortal caveman irradiated by a meteor. The DCAU even adds Wolverine-style rapid healing for funsies. The dots were there to be connected, even for those who didn’t know his deal on arrival, as ‘The Savage Time‘ teased that Savage travelled back in time, only to reveal he simply sent a message to his ‘younger’ self, despite them looking identical. The implications of this gimmick are enormous, but they still haven’t actually gotten into them despite coming clean at last. The things he’s seen! The wealth and power he’s amassed! TELL ME MORE!
They don’t though, because they decided to just make him a Bond villain. This whole plot made me realise that the DCAU design of Savage is clearly a knockoff of Hugo Drax from Moonraker. Disappointingly they don’t share his list of demands with us, but one can broadly assume its world domination stuff. Speaking of which, Audrey’s comment that she believes he would actually give her the whole world if he could while he hams up a big evil grin was fun.
I think Phil Morris keeps him charismatic enough to be memorable, and as I’ve talked about in the past, having a strong personality can score you high even when the plots are letting you down… but I think I may have to drop him just below Amazo. I hope you’re all happy!
Colonel Vox (Larry Drake) (second appearance)
He’s barely a factor this time around, but Diana winning their rematch by plugging her ears with diamonds and then crushing his prosthetic – which he presumably needs to like… talk and stuff – was kinda gnarly.
Not enough to impact him either way.
- Lex Luthor
- Darkseid
- Dr. Destiny
- The Joker
- The Injustice Guild (and Brainwave!)
- Amazo
- Vandal Savage (↓)
- The Injustice Gang
- The Imperium
- Brainiac
- Hades
- Draaga
- Aresia
- Deadshot
- Orm
- Simon Stagg (and Java!)
- Colonel Vox (–)
- Felix Faust
- Morgaine le Fey
- The Manhunters
- Kanjar-Ro
- Mongul
- Gorilla Grodd
The Matt Signal 
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