Does Young Justice: Phantoms’ Endgame Involve Infinity, Inc?

This Young Justice: Phantoms review contains spoilers.

Young Justice Season 4 Episode 23

I suppose after such a strong run of episodes, there was bound to be some reversion to mean for Young Justice: Phantoms. And while “Ego and Superego” isn’t necessarily a bad episode, it certainly is puzzling. It has me wondering what the game is when they introduce a brand new (to the season) storyline, three episodes from the finish. 

By my count, we’ve got five unresolved plots that are all approximately converging.

THE PHANTOM ZONE

Conner remains trapped in the Phantom Zone this week. Phantom Girl, awakened at the end of the New Genesis arc, told her story to Conner this week – apparently, when she phases between the Team’s dimension and her home dimension of Bgztl, she passes through the Phantom Zone, the gooey stuff that keeps the dimension separate. She reached to save Conner as the explosion went off on Mars, but the shock of traveling through the explosion with another person left her unconscious and only halfway home. 

Conner is completely in the tank for Zod at this point, so rather than cover for her, he snitches on her, and Zod and Ursa are pretty pissed. But she phases back to Mars before they can do anything about it. 

THE ORIGINAL TEAM

Not really much to report on the original team front. Aquaman, Zatanna, Tigress, Rocket and Nightwing found the bus that traveled through the Zone. Z summons a pack of gremlins and offers them Dick’s car to destroy and a bag of fried chicken fingers in exchange for putting the bus back together, and the episode ends with the five of them walking out of the bus door into (presumably) the Zone to save Conner. 

OA

There was no follow up at all to last week’s revelation that the Kaizer Thrall was a kidnapped 14 year old stuffed into a robot torture box. However, big thanks to Mobile Suit Elie on Twitter for the flag on Soranik Natu: she is Sinestro’s daughter and the current Green Lantern from Korugar’s sector, and also an accomplished neurosurgeon. Great pull!

GRANNY GOODNESS

And nothing still on the plot by Apokolips to infiltrate New Genesis, on what Darkseid’s plan is by allying with Lor Zod, nothing on what Lor Zod is up to, and interestingly, nothing on what Granny Goodness is up to with Mary Marvel. Nor do we get any hint about what Vandal Savage is working on, or any mention of the Lords of Chaos and Order. Unless…

MARKOVIA

You’ll remember from last season that fictional Eastern European backwater Markovia was the prime hub of metahuman trafficking. The trafficking ring was busted up by the team, and the evil Baron Bedlam was unseated by Outsider Brion Markov, heir to the Markovian royal family and metahuman Geoforce, with the power to manipulate rock with his mind. He’s back this week, pretty much out of the blue, leading a new version of Infinity, Inc. He picked up most of the team Luthor was manipulating last season – Trajectory, Everyman and Fury are here – but he also seems to be manipulated by Bad Samaritan, the Markovian ambassador with metahuman psychic powers who is secretly an agent of Savage’s group, the Light. Samaritan is trying to manipulate Brion into gathering more metas in Markovia, turning it into a superpowered haven and possibly army.

Brion and Fury voice some concerns with this arrangement, but they’re pretty obviously back to being manipulated by the end of the episode. It’s puzzling because on its face, it isn’t clear how this fits into the plot that the rest of the season has been weaving together. A deeper inspection shows some threads linking it to everything else, but we’ll really only know for sure once it wraps up. I’m hopeful they pull it off.