Plot summary: Grodd sends a squad to retrieve the frozen body of the legendary Viking Prince, keen to learn the secrets of immortality.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 30 (S3.E4)

Original Air Date: September 24^th, 2005

Directed: Dan Riba (15) Joaquim dos Santos (16)

Written: Dwayne McDuffie (17)

Animation: DR Movie Co., LTD (16)

Music: Kristopher Carter (12)

Aquaman was supposed to feature prominently in this episode but was taken off the table by DC’s plans for a Smallville spinoff that never actually came to fruition. Had Aquaman been available, Martian Manhunter wouldn’t have appeared in the episode and gotten his little sendoff.

This is also why original character and obvious knockoff Devil Ray takes the place of the far more famous Black Manta. Michael Beach voiced him and went on to play Black Manta’s father in Aquaman. Neat!

Wonder Woman says she’d rather take “another day trip to Tartarus” than attend a conference, referring to ‘The Balance‘.

The legend of Prince Jon is told through a series of images patterned after the distinctive art style of Joe Kubert, all done by Bruce Timm personally. Cute.

King Faraday continues to enable Bruce Timm to exercise his thinly veiled Marvel fandom, calling his cronies “gold-brickin’ yahoos”, something Nick Fury used to say.

DCAU Debuts

Prince Jon is based on The Viking Prince, one of the first heroes to debut in DC’s 1955 anthology series The Brave and the Bold. He was created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert. His appearance here is patterned after a 1966 story where Sergeant Rock uncovered him frozen inside a glacier. Jon reveals he fell in love with a Valkyrie so Odin banished him from Valhalla, demanding he die honourably in battle… but enchanting him to be impervious to all known weaponry. This of course allowed him to be killed by modern weapons, and he has since only popped up here and there, frequently refusing to be permanently restored to life so that he can remain with his beloved.

Mister (Goddamn) Terrific is really having his moment of late as the breakout character of Superman and getting a lot more love in the comics to match. Created by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake in 1997, he is Michael Holt, the second hero to hold the name Mr. Terrific. After suffering immense personal tragedy he found inspiration in the story of his predecessor, adopting his own version of the mantel and honouring his late wife as an altruistic hero touting Fair Play. Holt is among the smartest people in the world, inventing a lot of cutting edge tech, chiefly the ‘T-Spheres’ which can perform all manner of crazy shit. A version of him was played by Echo Kellum in Arrow as well as the aforementioned renowned portrayal by Edi Gathegi and a whole bunch of animated shows and films.

Heat Wave was created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino in 1963 as a Flash villain. Mick Rory has suffered with a lifelong obsession with fire, leading to his costumed identity and flamethrower. He has a frenemies thing going on with Captain Cold for obvious reasons. The character is a prominent part of the Arrowverse, appearing frequently in The Flash and then becoming part of the main cast of Legends of Tomorrow.

Recap

Wonder Woman is reluctant to go to a peace summit alone, asking J’onn to accompany her but he refuses to leave his post, which we learn he has barely done for almost two years.

MEANWHILE, AT THE LEGION OF DOOM (love that I got to say that) Grodd tells the tale of the supposedly invulnerable Viking Prince, dispatching a squad to the site of his recently unearthed ship in the arctic.

Wouldn’t you know it, the ship was unearthed in the same location as Diana’s conference, so she springs into action to try and fend off Devil Ray, Giganta, Killer Frost and Heatwave.

Outnumbered (even with support from King Faraday and his G-Men) and poisoned, she calls for help, with J’onn and Green Arrow taking the field to even the odds.

Devil Ray utilises a submarine to rip the ship out of the glacier and mounts a full retreat, with GA boarding the sub before it dives and taking out the crew while Diana battles Devil Ray underwater.

J’onn neautralises Killer Frost, demanding she use her powers to stop the avalanche caused by dislodging the ship from the mountain, saving hundreds of lives.

Ollie and Diana dislodge the viking ship and Faraday’s men seize the sub. J’onn states something ‘shut down’ Giganta’s brain before he could learn their true plan, like Metallo last episode.

