Young Justice
Cast & Key People
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Our Review
Young Justice is the best show the DC animated universe ever made that most of the casual crowd never watched. It premiered on PBS Kids in November 2010, which tells you everything about the network miscalculation: this is a covert ops thriller where the Justice League is the cavalry that cannot be seen in public, and the black bag missions belong to the sidekicks. Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash, Superboy and Miss Martian run the operations the League denies, mentored by nearly every hero in the company.
The writing is the whole point. Greg Weisman of Gargoyles and Brandon Vietti treat continuity like a chess game: seasons jump years, sidekicks age out and take over the board, heroes marry, get compromised, get killed, and the Light, a cabal running the world’s shadows from behind the League’s back, is the best organized antagonist group DC has put on screen. It was canceled twice and came back twice on fan force alone: season three moved to the DC Universe service, season four landed on Max in 2022 with an eight year story gap that paid off.
Season one holds 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb users have it at 8.6 from over 50,000 votes. The honest read: season one is a masterpiece of setup and the later seasons are better once you own the roster. If you watch one cartoon from the 2010s that treats kids like readers rather than demographics, this is it, and all 98 episodes are in the guide.
