Hello Speed Readers,
As many of you are aware the last episode of Young Justice aired this past Saturday. I finally got a chance to watch it this morning and wow, what a heart breaking episode for Flash Family Fans.
Spoilers for Young Justice Season 2 Episode 20 “Endgame”
****SPOILERS*****
Wally West is dead, again! For those who have not been keeping up with the show for whatever reason, Wally returned from semi-retirement last episode to help take out The Light (Earth’s top super-villains united under Lex Luthor) and The Reach (a group of aliens who were attempting to conquer the Earth) once and for all. The battle left The Light and The Reach alliance in shambles and as a final move to destroy key evidence of The Reach’s tampering with the Earth’s populace (lest they violate a treaty in place with the Guardians of the Universe), their top agent, Black Beetle attempts to destroy the Earth.
Part of The Reach’s endgame are drones that disrupt and destroy the Earth’s magnetic field and the Earth itself eventually. The heroes split off into teams of two to immobilize the drones and they succeed for the most part only to realize that one had remained undetected in the Arctic. Flash (Barry Allen) and Impulse (Bart Allen) attempt to stop the device but they are seconds late. In a bid to counteract the effect of the device on the Earth they run counter clockwise to the energy attempting to reverse it but their kinetic energy is not enough. Hearing this Kid Flash Zeta beams (or teleports) down to the battle and joins his uncle and cousin in trying to destroy the weapon. They start to succeed but as a result of Wally’s decreased speed the excess energy siphoning off of the weapon starts to target his body and batters him into nothing. Wally West dies.
In the aftermath, Artemis (Wally’s girlfriend in this continuity) visits Wally’s parents and gives them the heart-breaking news. Wally gets a memorial where it is revealed that Bart Allen has taken up the mantle of Kid Flash and Artemis has decided to shed her old identity to become Tigress once again.
*****End Episode Spoilers*****
Well I guess that pretty much brings the Flash Family in line with the New 52. *Sigh*. Extremely sad that we are not getting a third season and also a little perturbed at the way this episode ended. There is nothing to to say that Wally would not have returned from the Speed Force a more powerful hero and would eventually go on to take on the Flash mantle in the third season (Why else play up his reduced speed so much?). Only problem with that is as far as I know the writers have explicitly stated that there is no Speed Force in this universe. Just seems like a low blow at the end of the day. It was nice to have one Wally in continuity that kind of still existed and with him still alive we could have imagined all kinds of possibilities. With his death that chapter is closed. Permanently.
I was pleased to see Impulse evolve into Kid Flash. I was one of the few fans that thought Impulse’s evolution into Kid Flash made perfect sense in the comics and it is nice to see the show mirror that. I will say that the motivation in this continuity is stronger but really what beats death?
I know not everyone was in love with this show but I really, really wanted a third season. Especially after this ending and all the loose threads they just left dangling. It is really too bad that they ended the Young Justice tie-in comic book series a few months back as I could have seen their adventures continuing on in comic book form after the series ended similar to Smallville and Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Not to say that they still couldn’t restart the series but I’m not betting on it. There is also the small possibility of a direct to home release movie but again I won’t be holding my breath.
At least we have Young Justice: Legacy to look forward to in September (hopefully).
What did you all think of Young Justice’s series finale? Do you feel cheated, hurt, shocked or indifferent? Please, let us know in the comments below.
Screencaps courtesy of GothamKnightsOnline
DC hates Wally West
@SpeedForceOrg Thank you for the extra bit about Bart as KF. Some days I feel rather alone in thinking the comics transition was appropriate
Same. Happy to hear someone else feels the way I do about it. I still miss the pointed wing boots though. I hated what Ethan Van Sciver did to them later on.
Agreed. I loved Bart’s unique KF boots. It’s a shame they were lost in Van Sciver’s redesign. What a dull switch.
At least Wally dies a heroic death that can’t be unwritten?
I turned the show on hoping for some ‘kicking of the butt’. Maybe a scene more with Wally before the series went away forever.
When Wally ran out to join them and kept getting hit I was on the edge of my seat muttering “Oh please…” over and over because I thought….here it was: this was how they would give Wally his full speed and then they would all save the day and I’d have some wonderful memories to cheer me up a bit!
(Put it down to a really, really, bad week, but yes, I truly believed that the speedsters would survive and Wally gain light speed all the way to the end credits.)
Oh death where is they sting? Well, right here…like a ginormous wasp dagger in my heart.
I may not have liked this Wally West as well as the other versions done, but…it was still Wally West. A recognizable if (and this still makes me grind my teeth) a slow speedster.
When you consider that he (of all the original team) was the only one pulled from view….and after having finally done him justice in Coldhearted….then to bring him back at nearly the last minute…some great romance scenes with Artemis (even if I still prefer Linda)….to kill him and *only him* and in the last few minutes on a cancelled show….
omg, DCAU. O.M.G. I don’t know how to adequately express my feelings towards them right now because…yet again..family forum. Can’t curse like the mother of all pirates here.
