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Young Justice Season 4: Phantoms: Ep 25 Over And Out
763 Plays3 years ago
Zuhair, Andrew and J Scotty reflect on the eventful and emotional penultimate episode of Young Justice Phantoms, now airing on HBO Max.
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Transcript
Introduction and Ads
00:00:00
Speaker
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00:00:23
Speaker
On a very emotional entry of Animation Deliberation, we cover the penultimate episode of Young Justice season four, Young Justice Phantoms, episode 25, titled Over and Out. Getting right into that after some ads, we have no say over whatsoever.
Theme Song
00:00:39
Speaker
You're invited to explore cypress swamps and magical gardens and float along the rushing waters of an old-fashioned swimming hole. Plan your journey at visitmississippi.org slash outdooradventure. Mississippi. Wanderers welcome.
00:01:05
Speaker
Sing along if you know the words.
Hosts Introduction and Episode Mood
00:01:07
Speaker
One, two, three, it's time for animation, deliberation. A conversation and a celebration of our favorite action animated series. Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:21
Speaker
No. All right, folks, welcome back to Animation Deliberation, the podcast that takes action animation and cartoons seriously, but not too seriously. But on a day like today, we have to take it very seriously and very somberly, I will say. Is somberly a word? Sombre? I don't know. Anyway, I am Jay Scottie St. Clair, and I am joined by the Animation Deliberation T with a capital T, Mr. Zuhair Ali.
00:01:49
Speaker
I like the rhyme. Good to have you here. That's the only left you're going to hear from me today. Oh, I feel for you, bud. I do. And we've also got with us,
Episode Overview: Dark Themes and Character Deaths
00:02:00
Speaker
Mr. Andrew Rogers. What has happened in my friend? I was having a good day, and now we have to decide how this is actually going to go for the next week. Yeah, yeah. A lot of times when discussing more of the heartfelt moments of the show, they can be described as bittersweet. But I think this one's just plain bitter.
00:02:19
Speaker
I thought we had left our heroes in like a dire situation with the last episode, but this one makes the last episode pale in comparison. This was just a dark and dire episode. I still liked it, but hated it at the same time. Straight to spoilers, like you're going to make us so happy we have the team back together and then kill off two of them?
Key Character Deaths: Nightwing's Impact
00:02:42
Speaker
What?
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah. Like you go out of the way to make us hear his heartbeat go out and blood come out of his head. What?
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, we've talked plenty of times. The one rule in comic books is if we didn't see a body, they might not be dead. They showed us the body as the life finally faded away. And it was just like, I don't know how to handle that. And every time you want to make excuses, this is the one that I don't have excuses that can really be made for of how we're going to get out of this alive pun intended.
00:03:18
Speaker
And then your symbol of hope, you're seeing Superman standing all tall and mighty just to get hit by kryptonite and damn near public execution, like... Yeah. What?! Mm-hmm.
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, we've talked a lot about these like character arcs and how so successful some of them have been and how these last couple of ones, while they've been thrilling stories, maybe they've been a little bit of a disservice to the title characters, but I don't think you can be more of a disservice than killing off the main character or the supposed main character.
Speculation on Nightwing's Return
00:03:49
Speaker
And anybody that's seen the episode already knows who we've been talking about, but yeah, Dick Grayson, Nightwing are arguable heart of this show.
00:03:59
Speaker
had a little tangle with Lorzad, and Lorzad just continues to make himself more and more despicable. Lorzad picked him up by the throat slash shoulder, I guess the collarbone, threw him into a statue dedicated to Lara-El and Jor-El, and it collapsed on top of him, and then we see Nightwing on the ground bleeding profusely from the head as Lorzad listens to his heartbeat fade away and confirms he's dead.
00:04:29
Speaker
What? I don't know how the show goes on without Dick Grayson like Robin is the heart of the team. How do we lose him? Yeah, we're like so broken up over Jason Todd dying and we never even saw him on screen and we're talking about like what this reunion is gonna be like and then it's like hey just kidding like you won't. Yeah and as much as I hate losing Nightwing
00:04:53
Speaker
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wonder if they'll find a way to bring him back, maybe with the Lazarus pit, speaking of Jason Todd and, you know, we know his involvement or supposed involvement with the League of Shadows. But to be honest, like, we've already had a fake out death with Connor this season. I don't think they can do two fake out deaths in one season.
00:05:13
Speaker
So I feel like this has got to be a permanent one for the universe and the show to have some real... Nope. Denial. Denial. I'm sorry to be... Denial. Bad news. You can kill Rocket, it's fine. Not Nightwing. I was about to say. We're talking about that one being finite. Does that mean we also feel like they can't fake us out with Rocket's death?
