Triptych

"Triptych" is the eighth episode of the third season of Young Justice, and the 54th of the overall series.

Logline
As Meta-Human trafficking spreads across the United States, three very different teams of heroes seek to put a stop to it!

Synopsis
As Nightwing arrives in Oracle's sanctum sanctorum, she mentions that he was late. "There were difficulties," Nightwing relates.

Using Shade's ability to move through shadows, Mist, Livewire, and Shade infiltrate Star Labs' Detroit facility. Livewire shocks a scientist, Dr. Stone, to unconsciousness, and Mist finds their target: a large device that was larger than Shade had expected. Shade is visibly strained in moving the device through his shadow, which allows the scientist time enough to regain consciousness and raise the alarm.

A security guard, Casey Klebba, accosts the group, but is blindsided by Cheshire, who was watching her team's backs. In a moment of carelessness, Cheshire ignores the fallen guard and approaches the team, but Casey shoots her through her right shoulder.

Shade recovers in time, and the group manages to escape through his shadow portal before there are further injuries.

Jefferson Pierce and Helga Jace have after-sex pillow-talk, with Jeff expressing regret at leaving the Justice League at the same time Batman made his move. Jeff thinks the Justice League has strayed from heroism to politics, and that he's better off freelancing with Nightwing. Just then, he receives a call from Dick Grayson.

Jefferson arrives via Zeta tube at the farm, rendezvousing with Artemis, Dick Grayson, Brion Markov, Forager, and Violet; Superboy was off-mending fences with M'gann. Grayson explains the mission -- they have someone who might be able to provide intelligence on the League of Shadows, and therefore, the location of Bryon's missing sister. The rub is Cheshire may not be very cooperative; she is cornered and wounded, and that makes her dangerous.

Inside a plane in an empty warehouse, Dr. has just removed the bullet from Cheshire's shoulder and stitched her back up, commenting that most of his patients preferred to be sedated during the procedure. But of course, Cheshire doesn't trust anyone - not the least herself.

Cheshire receives an alarm from Shade as the Outsiders make their move. The plane attempts to take off, but Geo-Force quickly grounds it -- the plane is not going anywhere.

Livewire engages Black Lightning, and Nightwing pairs off against Mist. Nightwing has difficulty hitting the metahuman's misty form, and erroneously think neither of them can hit the other. Mist proves him wrong, materializing just her hands and chokes the life out of him while apologizing profusely for her actions.

Halo, Geo-Force, and Forager attack Shade, but he is able to redirect their attacks to each other with his shadow portals. When Halo is knocked to the ground by a redirected Forager, Geo-Force charges towards Shade in anger. However, Shade materializes a portal that swallows Geo-Force whole!

Almost out of breath, Nightwing manages to take a chemical spray from his pocket. The spray affected Mist's mist form, and crystallizes her into ice. However, Nightwing is also incapacitated.

Black Lightning manages to knock Livewire into the ground with a physical attack. Livewire dares him to zap her, claiming that she can absorb his lightning. But she is mistaken when Black Lightning knocks her out with a shock to the noggin.

Halo demands that Shade return Geo-Force, but he demurs, preferring to keep him bottled for a while, or maybe even forever. This enrages Halo, who unlocks a new white aura that emanates a bright light that overpowers Shade. He retreats, and returns Geo-Force.

Inside the plane, Tigress punches out Dr. Moon's lights and confronts Cheshire. She has two questions and a statement: Who is running the League of Shadows? And from where? Cheshire answers both -- she honestly doesn't know the new leader, but she does know it is run from Santa Prisca.

Cheshire asks about Lian, which brings Tigress to her statement -- go see her kid. But Cheshire claims Lian is better off without her. Even though she is Lian's mother, she will always be Cheshire first. As Shade comes to retrieve her, Cheshire asks her sister to hug Lian for her.

Tigress makes no move to prevent Cheshire's escape, but at least she has Dr. Moon and the intelligence about the League of Shadows.

As Robin approaches Batman, he, like Oracle, tells him that he is late. Robin then makes his report.

Two weeks prior, Robin's group, consisting of himself, Spoiler, Arrowette, and Orphan, had been tracking Jervis Tetch, the Mad Hatter. They noticed he was drinking a lot of water, and that the water bottles he was littering contained clay backwash.