Don’t anyone tell me DC, DCU, DCAU, DC52FU doesn’t hate Wally. I won’t believe you. There is too much evidence for me to believe you.
Now I’m going to go and continue to up the stock value of facial tissue companies again.
Yes, yes. Shocked. Cheated. Hurt. (and Indifferent to whatever DC has to say on this subject.) All of those.
As soon as Flash and Impulse headed off to take out the last device, I was sure that Barry was going to die, and that Wally would feel obligated to come out of retirement to take his place. It was a genuine surprise that Wally was the one who died. Artemis’ reaction was heartbreaking.
I have little doubt that he’d be brought back for season 3. Getting sent into another dimension, through time or converted into energy isn’t uncommon for a Flash character. Hopefully Young Justice will get a continuation in some form, as unlikely as it currently seems.
I feel like they were setting him up for a third season too. After all there is no proof that he is dead and with speedsters he could easily be lost in time or another dimension. There was a rumor that they were planning to do a third season, but after all the problems they had I don’t think it will happen. So lame…
Man, I was REALLY mad when I first saw this episode. When Barry first ran off to deal with that last bomb I thought for sure he was going to die. In a show about legacy and sidekicks it made sense to me that they would celebrate the most well known and well done passing of the torch stories ever. The second Bart showed up I knew what was going to happen and watched the rest of the trainwreck.
The more I thought about it I realized that Wally had the chance finally to go out how he deserved, a hero running the end of his race. In the DCU he was there one day and gone the next. THAT was a low blow. This Wally got to go out exactly like his mentor and that brings little closure to the whole treatment of Wally over the last few years for me. Although, the death still feels a little cheap to me…. no flash should EVER die from being “too slow”…. EVER!
Last sentence–nutshell!
Additionally, the producer made him far slower because he thought having him less super powered would make him more “interesting”. Now I gotta wonder….Would it have been more “interesting” if Bart or Barry had been the slow one? Ugh.
I’m not even going to go into the lack of a Speed Force, the cliffhanger that will never see a resolution, and (Seriously? I’m going to be sick) Teen Titans Go.
I cried all over again as I read through this post. :'( I’m a devoted Wally West fangirl and I don’t care if he died a hero or doing what he loved. That doesn’t make him any less dead and it doesn’t make me any less heart broken.
For anyone dreaming that Wally would’ve been back in a season 3 scenario, I encourage you to check out show runner @BrandonVietti’s twitter page, where he makes it abundantly clear that Wally is dead, no speed force to save him. He sees it as closure to Wally’s story.
I asked him point blank if that ending was editorially mandated from on high (i.e. DC52), but he didn’t respond.
It’s cheap and not very heroic to make Wally slower than Barry and Bart, and die because of it. His arc had closure. He offered up the Kid Flash identity to Bart so he could retire. Keeping Wally off the field all season only to have him pop up and die?
In my opinion, that’s fairly weak, maybe even lazy.
Your much more polite about this than I. 😀 Thanks about that info on show even if it just made me more angry than ever.
Which tweets? The only one I saw was where he said that Wally “is gone”. Since both Brandon Vietti and Greg Weisman are hoping for the possibility of YJ continuing in some form, they’re hardly going to confirm any future plot developments they had in mind.
Maybe, I’m sounding a little cynical, but did anyone feel that Wally’s death may have been a minor take that towards the people who wanted Barry to die in “Bloodlines”? Cause I read a lot of comments about that episode and almost all of them wanted Barry to die so Wally could/would take up the Flash mantle.
That’s as offensive to me as wanting Wally to die.
Here we finally had a place where ALL the speedsters were together…nobody dead. Retirement could be reversed even if only in our imaginations if not a later DVD or an unlikely renewal. To make a character dead in that universe’s canon….with no way out of the death…a death that wasn’t even needed for the plot…
I’m pretty dang angry.
But at least now I know to ignore any possible DVD or renewal or other shows put out by them.
The whole series was plotted out long before that episode aired.
I don’t see the difference in that.
Making him slower, planning on killing him from the get-go after nearly an entire season without him.
Never mind; I’ve decided that for me Young Justice just never really existed. I’m tossing out the one KF figure I have since it’s the dark uniform one and the DCU never had Wally wearing a dark KF uniform like that. Still, this did push me much further along towards leaving DC for good. (I’m down to keeping an eye on just two books there: Barry’s and Kyle’s. Both are tenuous.)
What is up with DC erasing every trace of Wally?? They wasted over 50 years worth of history by deciding to leave him out of every medium! I got really excited when Flash was making his way towards the last drone. I was getting ready for a big Flash Family finale where all of them end up saving the day! But instead they kill off Wally?? Seriously?? And isn’t it too convenient that Jay Garrick didn’t show up?? No Flash Family member would EVER pass up the opportunity to run together! But of course, if Jay had shown up, HE would have been the slowest. And they can’t kill off Wally. It’s such a shame. I really loved the show, and I still think the story as a whole was great. But I can’t help but feel that DC just used it to erase Wally from all universes. I haven’t even gotten over the fact that he’s no longer in the comic books. This is just a blatant slap to the face of every Flash fan out there.
http://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/search.php?rid=1032
Greg Weisman posted some dialogue cut for time, including an exchange between Kid Flash and Impulse and an extended version of Kid Flash and Artemis’ scene.
