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Young Justice: Phantoms ends its first four-episode arc with the death of a character that could come back at any time.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Young Justice: Phantoms, streaming now on HBO Max.
Young Justice first brought sidekick characters on the fringes of popular culture into the limelight, and over the course of the three previous seasons, established many of them as beloved and fully fleshed main characters in their own right. That time spent building up their characters lends so much impact to their deaths, and when team founder Kid Flash sacrificed himself at the end of Season 2, it left an emotional impact that continues to resonate throughout the series.
Now, with the conclusion of its initial four-part story arc, Season 4 builds up just as heart-wrenching of a death with Superboy. But unlike Kid Flash, this may not be a death that sticks.
Venturing to Miss Martian’s home planet for a wedding ceremony amidst the alien civilization’s fraught generational problems, Superboy quickly found his trip into outer space far more complicated than it was initially planned to be. With interweaving plots involving a race war between the Martian castes, an assassinated king, the Team’s Bio-Ship giving birth, Beast Boy’s own festering trauma and the intervention of Darkseid’s underling Desaad, there was much for Superboy to watch out for as his strength steadily faded in the subterranean world. That’s why he never could have seen it coming when his attempt to stop Ma’alefa’ak’s gene bomb released kryptonite that seemingly killed him.
But yet another overarching plot thread loomed in the background that may explain how Superboy’s fate won’t be so final. While Superboy’s betrothed, Miss Martian, briefly detected a psychic presence following the pair and Beast Boy around, at one point suspecting the presence of involvement in an attack against them in the Martians, the trio had no way to know it was actually the Legion of Super-Heroes shadowing them at a distance. Present at Superboy’s death after referring to a vague mission ahead of them, the Legion of Super-Heroes could very well have intervened to save Superboy, whisking him away to the future after his seeming death.
The time-traveling Legion already intervened to save Superboy’s life while he was stranded in a Martian sandstorm, with Chameleon Boy leading his companions to him as Saturn Girl psychically posed as Miss Martian in administering aid to Beast Boy so he could save Superboy from suffocation. Among themselves, the Legion referred to a sort of Prime Directive that keeps them from interfering in the timeline in unforeseen ways, but saving Superboy would be the perfect mission to explain not only their presence on Mars but also the watchful eye they kept on Superboy.
Pairing Superboy with the Legion is far from a new concept, either, and would have resonance with a longstanding history the character has with the team stretching back to the Silver Age of Comics. In classic DC mythos, the Legion regards Superboy as an awe-inspiring figure because of how he would one day become Superman. But the Superboy of Young Justice is a separate character altogether, meaning that if this is the direction the show is going, the series would continue its trend of giving a refreshing twist on classic callbacks. Overshadowed by Superman through much of his life, the Legion’s interest in Superboy could well indicate he is destined to become every bit the great hero he always doubted he could become.
The Legion is not seen again after Superboy’s apparent death, leaving Beast Boy and Miss Martian to begin grieving for their fallen friend and teammate. That grief will only compound with earlier deaths in the series, with Kid Flash’s standing out as the most notable, and helps set the increasingly dark tone the series takes as it progresses.
But Superboy’s survival offers light at the end of the tunnel. Saving him would not only stand out as a cherished piece of storytelling to fans of the character but also speak to a larger sense of optimism that Young Justice has always held onto. Without any other indication of what the Legion’s mission on Mars may have been, if Superboy truly stays dead, there may actually be more questions than answers in terms of the larger plot the series builds toward.
To see Superboy meet his end, the first four episodes of Young Justice: Phantoms are streaming on HBO Max.
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