User blog comment:Thailog/Ep. 203 "Alienated" discussion/@comment-4948848-20120513011452

My take is that Wally and Artemis may still be doing the hero gig but they are not members of the league or team. What ever events that caused Aqualad to leave and join Black Manta could have caused them to quit. They could be acting as protectors of a city they moved to and are possibly starting to mentor their own sidekicks. The also have an open invitation to join the league.

One possibility for Wally and Artemis is that they have a completely understandable reason for quitting active hero work. It could be played both for seriousness and laughs as an oops event forced Artemis and Wally to go in to semi-retirement. As events on earth spiral out of control they will call be back into active service.

The fun thing is now that we are three episodes in to the season we know are beginning to see the reason behind the use of a time skip. It allows greater story line tension as we begin to piece together what happened in the 5 years in between.