00:05:34
Speaker
What are the implications there? I'm not convinced Rocketstead because we didn't see a body and pretty much everyone that was on screen acknowledged. Nobody knows what happens when a boom tube collapses. They just don't want to find out. But we don't know for a fact that she's in any physical harm. Really, she's just separated from the rest of the team. She'll come back more powerful than you can ever imagine.
00:05:58
Speaker
at first for a moment there I thought you were doing an Orion and if there's anyone that's going to save her it's going to be the new gods and I think that would be an interesting storyline to take it in next season is a little adventure with the new gods to get Rocket back from whatever in-between realm that's in between the already in-between that is the Phantom Zone so
Post-Credits Scene Analysis
00:06:25
Speaker
Ryan's mother box Now I'm also gonna jump to the end of the episode as we talk about rocket the fact that the post credit scene was only silence over Amistad's cars. Yeah, that was a bizarre moment. I didn't know what to make of that Yeah, I thought it was just you know
00:06:49
Speaker
Continuing that somber moment and not knowing what happened with rocket making an acknowledgement to the fact that she was a mother and whether she's she's dead or just lost to the ether for the time being she's leaving a son behind a son with needs and The other thing I picked up on with you know, his toy cars being you know top side or bottom side up with the the wheels facing skyward as it kind of looked like they had taken that scene that we had just closed on with a
00:07:16
Speaker
Zod basically commanding Superboy to commit a public execution with Superman. It kind of looked like that city center there in Metropolis with the overturned cars. And I know I saw a school bus, a red vehicle, a couple of other cars. I don't know if they were the exact cars that were from that scene, but that's just kind of based on a first viewing where I kind of took it in my mind.
00:07:39
Speaker
Okay, I'm glad I'm not the only one on that because there was a good second where I was like, why did they take like all the detail out of the cars? Oh, it's his. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay, thank you for clearing that one up because I had absolutely no idea. Attention
Superboy's Actions and Zod's Manipulation
00:07:56
Speaker
to detail something the show just so so good at. Oh, yeah, no doubt. Well, you know, I don't think any of us really saw
00:08:08
Speaker
it going this way. We talked about our fears for Superman, especially being on that planet with the red sun, Trombus. Why would he go there? Why would he put himself in danger in the first place? But to have him in this situation with Zod where his skin is completely pale green and Superboy has reverted to what McGahn referred to as his Cadmus programming, I thought the dialogue was particularly
00:08:34
Speaker
convincing the fact that he's hearing Lex Luthor in his mind, reciting that directive that we've heard over and over and over again, that he is the super boy. He was designed to destroy or take out Superman should he ever turn from the light. And the fact that Zod chose the language to say that he turned from the light of Krypton, it really sold me on the fact that leaving off on this cliffhanger, I can very much see a situation where
00:09:02
Speaker
Superboy does what he's been having these nightmares about this entire time and snaps his only brother, as Zod points out, his only brother's neck. I hope it doesn't go that way, but especially with all the collateral damage we've had. I hope the Legion of Messing Stuff up are happy with their decision of trying to save Superboy, because they might have doomed the galaxy because of it.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, I don't know if we can necessarily blame them because I think, uh, Lorzad was going to come back no matter what and try and free his father. So there's, there's too much time travel and too much of the time stream loops that DC likes to do where sometimes they do disappear from existence. If they change the timeline, sometimes they don't. It's a whole bunch of nonsense and I don't know who to blame anymore.
00:09:49
Speaker
But I agree totally with what you were saying, Jay, Scotty, I don't want it to happen. But I could see Superboy snapping Superman's neck. There's plenty of ways out that I can totally see that the show has set up with all of the mind powers that we have at our disposal. But if no one's there to stop him, I think it
Future Plot Speculation
00:10:07
Speaker
could happen. And then it's a huge question of where do we go from here? Do we maybe get a little bit of the
00:10:15
Speaker
Superman storyline where you get all of these replacement supermans that start popping up. This deal is usually one of them in the comics, Superboy. There's other timeline supermans that sometimes come in. There's a lot of options if they did get rid of Superman that are already canon in other pieces of media.
00:10:33
Speaker
And I'm scared that I'm having to think about them possibly needing to use those because we're also so far off of the page when it comes to any other comic storyline Young Justice has thrown them all in a pot and said we're gonna mix them up entirely So I have no idea which direction this is gonna go. I had this There's a DC animated universe movie about like all the replacement Superman's that was pretty good You remember the title?
00:11:00
Speaker
I don't know, but it was like, I think it was the one like right after death of Superman. And that was the one I was trying to refer to with that storyline. And I want to say it's like dawn of the Superman or something like that. Hmm. Sounds like it could be right. I don't, I don't know, but it definitely sounds interesting. Let's see. Rain of the Superman. Rain of the Superman. Okay, cool. It's got like this half cyborg face of Superman on the cover.
