Young Justice Season 3 Reveals The REAL Outsiders Team

Young Justice: Outsiders has finally revealed the Outsiders team led by Beast Boy in episode 17, “First Impression”. Before this episode, it was presumed that the Outsiders name referred to a new covert superhero team started by Nightwing in the opening episodes of Young Justice season 3.

The Outsiders first appeared in comics in 1983 as a clandestine superhero team formed by Batman that could deal with problems that the Justice League weren’t able to address openly. Since that time, the Outsiders name has been used by other teams who operated independently of the superhero mainstream. The story of the third season of Young Justice has taken a good deal of inspiration from the original Batman and The Outsiders comics, featuring characters like Black Lightning who were part of the classic Outsiders line-up. However, despite a great deal of upheaval among Earth’s superheroes and a mass-defection from the Justice League led by Batman, none of the new groups of heroes that have been formed during the current season of Young Justice have claimed the Outsiders name until now.

“First Impression” picks up where the first three episodes of the second half of Young Justice: Outsiders left off, with Garfield “Beast Boy” Logan addressing Aquaman and Ms. Martian regarding the covert team of teen superheroes (a.k.a. The Team) that is overseen by the Justice League. Beast Boy argues that a team of teenage superheroes operating in the public view would enable the Justice League to fight the propaganda war that they are losing to the secretive supervillain union known as The Light. By showing that there are young people willing to risk their lives using their powers to help people, Beast Boy hopes that meta-teens will be humanized with the general populace and that people will start to see them as real people rather than potentially dangerous criminals and demand the United Nations allow the Justice League to tackle the metahuman trafficking problem. Beast Boy also hopes to inspire young people without powers to embrace the heroic ideals of the Justice League and believe they too can change the world for the better.

Aquaman and Ms. Martian agree to give the idea a try, with Beast Boy using the money he’s made from his time as a big-name actor to secure a skyscraper base in Los Angeles where the team can live on-site, ready to respond at the first sign of trouble. Trouble soon arrives in the form of an apparent alien invasion in the small town of Brooklyn, Maine, which the young heroes neutralize with relatively few difficulties. When asked who they are by a trio of reporters, Beast Boy explains they are a new superhero team of teen heroes that won’t be held back by the rules or bureaucracy that restrict the Justice League.

When one of the reporters says he makes them sound more like a social revolution than a superhero team, Beast Boy doesn’t disagree. “We’re definitely not playing by the insiders’ rules. We can’t,” he replies. “We are all outsiders.”  Soon the story of the battle is trending on social media, along with the hashtag #WeAreAllOutsiders.

Ironically, despite having adopted the Outsiders name, this new team is actually the closest Young Justice: Outsiders has come to producing their own version of the Teen Titans, as depicted in the New Teen Titans comics which also inspired DC Universe’s live-action Titans series. Both teams operate out of a skyscraper base and share the goal of inspiring other young people, though the Titans’ base had a distinctive T-shape and was formally known as Titans Tower. The Outsiders’ base is in Hollywood and has yet to get a formal name. It seems unlikely the Teen Titans name will be used on Young Justice due to branding issues, but it is fascinating to see how different shows make use of the same source material.

About The Author

Matt Morrison
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Matt Morrison has been writing about comics since before the word
“blogging” was coined. He got his start writing for the
legendary DC Comics digital fanzine Fanzing,
before receiving his own column, The Mount. Since then he has gone on
to write for over a dozen websites, including 411
Mania, Comics
Nexus and The Cult of Nobody. He holds both an MS in Information
Science from the University of North Texas and a BFA from the
University of Texas at Arlington. Known as a font of comic book
history trivia, he has delivered lectures on the history of American
Comic Books, Japanese Manga, Doctor Who, and Cosplay at over a dozen conventions
and served as an Expert In-Residence for a course on Graphic Novels
for Librarians at the University of North Texas. In addition to his
work for Screen Rant, Matt is currently the Editor In Chief of
Kabooooom.com and writes reviews for No
Flying, No Tights – a graphic literature and anime review site
aimed at teachers and librarians. He also maintains a personal blog –
My Geeky Geeky Ways –
which hosts his extensive episode guide for the television series
making up The Arrowverse as well as his
comedic Let’s Play videos. What little spare time he has is
devoted towards acting, role-playing, movie-riffing and sarcasm. You
can follow his adventures on Twitter, @GeekyGeekyWays.

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