Justice League Wally
Young Justice Wally
As much as I love JL/JLU, I feel YJ did more for Wally in both costume and civilian.
Le Suck it, Dolphin!
-God I am so tired.
SCOTT SUMMERS AND EMMA FROST DESERVED BETTER.
The issue I had with YJ Wally is his story never really seemed to go anywhere despite the initial concepts demanding it should have.
His role in season two appeared to be a continuation of his heroic outlook being a weakness from the previous season and his death seemed to be merely another example of how he didn't stack up to the other speedsters. They tacked on the idea of a sacrifice at the end, but there didn't seem to be much substance behind it as far as I could see.
I think a big part of that is he got put into a few lopsided conflicts that magnified things.
People were simply inclined to side with characters like Artemis (both seasons) and Dick (season two) because their side got fleshed out in a way his never really did. Things like having Wally question Dick choices while he wasn't shown to be doing anything to help during the invasion himself just looks bad.
You pretty much nailed my issue with YJ Wally down to a T, is he more like comic book Wally? Yes. but he's also in many ways basically "wasted potential: the character" compared to the rest of the core cast he got much less development and didn't really have much of a character arc and by the end he was essentially a sattelite love interest to Artemis. Then he dies... to give Artemis reasons to angst basically. They gave Bart more of a character arc than Wally and he's only in one shorter season.
like Aqualad has his struggles with being leader in S1 and all the undercover stuff + his relationship with his father in S2, Miss Martian has the white Martian plot and all her inner fears and doubts related to that she has to overcome in S1 and her struggles with morality in S2, Dick grows up into a leader who has to make hard choices and live with them, Artemis has her crazy family drama and she matures a lot and also gets over her self doubts and fears. Superboy goes from rage filled punk who's only knowledge of the world is what was downloaded into his brain to honestly by S2 probably the most mature and level headed member other than Aqualad. Wally's series long plot is... his relationship with Artemis... that's about it, and it sucks when characters are basically defined by something like that. Wally in YJ was a fun character but he could of been so much more had he actually been given a personal character arc.
I suppose my question is, what kind of arc did Wally have at all in JL? Flash and Substance was good, him chewing out Hawkgirl for leaving behind John was a stronger moment, and beating Lex-Brainiac and almost dying was epic. But none of those fit into an arc where he learns something or grows. The only episode like that is the one when he's selling out to advertise products and then realizes it's not what he should be doing, though that's a low place to put him in the first place.
The fundamental difference for me is Young Justice actually seemed to make an effort to set things up for him while failing to provide any tangible payoff to those things.
There didn't seem to be any point in having him do things like be dismayed about having to deliver a heart because it wasn't a real mission and heavily emphasizing his shortcomings to the extent it was done in the Flash-Family episode because his character was never really allowed to move past those things. All they seemed to do to me was superficially present the idea of progression while reinforcing the initial concepts.
So while Justice League never gave Wally what one would call an arc, I don't think they ever really put him in the position Young Justice did where he needed it.
Last edited by J. D. Guy; 10-19-2018 at 03:16 PM.
Moving past the speed issue doesn't mean getting faster. It means allowing his character to overcome it in some way down the road. Simply having him be the only speedster directly involved at the end would have accomplished that in my opinion. Him being able to save the world despite his inferiority (which had been hammered home earlier) would have worked great. He still dies and his death is about what he could accomplish.
Instead they chose to have him only die because he wasn't as good as the other speedsters after they had already dedicated an episode to actively highlighting that fact earlier. The payoff to them using the Flash-Family episode to heavily emphasize his shortcomings as a speedster was having him only die because he was inferior later. His story as a speedster just seemed to stay in the same place as it was all about his failings.
It's simple story progression.
Think about how the show establishing Artemis' insecurities/trust issues in the first season led to her getting over those things and trusting the team at the end. The reason they built up her insecurities and trust issues to the extent they did is because they were setting her up to move past those things down the road. Her coming to trust the team and continuing to do so during the rest of the series was a suitable payoff worth the build up.
Wally was never really allowed such a payoff to the things built up for him in my opinion. His story as a hero and speedster never really moved past the initial concepts established. The equivalent for Artemis would have been if they had established her trust issues like they did and she was shown to continue to never trust anyone throughout the entire series. So my issue is there was no real progression to Wally's story as far as I could see.
Y'know, I wonder if we'll ever get an adaption of Wally that features him taking over as The Flash from his Uncle Barry, coming into his own as a hero, and attached at the hip to Linda Park...