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But it is that other thing that we know Steel already exists in this universe. So that brings up more questions of the how and why Superman would possibly be gone. Like, has he already fought Doomsday in this universe? Who knows? But yeah, there's a lot going on there. Yeah, he's clearly had a lot of adventures off screen, you know, with his dealings with the Martians, or it seems like
00:11:54
Speaker
I know in season three, he had at least some interaction with Orion, but, you know, Orion's little dig about, you know, your enemies have infiltrated your sanctum, kind of like, and Black Lightning has to step in and say, maybe don't rub it in right now. It just made me feel like they had even more of a history than we'd seen in this show. So, I mean, it's all up for debate, whether he's fought Doomsday, maybe we'll get those answers later on, hopefully not.
00:12:21
Speaker
you know, posthumously or post-mortem, fingers crossed. But with this whole situation with Zod and kind of talking about how this has diverged from all the other comic lines or, you know, other animated stories we've seen, I couldn't help but like pick up on how much of like,
00:12:40
Speaker
I felt like it was really paying homage to what Zack Snyder did, especially with Man of Steel. And that was controversial because spoilers for that movie came out in 2013. And if you're watching Young Justice, I'm sure you're a big DC fan anyway, so you probably know this, but Superman snaps Zod's neck in that one. So this seems like a direct inversion of that situation where Zod will be able to
00:13:01
Speaker
you know, not do it himself, but it's his command that Superman's neck will potentially be snapped. And I don't think that was the only, you know, Zack Snyder reference there. When we had that kind of like our team defending the boom tube, like holding the door, which was a great Game of Thrones reference.
Homage to Zack Snyder
00:13:21
Speaker
They also reference. Yeah, yeah.
00:13:23
Speaker
There was another great reference that I don't think we can miss in there as well. We'll get there. We'll get there. But they referenced the Battle of Thermopylae, which, you know, it was a historical event in itself. But one of Zack Snyder's, like, first really big successful films outside of his work in the horror genre was 300 with Gerard Butler playing King Leonidas and
00:13:46
Speaker
I just I thought there was love for Zack Snyder all over this episode and you know There's the house the hashtag out there resort restore the Snyder verse and I'll be honest. I was genuinely surprised that's the
00:14:01
Speaker
Zack Snyder's Justice League, his cut, actually became a thing because when that movement first happened, I didn't think Warner Brothers as a studio would show weakness or admit any wrongdoing, really, in the version of Justice League that they put out there. That being said, I'm delighted that it happened. But all that being said, yeah, I just felt like there was a lot of love for Zack Snyder in this episode.
00:14:22
Speaker
Oh for sure paying homage to all those different things and you know acknowledging that all of the stuff that happened in our world still happened in their world I mean I'm sure there was probably some god or goddess that was fighting alongside them in that version of
00:14:39
Speaker
Sparta and stuff like that that actually made those events happen in DC canon, but it's always cool to acknowledge they have a history Despite having superheroes that you know humans still did all of these crazy things which is kind of cool Wouldn't be surprised at all if Vandal Savage or one of his offspring
00:14:55
Speaker
Played a role in that historical event in universe here. I mean, he how much you want to bet he just like was Leonidas or something along those lines because he has all of the monikers that we know he's held between Attila the Hun and Alexander the Great and all of the other, you know, crazy people throughout time. True. Very true.
00:15:15
Speaker
Well, I guess we won't dance around this third reference any longer. It came from one of my favorite franchises, but I won't steal anybody's thunder because I love Nightwing, but I'm not the self-proclaimed Nightwing fanboy like some of my co-hosts are. So why don't you tell us about this great reference we got?
00:15:36
Speaker
I mean, how could you not like love that Dick Grayson is a nerd like the rest of us? He has consumed his content. He's all about it. That's the one thing I wrote down is Dick Grayson is us and you shall not pass. I've always wanted to say that. That was actually the funny reason I was waiting for one of you to say it so I could set you back up with the joke. But I'm glad we're all on the same page there. That was
Batman Encounter Anecdote
00:16:02
Speaker
I didn't see that coming that you forget the reason that everyone fell in love with Dick Grayson as the original Robin in comics was his quippy attitude his positivity all throughout him making references and in a lot of modern comics they poke fun at that him and Jason Todd have this rapport.
00:16:21
Speaker
where he'll make a quip and he's like, why do you always need to be positive? We're fighting murderers right now. He's like, cuz it's fun and I'm an acrobat. So let's do it. And it just brings more life to the character and it made it so much more sad to possibly see him go. I know we talked at length about it already, but
00:16:38
Speaker
I have to almost believe it because they gave us so much of that happy side again. And I don't know what else could process besides a Lazarus pit, but that usually messes with people. So I don't even want to go down that road. I almost want to see him and Wally West run into the sunset. If that's going to happen, let it be peaceful and happy.