Robin decides to find a way to check on their suspicions, but Orphan short-circuits it by slicing Tetch in half, revealing him to be Clayface in disguise.

During the battle, Spoiler tells the team to forget Clayface - Tetch is their real target. At this, Clayface retreats to protect Tetch, and the group can track him thanks to a liquid tracker Spoiler tossed on him.

Tetch is inside a warehouse, injecting a nanotech solution into an inmate. It is a solution that allows complete control over the subject, through words spoken into the Mad Hatter's device.

Clayface arrives, yelling that he has to protect Tetch. From what? From Robin's team, who make their entrance. Tetch activates his device, clearly showing Clayface to be under his thrall. Yes, shield him, as he makes his exit with the inmate.

As Clayface keeps the team busy, the Mad Hatter activates a self-destruct button. Although Spoiler is tracking him, he manages to lose her and abscond with his new puppet.

Robin grabs one of Hatter's control devices, and as he grapples to the roof, notices that the warehouse is wired all over with explosives set to detonate. He orders everyone out of the building, and his team manage to escape just in time.

Robin tells Hagen to escape as well, but Clayface must protect Hatter. The warehouse collapses in a fiery explosion with Clayface still inside, but the villain is able to reform.

“She is late,” Aquaman complains to Miss Martian. But that was to be expected, since Wonder Woman was calling halfway across the galaxy. Moments later, a holographic image of Wonder Woman appears, apologizing for being late and asking her co-chair to report. “It began a few weeks ago,” he starts.

In Star City, Brick and an unnamed metahuman prisoner were being loaded into a Star City Stateville Penitentiary transport to take them to Belle Reve. While en route, an explosive javelin flips the armored car into its back – it was Sportsmaster. Fortunately, the car was driven by an undercover Barry Allen and Billy Batson. Flash immediately attacked Sportsmaster while Captain Marvel prevented the upside-down car from hitting the ground. Cornered, Sportsmaster holds up a hockey puck, which emanated a sonic attack that incapacitated both of the heroes.

Sportsmaster calls out to Abra Kadabra, who breaks into the armored car and liberates both prisoners and deactivates their power dampening collars. But the heroes have reinforcements. Rocket traps Brick in an energy bubble while Aquaman captures Kadabra. Sportsmaster takes advantage of the fracas to abscond with the meta-prisoner, and they manage to escape.

Brick bemoans his poor luck as Aquaman replaces the collar on his neck. But Aquaman tells him he has no idea how lucky he was.

Aquaman finishes his report to Wonder Woman, and is revealed to be in the same location in Gotham City as Nightwing and Oracle, and Batman and Robin. Batman reports that they have successfully neutered the metahuman trafficking operation of Branchwater Security, a front company controlled by Stagg Industries. Simon Stagg, its majority shareholder, uses Branchwater to create a meta-crime covert operations unit to engage in corporate espionage and warfare. Oracle explains that they identified three links in Branchwater’s supply chain – acquisition, coercion, and utilization.

In the acquisition phase, Blackwater liberates existing metahumans from prisons and transports – Clayface, Livewire, and Mist were acquired in this manner. In the coercion phase, Blackwater has the Mad Hatter inject a nanotech solution that forces them to follow commands – the fate Brick was rescued from. Finally, Cheshire leads the metahumans to do whatever Stagg wanted to do.

Fortunately for Clayface, Robin used the device he found to forever release him from external control of his actions, an act that Hagen actually thanked him for. Batman did the same for Livewire and Mist, but since the two are minors and not hardened criminals, they were not taken to Belle Reve like the others. As for Stagg, Superboy and Miss Martian captured him in the act of receiving stolen property – the device stolen from Star Labs. It was a Reach device salvaged from one of the Reach warships that was destroyed when protecting the Earth from the War World’s missiles. The device’s purpose is unclear, but Blue Beetle translated the Reach text on the device as “metahuman failsafe.”

Nightwing believed that Stagg had become paranoid that someone else would emulate him and use metahumans against him, and that the machine would protect him from them. But it cost him, since Oracle sent all the evidence to the authorities, and a news broadcast showed that Stagg was being arrested in Gotham City for meta-trafficking. The Reach device was on its way back to Star Labs Detroit, although it appeared to have sustained some damage.

