Andy Behbakht looks at the March 10 episode of Young Justice, titled “Cold Hearted.”
Official Synopsis:
“Wally West comes oh-so-close to fulfilling his birthday wish to finally fight alongside the Justice League. Instead, a massively disappointed Kid Flash is taken of the mission and tasked with a simple delivery job. But a few deadly surprises await the birthday boy along the way…”
Recap:
Wally West wakes up to his sweet 16th birthday with joy and excitement – he gets even happier when it’s announced that due to the snow, his school is closed for the day. Little do Wally and the rest of the citizens know that up in the sky, hiding behind the clouds, a floating fortress is there.
At Mount Justice, Wally arrives and is greeted by a surprise party from the team. While everyone is enjoying the party, Artemis decides to break the news to Wally about Miss Martian and Conner’s relationship, which makes him disappointed. Suddenly Batman calls the team and assigns them their latest mission that regards 5 ice fortresses that are causing the snow storms. The time however, the young heroes will fight side by side the Justice League… except for Wally, who is assigned the mission to pick up a heart in Boston and deliver it to a girl in need in Seattle. Due to the circumstances, Wally has no choice but to follow Batman’s order.
Wally arrives later at Boston General Hospital where he picks it up and is informed that he has 4 hours at his disposal. While Wally is heading towards Seattle, the heroes deal’s with the fortresses. Meanwhile in South Dakota, Vandal Savage attacks police officers who are keeping their eyes open for Kid Flash, who notices that Savage is attacking them and stops to fight him. An intensive fight begins between the Speedster and Savage but after a while when he realizes that he is just wasting time on Savage, he decides to leave in order to deliver the heart in time. Wally arrives at Seattle Hospital and is informed by a waiting “doctor” that it’s already too late as the girl had just pasted away 12 minutes ago. Wally feels disappointed over himself and decides to take a break at the hospital as he has been running for four hours.
Suddenly three surgeons show up and ask where the heart is for Queen Perdita of Vlativa, which makes Wally realize that he has been conned. He runs after the imposter. He makes it to the garage and gets the heart back but is then stopped by Count Vertigo (uncle of Perdita, who wants to see his niece die so that he can take the throne). Kid Flash is able to escape with the heart and delivers it to the surgeons before he faints out of exhaustion. Back at West residents where the family is waiting for the birthday boy to come home, they see on the news that Queen Perdita died on the operating table. The next morning when Wally wakes up at the hospital, he is greeted by Count Vertigo who believes that he has won. But when Wally pulls the curtain next to him, it’s revealed that Queen Perdita never died and that she had been recording his confession – he is then arrested after he tries to attack her but fast as a flash that he is, Wally stops it.
After that event, Queen Perdita thanks Kid Flash for protecting her and coming up with the plan to make Count Vertigo confess. When Kid Flash tries to hand her the blade of Count Vertigo, she doesn’t accept it and insist that he keep it as a reward or (ironically) as a “souvenir”. At Belle Reve where Count Vertigo is having a hard time dealing with the humiliations from the other inmates, Batman and The Flash tries to get an answer out of Hugo Strange who was responsible for the fortress, it turns out that it wasn’t any of the five ice villains as they were still at Belle Reve.
Back at Mount Justice, Wally places his latest souvenir from the mission – the container bag where the heart was lying in because to him, who was appreciating the birthday gift of seeing that little girl (Queen Perdita) smiling at him instead of fighting with the Justice League.
Review:
I want to start by saying one thing that this episode touched me. I was touched that as obnoxious and self-confident as he is, Wally/Kid Flash actually learned something by this mission. He realized the beautiful part about being a scarlet speedster – being able to save lives. I thought that it was an excellent episode for Wally. Usually we see him as being a stuck-up and big mouthed teenager but this episode showed a mature side of him and that was something that I enjoyed watching.
I was sure that I was going to be bothered by the fact that this episode was going to be focusing a lot on Wally and not so much on the others but in all honesty, I was actually glad that the writers decided to give him an episode focused on him. I was thrilled to see what how truly impulsive Wally/Kid Flash really is when he is running, maybe flexible as well – I know it’s just a small thing, but it was nice to see.
The overall story was something that was nicely picked by the writers. Sometimes I think that Wally himself just forgets that he can be at places in a flash and also potentially save lives like Queen Perdita’s. Wally really made a progression as a hero in this episode – getting older really did make him wiser.
Villains of the story for this week: Vandal Savage and Count Vertigo. I felt that Savage’s part in this episode just felt so random but in the end he was actually in cooperation with Count Vertigo, so I can buy that. All in all, this was an excellent and touching episode!