00:17:00
Speaker
Yeah, so my thought process on the happy moment was like, man, it's nice seeing this team back together. I'm loving this dynamic. Like I've missed this so much. Oh, just kidding. We're losing them. But if it does resort to the Lazarus pit, I feel like Zatanna is going to be the one to take him there and maybe work some of her magic to kind of keep his head straight as he's going through the process. That's what I want for him. Okay.
00:17:22
Speaker
I think it'll be Bruce. I think Bruce will be so torn up he'll turn back to his old flame of Talia and say, hey, I need your help here. And or we also have those characters that we left on was it Infinity Island or was it a different one this time around? Either way, we left Cheshire and the one character we got introduced to in that arc. They're already there that they could also help out.
00:17:46
Speaker
Oh yeah, I can't remember if it's called Infinity Island or not. I know we've been given- I was focused on the magic influence of Zatanna on that, like, as great as Bruce Wayne is, he's not going to turn into a sorcerer overnight. Yeah, we really haven't seen him at all this season, outside of maybe a shot or two in the-
Zatanna's Potential Role in Revival
00:18:05
Speaker
Mars on goings if I, maybe not at all. I can't really remember, but I do agree with Yuzu here. I think just the fact that Zatanna was the one that recruited him and he was just happy doing his Acrobat thing, taking a break for a while. And it was the fact that she needed a detective that she brought him back in. She's going to have some guilt about her good friend, you know, being the one that was taken out during this mission.
00:18:30
Speaker
I could see another argument between her and Nobu over it too. Like, yo, we need to bring her back to life. And he said like, no. Yeah. Oh, what if she takes the helmet and like, just does some crazy magic to do it herself? Yeah. I mean, she's got no lack of resources at her disposal. We saw that when she was searching for connoisseur. We've got that, you know, river sticks in the Louisiana bayou, her sentinels of magic.
00:18:58
Speaker
the bell, I can't remember what the bell was called, but the bell that can find basically a soul anywhere, even if she doesn't bring him back into the physical realm, I could definitely see a situation where she kind of like helps shepherd him to the happy afterlife, hopefully with Wally West.
Eye of Ekron and Emerald Empress
00:19:17
Speaker
Oh, speaking of bell and cell and all that, what was this whole Emerald Empress thing? Yeah, that's a good talking point. I was kind of thinking, you know,
00:19:28
Speaker
we voice these fears and expectation that maybe a Kryptonian would get a Green Lantern Ring. And I feel like this kind of realized that without actually doing that. The fact that we learn from our listeners that this Eye of Ekron is very similar to the Green Lantern Rings and their power set. And just knowing that, we learned that the House of Zod Maxim was basically
00:19:54
Speaker
from will comes strength, and from strength comes will, the fact that she got a taste of this little bit of power underneath the yellow sun, and then she basically just has a temper tantrum in the eye and was like, oh, I peep that, like you're the one for me. She basically becomes, she inherits the Eye of Ekron and with it the title of Emerald Empress.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of terrifying to see her with all those abilities.
Bioship's Fate and Significance
00:20:21
Speaker
And we've talked about, you know, Rocket, we've talked about Superman, we've talked about Dick Grayson, but the bioship was shot down by her. And we don't really know the fate of all these heroes that are in the wreckage of bioship. Connor himself believes that he killed McGahn. He says, you know, the thing I always fear has come true. I've killed her. And Superman's the only one that stands up because he's
00:20:45
Speaker
The only one that can withstand a blow like that.
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that was actually a really well done scene because I don't know about you two, when there was that moment where the Emerald Empress popped up with the eye and I think it was Saturn Girl said, you know, there's no way it can't be. I expected that to be a usual, all right, we're gonna cut away, she's gonna give some warning and they're gonna phase through it or they're going to go into some alternate way to escape. The fact that they subverted that expectation and instead
00:21:17
Speaker
flew headlong into the laser were shot down and that was the end from that moment was a total I didn't see it coming because we had all of our heroes on the way that was the one saving grace that they had and I figured we would end the episode on them having bio ship pull up somehow disabled you know Superman security and then we were gonna end there knowing the battle happened next week instead they flipped it on its head and it was just an awesome moment of
00:21:46
Speaker
Okay, things are going this badly that everyone is down for the count, whether they are dead alive or not.
00:21:54
Speaker
Yeah, I just thought we were gonna get a heavy fight scene, but I wasn't too surprised when they got hit with it. But I'm scared for Bioship. Like, was that her demise? I hope not. Especially with McGann, you know, giving her that acknowledgement of the fact that she forewent her retirement just because she cares about Connor as much as McGann does. It'd be a really cruel end for such a stalwart.