Diana uses the freakin’ Sun to perform a viking funeral, while J’onn says his farewells to The League as he leaves to try and better connect with humanity as ‘Jon Jones’.

Best Performance

Really good episode for voice acting, but I’d have to tip my hat to Susan Eisenberg who is positioned firmly as the lead. She does a great job of trying to coax J’onn out of The Watchtower, fighting the good fight of science in the face of ignorance, going full action hero mode against the LoD, and then capping it all off with her solid read of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Carl Lumbly is decent on his side of the dynamic too, but J’onn is naturally a more reluctant and unemotional speaker.

Kin Shriner couldn’t get the cadence right on the little hum Ollie does so Lex Lang ended up performing that part. What he could do was remain a welcome campy presence throughout.

Jennifer Hale continues to play Killer Frost as a kind of dryer version of Harley Quinn, saying playful things in a way that makes you afraid for your life. “Kiss my frosty butt” is a great defiant final line. Michael Beach made for an excellent ~~Black Manta~~ Devil Ray, cockily smack-talking Diana throughout their fight. Even Powers Booth was surprisingly good delivering the little monologue about the history of The Viking Prince, which was a bit of an odd choice given Grodd doesn’t seem the type to romanticise, but he did it well.

Finally, shout out to Scott Patterson, who is greatly improved over his two previous outings as King Faraday, though still a little shaky when it comes to the ‘heat of battle’ banter, which is understandable. His flirty repartee with Wonder Woman was tremendous and you could tell he had fun with the scene where he threatens the LoD submarine.

Episode Ranking

I liked the little video wall of various League members on generic missions at the start. It’s good to remind the audience that the giant roster aren’t all just hanging out at their clubhouse with only 3-5 deployed at a time, which is further emphasised by J’onn starting there were 23 missions in progress. Remember to always make your world feel lived-in – that things are happening off-screen and between episodes!

That brings us on to what may not be intended as the core of the episode (which is the battle for the Viking Prince), but is certainly what most people remember best about it: the liberation of J’onn J’onzz from The Watchtower. Diana demonstrating her strong empathy by being the one to cut to the heart of his issue, that he simply doesn’t like humanity all that much so prefers to keep a distance, was a solid way to showcase both characters at once. You can trace J’onn’s feelings back to ‘Tabula Rasa‘ where he had an existential crisis in the woods, and while he did seem to have a breakthrough about the human race, it clearly didn’t fully stick. That he has barely taken to the field since the team expanded is something some fans may not have even noticed as he generally finds his way into more episodes than the rest of The Founders. Diana has always had a bond with J’onn dating back to the earliest episodes where she made a point of talking to him while he was trying to separate himself from the group, and it makes sense given both her aforementioned empathy, and that she is a fellow outsider having been raised on Themyscira.

Making Ollie the third leg of this tripod is a nice idea given he’s such a man of the people, encouraging J’onn to eat lunch with his teammates more often. GA is also here because of his strong background with social issues, and this episode is also an environmentalism PSA, with Diana arguing against regionally ambiguous world leaders about whether or not global warming even exists. How far we’ve come in the last twenty years! Ollie’s also a lot of fun in general, bringing levity to proceedings with his trick arrows and light-hearted fight banter. He was never a character I thought anything of when I was younger, disliking his campy Robin Hood knockoff vibe, but growing up is realising he’s actually great and it’s deeply funny to me the most prominent/mainstream representation of the character is instead a broody Batman knockoff.

I was pleasantly surprised that King Faraday popped up again after his promotion in the season premiere, and was completely bowled over by how incredibly charming I found the little joke about having his men shoot Diana if she keeps causing trouble. He takes the edge off the remark by popping his bubblegum and doing a finger gun gesture, while she responds by showing off one of her bulletproof cuffs and flicking it to make a distinctive ‘ting’ noise. So good. This is why we need recurring supporting characters! Likewise, Wonder Woman does her first (and only) Lynda Carter style twirling transformation and I’m once again angry at how long it took them to give Diana all her gimmicks, only getting the Lasso of Truth’s proper powers last season, and only seeing her in her civilian life a couple of times. Much like the recurring characters, we need to see more of the heroes’ interior lives.