Despite the fate of Wally, I did enjoy the episode. I hope this isn’t the end of the show in any final way. The plot threads left from this finale are just a tease if so.
As for Wally, just stunned, STUNNED that he died. I too thought for sure Barry was going to die at the end yet Wally did. It was both sad and sweet how it was handled though. The moment with Bart and Artemis accepting their new identities was great.
I don’t like it though. DC is being remarkably single-minded here in (seemingly) erasing Wally from all forms of media existence. Batman has his Family, Superman has his Family, you even have 3600 Green Lanterns, all with the same exact power ring.
Yet somehow it’s wrong to have both Barry and Wally together as heroes…….
Watching this episode got me to thinking about Wally at the end of the last DC continuity. It would have been a nice parallel if Wally had sacrificed himself for the sake of the New 52 continuity, just like Barry did for the Silver Age in Crisis.
If DC was going to shut down the character for several years, he should have had a bigger role in Flashpoint.
Amen!
I’m annoyed with the producers. I loved Bart, thought Wally was a jerk, and was quite happy that Barry was still alive, but the way they killed Wally made NO SENSE. The science didn’t work. And since there is no third season, we don’t get to see if Barry actually investigates this. I’d like to assume he does, but of course, they’d probably have Batman do it, which is just wrong because this is personal and Bats shouold be investigating Red Hood, who should be coming back to life by now. If they’re going to make a show about something from the comics, in my opinion, Barry should’ve died, even if Bart did come to save him, so Wally could take up the Flash mantle like he was supposed to and Bart could be Kid Flash and they’d help Iris with the kids. That’s just my opinion, though.
Also, why were Max Mercury, Johnny Quick, and Jay Garrick not there, or at least not shown cheering them on? They all know how scary being a speedster can be, and they aren’t even shown mourning or ANYTHING!
Presumably Jay was nowhere near a Zeta tube which was how Wally was able to get there so fast, but yeah, no Iris, Jay, Joan…no actual funeral. This felt not only pointless but also like a last minute add on given only the thought: “We gotta make someone die for dramatic effect and it can’t be someone we might want to use if we get a third season because our deaths are permanent. Hey, lets use the guy we stiffed out of the plot during second season!” *sigh* I am done with DCAU.
My main beef is that Wally should not have died so uselessly.
Think about the math. At least Barry slowed down to Wally’s level to try to save Wally. So if B lost 90% of his momentum and the bomb explosion was still containable, then W’s 10% wasn’t really necessary. Barry could have thrown Wally up and away while shouting for the others to catch him and immediately sped up again (even if it took time it would have been faster than 20% (10% plus 10%) and the disaster averted. Beetle would have caught Wally. Maybe bruised up, maybe some broken bones, but still alive. Happy Day (except for the unresolved War World and Darkseid.) Wally’s sacrifice was not needed = he died for nothing, heroic intent notwithstanding. End result, Kyer not happy with all parts of the DC body. Not happy at all.
Anni, yes! I so wanted to see Max Mercury animated.
I am really disappointed that they cancelled Young Justice. For the last few years, especially since the New 52, this has been my favorite interpretation of my favorite characters, It always reminded me of DC of the 80s and 90s with a few new and interesting twists. The episode itself seemed overly rushed and, maybe it was my tv, but the animation didn’t seem up to par either…not as crisp. As soon as Wally left for the Arctic, I knew he was a goner. I did like how they made it reminiscent of Barry’s death in Crisis. I’m gonna miss this show and the nostalgia for “old” DC that it invoked. I was really hoping for some flashbacks to fill in the time jump. That always struck me as a bit arbitrary and with little explanation to how everyone got from points A to B.
Personally I was pissed with how they handled Wally all season. They pretty much phased him out to make room for a vastly inferior character in Bart Allen. Wally was pretty much the shows most interesting character (tell me another charcter who had as much character range as he did, because you won’t find one). The only treatment of Wally that I did like was his relationship with Artemis, which was not only the shows most interesting relationship, but Wally’s most interesting relationship in any medium IMO (sorry Liinda fans, nothing against her but her being a civilian reporter REEKED of Iris, and she felt out of place amongst her superhero husband and children). But they pissed that away by killing Wally off all for the sake of having Artemis angsting and fulfilling the DC status quo.
Though one also has to wonder if DC would’ve even ALLOWED Barry getting killed off and Wally being allowed to become the Flash on this show. If not, I can somewhat see their point, but still not agree with it. If DC had no problem with it, THEN THIS was a fundamental betrayal of Wally West as a character on this show.
Dc and cartoon networkjust hates us. Thats why they gave us a crap reboot, a crap ending, and a crap death for wally.
am so depressd and sad that there isnt another episode as to what happened to wally after his death