00:22:21
Speaker
installation and it's kind of weird, it's Bioship, but we know Bioship is a living being, so to say, someone who has served their time and done their service and has earned their rest, the fact that they came back into the battle, not dissimilar from Nightwing at all. But I did pick up on Saturn Girl's dialogue as well, the fact that she saw this
00:22:47
Speaker
this shot from the Eye of Ekron coming in before anyone else did. And it just gets me thinking about, you know, the involvement of the Legionnaires, whether or not this is their fault. Chameleon Boy had the line of dialogue. Should we be involving this heroes, or we're really putting the time streams at risk? And, you know, Saturn Girl says, at this point with the Zods being free, they're our ultimate priority. We have to do what we have to do at this point. But with all these deaths and all this collateral damage, again, I don't want it to be a cop-out in any way.
00:23:17
Speaker
could kind of see a solution to all these problems is having one of the Legionnaires do another trip through time and actually being successful in this mission that they set out in the first place and maybe this whole scenario and situation that we've seen gets erased and we get our happy ending where
00:23:39
Speaker
this season ends with Connor and McGann getting married. That would be the ultimate happy ending, I think, but maybe they'll leave us with a cliffhanger and set up for the season five that we very much hope we're getting. That's what I'm hoping for.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, well, and that's the biggest thing. We've talked about a lot of grandiose scenarios. We have 23 minutes next week. We don't have any longer than we usually do. How do you fit all of this into a singular episode? Yeah, this this needs to be I said it last week, like I don't want
00:24:15
Speaker
our heroes. I don't want the Zod story to just be over and everybody win. There needs to be ramifications, there needs to be a greater problem that we have to deal with next season and that's what I want. Imagine the whole Justice League having to fight the Kryptonian army.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, I want that story that sounds cool. Yeah, you want infinity war. Yo, I want this to be our Thanos moment where they lose and next week we are all like what just happened? Oh, yeah, we're gonna find out a year from now with all of the actual ramifications of how we solve this time travel or otherwise. I think that would be a bold pull out of the writers and amazing if they did it.
00:24:56
Speaker
It's almost like season two where like even the light had to join the Justice League to get everything under control like right before we lost Wally like having that level of like this is a big threat and all of us have to come together for it. Very intriguing.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's a fair point. And I kind of would like it to go that way, too. I could totally see a situation where the next season is almost kind of like we talked about, you know, the Zack Snyder verse. But what if it's like we pick up and more time has passed and it's kind of like this dystopian society where Zod has been
00:25:28
Speaker
in a position of power for a long time and we finally we do see like you mentioned in season two we see the light in the team and the Justice League or whatever remnants of it there are all kind of have to come together to go up against sod and
00:25:41
Speaker
the armies of Zod that have been just, you know, basking in a yellow sun for a long time. Like that would be really epic. And we talk about the stakes being raised and the dire situation. I can't think of a situation really more gripping than that. That would require the full might of all these various teams and factions, the Green Lantern Corps, the new gods. They like their time skips. So that's possible.
00:26:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And as we talk about this, there's also the one villain that, you know, made all of this happen was Darkseid. He's still looming big bad out there somewhere. So there's always that to remember. And as you're going to be friends with Zod, is he going to be another villain is
00:26:20
Speaker
Well, yeah, because he supplied the Kaiser Thrall to Lorsod. So, you know, he probably wants something in exchange. He doesn't do anything for free if we know anything about Darkseid. So there's all that. But you mentioning, you know, the armies that they're going to bring through and have to contend with, I wonder where Mahalafa Ak
00:26:42
Speaker
Really has his loyalty at this point because he's the one that is controlling those boom tubes and will be bringing the armies through because he did seem a little skeptical of How bossy the Zod's were getting? Throughout this episode interesting
00:27:00
Speaker
I don't know if I really picked up on that as much. I definitely picked up on it with Lorzod, like, their little exchange there, like, Lorzod wanted him to control what they're calling the Mother Thrall now, and he has to say it's not a matter of control, it's a matter of physics, so I can see the hesitation there. I have to, you know, just in my own headcanon, maybe it's a conversation we'll get, but at this point I think he's probably agreed just to have his...
00:27:25
Speaker
dominion over Mars where he can finally exact this revenge on the green Martians and the red Martians who have subjected him as a white Martian for so long. Maybe that's all he wants. And you can lay a waste to the universe at large as long as I get this little corner that is Mars. Sounds interesting for sure.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah, but, you know, bringing up all these various factions, including the new gods, the Martians, as well as the Green Lantern Corps, I'd be remiss if I didn't give a special shout out to our Green Lantern foragers. She continues to impress me almost as much as she impressed Kid Flash with just her strength of will and the fact that she was the one that was able to break free of the Chrysler Thrall again, and then seeing her
00:28:10
Speaker
create the, what do they call it, the warp tunnel that allowed them to travel through subspace. She has come a long way in a very short amount of time and I feel like it's been a total redemption for all the flak that we've given Forager. Anyway. Yeah, at least this one's like making me care. And she didn't have too much dialogue. That's probably why I thought it was more intriguing. I guess so. True.
