#I can't believe I'm talking about Young Justice a whole ass decade after I stopped watching it

[azol-otl]

So I was rewatching season two of Young Justice (because I only kept up with the show while it was on television and it not existing for years meant I didn’t bother going back to it) and it seems like I still share my opinion from way back then.

Why did they use Tim and Cassie?

Like, don’t get me wrong it makes sense that a show called Young Justice would have them, but the show was already nothing like the comic. YJ!Superboy is nothing like comics!Superboy and he’s the only core member of the actual Young Justice comics to have been in season one. The show’s core cast has two gen one sidekicks, a gen three sidekick, a gen four (??? things get muddled as hell in the 2000s), a gen five sidekick, and a bit villainess. They are literally an elseworld.

Not only that, but Tim and Cassie were...pretty much non-characters during the season. Despite the time given to them, they weren’t very important to the overall arc and were wasted potential.

But you know who wouldn’t have been? Jason and Donna.

We already know the characters exist in universe. We see Jason’s memorial.

This is an unnecessary aside, but I am so sick of Jason’s death being the only thing we see of him in elseworlds. Even the ones where he’s alive they’re always like “And he’s evil because he was poor!” Like bitch do you not understand how to create a tragedy? You don’t just give us sad events you have to get us attached to the character first. This is a cartoon! It has a much wider audience than a comic! They won’t know major comic references because they are not informed! Why would the grotto scene work if we never met these people! Get us attached and then kill them off!

 But there is no point in knowing these characters exist if you don’t use them (or at least cameo them if they’re really niche), but with these two specifically they could have done something really interesting.

 They could have been Red Herrings.

Jason and Donna have both died in the comics. Their deaths were majorly important events to their respective IP’s (Batman and Titans). Not only that, but we already have Bart coming back in time to save a third person who had famously died, Barry Allen.

We know that Bart came back in time to stop the apocalypse. We know something happens to Jaime that turns him evil. We’re led to believe that Artemis dies (something that rocks Bart to the core because she didn’t die in his timeline). So we would suspect that Jason and Donna would be the first in line to die.

The Young Justice writers could even play into their reputations with what’s already present. They could have made Jason and Jaime (who are the same age in this universe) close friends. This could be used to give Bart anxiety because Jason, again, famously gets murdered as Robin and Jaime is supposed to become evil.

Hell if they made Jason take Tim’s place during the infiltration there would have been some serious investment when original Roy purposefully explodes shit and they fight Black Beetle because one of these characters has a history of being murdered. 

I would also like to push my YJ crackship of BlueJay (Jaime/Jason) because I am trash and will forever push Jason being queer.

Or with Mongul (who Jason has a major story with) you can push Jason almost dying again. And it would be through betrayal from someone who’s supposed to love you, just like in DitF. (Imagine the scene where Nightwing finds the batarang when you know that there’s a real possibility that this is how Jason dies in this universe).

On Donna’s end you can have her take more and more responsibilities after Artemis dies and she starts becoming more of Dick’s second in command with a penchant of shoving herself in front of attacks because she can survive things that others cannot (because Artemis “died” via stabbing and if you had Donna there, whoo boy that’s some guilt). So when the Bialya mission occurs and it’s the all-girls team (the all-girls team with two very squishy humans Barbara and Karen), they could just bring in a larger threat than the henchmen that are there then hey there’s more conflict and fear for comic fans. And again in Warworld where she can be fighting against Mongul and guess what there’s another squishy human there, Roy. Instead of being immediately knocked out she could have taken a blow for Roy.

Side Note: When Nightwing explains why it’s an all girl’s team being sent to Bialya (way to assume everyone’s straight Dick), Donna can have a snarky line like, “And Robin isn’t here why?”

For extra extra angst you can have both Jason and Donna reacting negatively to Artemis’ “death” and reaching out to Wally because of it. Jason because both he and Artemis are from the same place and have a similar prickliness that comes from how they were raised (we could have had an Artemis-Jason sibling bond and it would have been great), and his fury that someone who “got out” still died a violent death. Donna because of the guilt of Artemis dying but also because she’d be closer in age to Wally and Artemis so making them be friends just makes sense. And by putting more of the focus on their grief and Wally’s guilt the writers could expertly tie Wally into the “could possibly die” camp without making the audience worry about it.

And with everything that happens. With the two obvious targets somehow alive throughout the season, they still “kill” Wally West. All of the foreshadowing about sacrifice. All of the remarks about not being reckless (because this is still DC and they love blaming Jason’s death on himself). All of the near-deaths, it ends up being the person you don’t expect and it hits harder because of it (except for all the people who watched JLU who had pinged Wally dying pretty early on in the season) .

But yeah. If they were going through the trouble of confirming these characters exist, why not use them for the narrative?