The tribute to Joe Kubert’s Viking Prince artwork was really nice, and it was smart to utilise ancient myth as an excuse for a completely different visual style. They did something similar in ‘Paradise Lost‘ but not to this extent.

I think all of these disparate elements coalesce in a surprisingly organic fashion. The opener reveals the viking ship, our McGuffin for the episode, while also understatedly showcasing the global warming point. Diana is heading to the same location to discuss the problem, needling at J’onn to come with him, making good on the history of both characters. Grodd wants the ship so he sends a squad to seize it, which brings J’onn onto the field in response to Diana’s criticisms and he saves a tonne of lives not through his powers, but his humanity as he manages to talk one of the villains into doing the right thing. They again highlight Grodd’s machinations, and then they manage to make Diana’s recital of Coleridge work as both a sendoff to the Viking Prince and J’onn, who identified with the immortal warrior’s lonely quest.

This is just really good writing, by far the best scripting McDuffie has done to date.

Double Date
For the Man Who Has Everything
Clash
Task Force X
Question Authority
Fearful Symmetry
To Another Shore (NEW ENTRY)
Panic in the Sky
The Return
The Once and Future Thing, Part 1: Weird Western Tales
Epilogue
Flashpoint
Shadow of the Hawk
The Ties That Bind
The Cat and the Canary
The Greatest Story Never Told
Divided We Fall
The Balance
Dark Heart
Initiation
This Little Piggy
Kids’ Stuff
The Once and Future Thing, Part 2: Time Warped
Doomsday Sanction
Wake the Dead
Ultimatum
I Am Legion
Hawk and Dove
Chaos at the Earth’s Core
Hunter’s Moon

Rogues Roundup

Gorilla Grodd and The Legion of Doom (Powers Booth/Jennifer Hale/Lex Lang (second appearance)

The problem with packaging The L.o.D. up as a single entity is they get a bit of an unfair advantage because there are SO many of them who can do cool shit and they’re going to be the villain of almost every episode. But I’m not writing them all up individually as that would be insanity. Plus their ludicrous numbers mean they lack in personality as they rarely have the individual screen time required to establish one, aside from the figureheads like Grodd and Lex… who arguably make a bigger impression in their single short scene than the flunkies do in extended action.

I enjoyed seeing Killer Frost sliding around Iceman-style, Giganta was there to be beaten up and Heatwave… was also present. Fun little group for fights overall, I guess.

Grodd remains evasive about his true intentions, but we know he has Lex enhancing the various equipment and powers of the LoD, that he wanted to give them all The Viking Prince’s ostensible invulnerability, and that he’s mind-wiping any of his agents before they can be interrogated. This is all something, but I still think it’s lacking in proper personality compared to the higher-ranked foes.

Devil Ray (Michael Beach) (first appearance)

~~Black Manta~~ Devil Ray got the main showcase, poisoning Diana early in the fight to give her something to overcome, and being a real dick by sticking his fingers in the wound later. He spends most of the episode taunting everybody and really holds his own against some relatively heavy hitters, aided of course by doing battle with Wonder Woman underwater. He was just cool enough to merit his own ranking in my opinion. Huge shame Aquaman is done for and this guy couldn’t stick around as his nemesis, or justify being one of the highest ranking members of The Legion.

Lex Luthor
Steven Mandragora
Amanda Waller & Project Cadmus
Circe
Task Force X
Amazo
Galatea
Chronos
Mongul
Brainiac
Shadow Thief
Granny Goodness
Gorilla Grodd and The Legion of Doom (-)
Devil Ray (NEW ENTRY)
Deimos
Dark Heart
Tobias Manning
The Jokerz
Felix Faust
The Annihilator
Metallo
The Ultimen
Tala
Doomsday
Hades
Roulette
Solomon Grundy
The Thanagarians
Brimstone
Ares
Mordred (and Morgaine le Fey!)
Mordru
Virman Vundabar