00:28:40
Speaker
So as we're still bouncing around here, I don't know if you guys are going to have an answer to this. And this will be a question for both you and our lovely listeners that like to write us in their knowledgeable feedback.
Superman's Fortress of Solitude Items
00:28:52
Speaker
Superman had a lovely assortment of actual trophies in his Fortress of Solitude.
00:29:00
Speaker
I have them all written down and I don't know what a single of them single one of them is a reference to. Did you guys pick up on any of them that you thought, oh, this is a villain he's fought or this was an ally or this was an event that I know that those trophies would matter to? Or were you blanking as hard as I was when I looked at them? I looked at them and thought it was like stuff he possibly grew up with or stuff that was like big to Clark Kent because he like a broken baseball bat. The newspaper like
00:29:29
Speaker
It looked like it was like a childhood album or just life stuff and not so much Superman stuff. Yeah, the main thing that I took away from it is I noticed the soccer ball. So I kind of thought the same thing as you hear was the fact that like Clark was able to have a childhood and it kind of just like
00:29:47
Speaker
highlights the tragedy of Connor in a way the fact that he was really never given a childhood as much as their brothers and this is both like a sanctum that they both share because you see they're both of their outfits both the Kryptonian as well as Connor's usual like battle get up the long black long sleeve with the utility pants and then
00:30:09
Speaker
I don't know if it was Superman's original Kryptonian outfit or it kind of looked like what Superboy was wearing at Cadmus and then, of course, Superman's classic red and blue. But then, yeah, the newspaper stuck out to me as well. I have to imagine that photo was the first meeting of Lois Lane and Clark Kent. But outside of that, I couldn't really pick up on anything or tell you what it was a reference to. But good on you. Can you run down the list? You said you made note of all of them.
00:30:36
Speaker
Yeah. So there was a sled, a trophy, a storybook that I think said get the story on the cover. That's what it looked like it actually said. There was the soccer ball that you mentioned the broken baseball bat, and then the picture of them on the cover of the Daily Planet together. But yeah, I'm just so used to, you know, Batman's
00:30:58
Speaker
Batcave in comics is full of trophies that he's taken over the years. Kid Flash in season one was taking all the trophies and putting them in the old Mount Justice. So I think I'm just so used to that that I expected them to be some sort of a reference. But I also now wonder, were these also items possibly of his son? And instead of, you know, hanging the artwork on the fridge, this is just putting it in the fortress of solitude. Like, you know, oh, he got his powers. He broke a baseball bat. That's a memorable moment. Let's put that
00:31:27
Speaker
right here in the fortress just to have forever. Yeah, that's a great point. I almost kind of forget that he has a son sometimes, even though his son has been a big factory, even with the supposed death of Connor earlier on.
00:31:43
Speaker
The one thing that stuck out to me in your rundown there was the book that said like get the story. It just kind of like highlights the fact to me that like Clark is not just Superman as much as he is like Earth's greatest hero. He has a life that he cares about and enjoys. He has a job that he actually puts his all into and he wants to be the best reporter that he can. So he has a book that helps him perform better at his job. Like that's pretty cool. Were you gonna say so here?
00:32:12
Speaker
Oh, I'm sticking with mine of it's his childhood stuff. Okay. You know, I like all of those as answers. It was just, it was more a curiosity than anything because usually they like to do those things. We saw them before and we had never seen any of those. So I didn't know what to think.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, we shall see. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a reference there that we don't know about. So yeah, as Andrew alluded to, our lovely listeners, if there's something we're missing and that you know about, please write in at animationdeliberationpodcastatgmail.com or any of our social medias. You can drop us a line there and we will read it on air. You can also leave a voice memo if you want. That's something we haven't done in a while, but that's certainly a nice way to have your voice included on the show, rather.
00:32:59
Speaker
and saves us from stumbling over trying to read an email for 10 minutes true that true that right unless there's anything else we want to discuss as far as the events that took place in this episode i did have one little critique as awesome as this episode was um i i do have a critique here and i hate to be
00:33:23
Speaker
critical because the show usually fires on all cylinders, especially the talent behind the scenes, the voice actors, the writers, but I feel like there was a little bit of disservice done to one of the voice performers. And I looked it up. Denise, I'm gonna, I apologize because I should definitely get your name right because I'm critiquing you right now, but Denise, Denise Boot or Butte or Butte. Anyway, she voiced both Rocket and Feora.
Voice Acting Critique
00:33:51
Speaker
And there was just an exchange between Rocket and Feora when Feora was telling the Kryptonians, build your rage, build your rage to attract the devourer. And they go right from her dialogue to Rocket's, where she says, you're not the only one getting angry here. And she's like, I certainly hope not. Just hearing them go back and forth between these two characters that she voiced, there just was not
00:34:15
Speaker
enough of a differentiation there. I could tell it was the same voice performer. And a lot of times I like being able to identify that a voice performer is doing multiple characters, but in this instance, it just kind of like took me out of it. And I feel like that's kind of a failing of like maybe the writers or the editors just having this. It could have been very easy to have one more character like speak up in between just to break it up a little bit. But, you know, I noticed that I wrote it down, so I had to bring it up.
00:34:43
Speaker
Hey, you know, that's what we're here for. It's a deliberation for a reason. And it is difficult because we even talked about earlier in the season, we felt like Nolan North changed up his Batman or not Batman, Superman to sound different from Superboy in one of the scenes when they did have to talk to each other. And he had never done that before. So it's definitely difficult for them to contend with. I could only imagine. And I'm glad you brought it up because it's something always
00:35:09
Speaker
that I agree I like to listen for and figure out who are those same characters. Well, on a happier note, I'll circle back to, well, it's not entirely happy. It's kind of bittersweet because we were talking about Dick Grayson and kind of how he had to have this. He got to throw that reference in the Lord of the Rings reference, the Gandalf reference before he was the one that ventured through the boom tube. But I really appreciated the fact that what might have been his final line of dialogue before
00:35:36
Speaker
he possibly perishes for good. He got to give another one of his prefix slash suffix jokes where he said, not that this is an asterisk, I'm enjoying this little bout that we're all having together, but somebody needs to go through this boom tube to figure out what's happening. So just to get asterisk in there one more time was a nice little nod for me.
00:35:58
Speaker
If only he could have ended on a whelm and just you know guys gotta calm down stay well Just just one more that would have that would have been the icing on the cake coming back. He's coming back. Just so he's not staying dead
00:36:15
Speaker
Well, before we wrap up, I can end on a positive note in Andrew's music corner here, as it turns out we have every week.
Emotional Depth of Superman's Scene
00:36:22
Speaker
Superman's theme that they played in the scene on the bioship that you mentioned earlier, Jay Scottie, where him and Black Lightning were talking about, all right, what do we do from here? And he asks, you know, how are you doing?
00:36:36
Speaker
Yeah, it was a beautiful piano piece that started on just calm telling notes and if you could see him looking off through the windshield and it felt like a moment of beauty and he was kind of glancing off thinking to himself retrospectively and I almost wondered what secrets is he still keeping because the Superman has been very secretive this season and then it's slowly crescendoed up and Then got longer and it turned into this very eerie sounding like
00:37:06
Speaker
it got you tense before we cut back to the fight. And I don't know why they did it as we were focusing so hard on Superman. But I just noticed it was a beautiful piece that it felt almost out of place with everything else going on in the bio ship being intense being how do we save things to have this eerie long drawn out piano it felt specific and I can't quite put my finger on why but I noticed it and I loved it. So
00:37:31
Speaker
Just one of those great moments that they're playing with music somehow. I don't know what the psychological side of it is, but they were pointing us in a direction. So I don't know. The Superman's felt really weird this season. A lot of secrets that it's usually Batman's thing, not Superman's thing.
00:37:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's fair. And I'm really glad you brought up that moment. I don't know if the music stood out to me as much, but I'm really looking forward to rewatching now to pick up on that. But it was an incredibly beautiful and effective moment. Not only did it, you know,
00:38:02
Speaker
give Black Lightning again the opportunity to showcase why he's such a good leader is because he cares about the mental and emotional wellbeing of the people on his team. But yeah, it really just, you talk about how little we know about the Superman. It was a great character moment. You get to experience some of the heartbreak of this character as much as he is like the savior of the planet again, like at its core, like Superman is like the story of an adopted child, an orphan,
00:38:30
Speaker
Pretty much a sole survivor, and it's always kind of the situation with Zod, the fact that he finds out that he has brothers and fellow Kryptonians, and they spell such disaster and doom for the universe at large. It really is heartbreaking for him that this is what he's wished for his entire life, and now that his wishes come true,
00:38:51
Speaker
It's endangering everything that he's loved up until this point. That's, you know, incredibly poignant. Couldn't have said it better myself. All right. Well, it feels like we are, you're winding down. You know, it's interesting you bring up that next week is going to be a 23 minute episode. That's a lot to get done unless they're leaving us off with a cliffhanger. But I did notice the runtime for this episode was 22 minutes, which, you know,
00:39:13
Speaker
is noticeably, well, I mean, I think the episodes cap at around 26 minutes at the longest, but I feel like most of the episodes lately have been closer to the 25, 26 minute range. So much happened in such a short amount of time, which just speaks to the pacing and how things are really ratcheting up in terms of the pacing towards the end of the season here.
00:39:35
Speaker
I guess at this point I'll just open the floor one more time. Do you guys have any last-minute thoughts on the episode? We've already speculated and predicted a lot just during the course of our discussion, but if you want to throw anything else out there, now's the time. Yep, I think it's just when those episodes were a lot happened and just needed a lot of time to sit and emotionally absorb it all. An instant reaction is kind of tough for when you're just in all the feels.
00:40:02
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have a friend who is currently getting her PhD in psychology and I'm about to change her contact at Dinah Lance so next week I have someone to talk to when we need to get through all of this because I I don't know what the answers are going to be but I have a feeling we're going to come in with this same energy of Something happened to one of the characters because I don't know if the whole team is gonna make it out of this hmm fraught with tension
00:40:33
Speaker
and possibilities.
Personal Anecdote: Signed Batman Poster
00:40:34
Speaker
So I had something cool happen at work that's Batman related. Okay, what you got? It's just to wrap it up on a more optimistic note. So photographing a property for a nerd today, which I absolutely love. I was quite mad that they actually had to take down all the nerdy stuff for the photos. And I was like, how dare you? Why would you do that?
00:40:56
Speaker
So there was, I was like, yeah, we had this and we had that. So every time I would finish up a room, they would pull out a lot of the stuff and to show it to me. And one of them, which I thought was amazing. I just texted the both of you is a signed poster of Batman. I made series by Kevin Conroy. I was scared to touch it. It was so beautiful. Oh my goodness. Wow. Yeah. That is incredible.
00:41:20
Speaker
She pulled that out and I was like, oh my God, am I worthy of holding this? And I love how Kevin Conroy signed it in white ink because that show was so noticeable for using black paper. Yeah, that's incredible. And he wrote Batman on it too.
00:41:37
Speaker
Nice. And honestly, for all of our listeners, because I'm not going to be posting this on the Instagram as much as I wish I could. I don't want to post these people's nice thing. Look up Kevin Conroy's signature, because it's just a very fluid, flawless signature that looks amazing on this poster as it is. Well, I don't want to do that to these people that nicely let you take the picture. Look at that and tell me how you know whose it is. You're going to look up the threading on that couch. Did you even know it was a couch?
00:42:07
Speaker
I didn't know it was a couch, I'll be honest. Share it with the people. All right, fine. On Zuhair's request, you will all get to see this beautiful thing on the Instagram story when the post for all of this goes up. Have fun. You have two jobs. Do it. On that note, you can follow us on all of our socials. Instagram is animation deliberation. Facebook, just look up animation deliberation. And Twitter is animationdelib1.
00:42:34
Speaker
So those are all of our socials post a lot of the same stuff there and that's how i interact with a lovely lot of you there's plenty of stuff i post art as we see it. Any fun stuff that these guys send to me i generally throw up there and.
00:42:50
Speaker
You know, anytime there's events that comic book places are putting out or artists, I always kind of try and get that information out there. So we're a little bit of news, a little bit of fun. So give us a follow, give us a share, give us a like, whatever I'm supposed to say. Those are the social media things. Show us all the love.
00:43:09
Speaker
Yes. That. There it is. Yeah. Well, that's a perfect transition to putting the call out there for love and respect for what we're doing. Give us a rating, give us a review, show us some love. This is a labor of love. So if you appreciate what we're doing here, please let us know. Leaving a review on wherever you catch us is the best way to do that. And on the subject of all the places to reach out to us, I do want to tell you again,
00:43:33
Speaker
If you find yourself, like your head is spinning, you're emotionally reeling, if you need your dino-land, so you're black-lightening to check in with you and make sure you're emotionally and mentally okay, have the conversation with us. We are getting towards the end of our Young Justice coverage here, so
00:43:49
Speaker
next episode really might be your last opportunity to give us your feedback. It all depends on how much we get. We have done more news and feedback episodes here recently. So if we get a wealth of feedback, we might just have to do another one of those episodes. But I know we were already filling up our summer schedule. There's a lot of content out there looking to the future. We've got, you know, like you're just around the corner, which we're very excited for. And we're going to try and go back and catch some of the celebrated series that have come out recently that we have just not had time for. So
00:44:19
Speaker
Otherwise, other things that I've got going on, again, I'll just plug the Benjers Assemble coverage that we're doing for the Jurassic Park franchise. The Jurassic World coverage just dropped on the feed, as I saw, and we have recorded for Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom, and a week from today is when we get Jurassic World Dominion, so.
00:44:40
Speaker
Look forward to that. Benjers Assemble, wherever you get your podcasts, part of the Stranded Panda Podcast Network. And that's it for me this week. Anything else you guys want to plug? OK, well, thanks for tuning in. That's T-double-O, N-I-N. Stay whelmed. Until the finale, Muscle Muscle.
00:45:03
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Animation Deliberation Podcast, a proud member of the Strandepanda Network. If you would like to contact us, you can email AnimationDeliberationPodcast at gmail.com or follow us on Twitter at AnimationDelib1. For this and other great shows, you can visit Strandepanda.com or join the great community that is the Strandepanda Chat Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash spchat. Tune in next time and remember, stay well.
00:45:33
Speaker
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Speaker
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