However, there are loose ends. Having both escaped, Shade was now the mind-controlled stooge of Cheshire. Nightwing doesn’t think Cheshire would free him without significant incentive. But he was proven wrong, since Cheshire freed Shade unconditionally, and the first thing he does was to teleport to Stagg’s cell and do unspeakable things to him.

Wonder Woman questions whether this was a victory, remaining troubled at the fact that between the seven of the heroes gathered in the Batcave, they were leading six separate teams who were unaware that they were working together. Batman reminded her that they agreed to take a page from the Light’s playbook to fight fire with fire.

As kind of Anti-Light, Robin quips. But Diana is quick to point out that darkness is the opposite to light. She is uncomfortable with keeping the other members of the League in the dark.

Batman points out that they needed plausible deniability. Superman can hardly be expected to lie under oath, and as a sovereign princess of Themiscyra, Wonder Woman could invoke her diplomatic status to avoid testifying.

Wonder Woman then asks if the rest of them are prepared to lie. Although Aquaman and Miss Martian gave each other a meaningful look, nobody says a word.

Title
A triptych or "three-fold" is a type of painting that has three frames, depicting three related scenes in all windows. This episode has three teams investigating seemingly unrelated events, until the Batcave scene ties them all together.

Cast and characters
! colspan="3" | Non-speaking roles
 * class="VA" | Troy Baker
 * colspan="2" | Brion Markov/Geo-Force
 * class="VA" | Britt Baron
 * Livewire
 * class="VA" rowspan="2" | Jeff Bennett
 * colspan="2" | Abra Kadabra
 * Casey Klebba
 * class="VA" | Daniela Bobadilla
 * Mist
 * class="VA" | Denise Boutte
 * colspan="2" | Rocket
 * class="VA" | Cameron Bowen
 * colspan="2" | Robin
 * class="VA" | Vic Chao
 * colspan="2" | Doctor Moon
 * class="VA" | Nick Chinlund
 * colspan="2" | Sportsmaster
 * class="VA" | Zehra Fazal
 * colspan="2" | Violet/Halo
 * class="VA" | Bruce Greenwood
 * colspan="2" | Batman
 * class="VA" | Grey Griffin
 * colspan="2" | Helga Jace
 * class="VA" | Kelly Hu
 * colspan="2" | Cheshire/Jade Nguyen
 * class="VA" rowspan="2" | Stephanie Lemelin
 * colspan="2" | Artemis Crock
 * colspan="2" | Computer
 * class="VA" | Chad Lowe
 * colspan="2" | Billy Batson/Shazam
 * class="VA" | Jesse McCartney
 * colspan="2" | Dick Grayson/Nightwing
 * class="VA" | Danica McKellar
 * colspan="2" | Miss Martian
 * class="VA" | Nolan North
 * colspan="2" | Clayface
 * class="VA" rowspan="3" | Khary Payton
 * colspan="2" | Jefferson Pierce/Black Lightning
 * colspan="2" | Aquaman
 * colspan="2" | Brick
 * class="VA" | Maggie Q
 * colspan="2" | Wonder Woman
 * class="VA" | Dwight Schultz
 * Mad Hatter
 * class="VA" | Jason Spisak
 * colspan="2" | Forager
 * class="VA" | Kelly Stables
 * colspan="2" | Arrowette
 * class="VA" | Alyson Stoner
 * colspan="2" | Oracle
 * class="VA" | Joel Stetow
 * Shade
 * class="VA" | James Arnold Taylor
 * colspan="2" | Flash/Barry Allen
 * class="VA" | Mae Whitman
 * colspan="2" | Spoiler
 * class="VA" | Nolan North
 * colspan="2" | Clayface
 * class="VA" rowspan="3" | Khary Payton
 * colspan="2" | Jefferson Pierce/Black Lightning
 * colspan="2" | Aquaman
 * colspan="2" | Brick
 * class="VA" | Maggie Q
 * colspan="2" | Wonder Woman
 * class="VA" | Dwight Schultz
 * Mad Hatter
 * class="VA" | Jason Spisak
 * colspan="2" | Forager
 * class="VA" | Kelly Stables
 * colspan="2" | Arrowette
 * class="VA" | Alyson Stoner
 * colspan="2" | Oracle
 * class="VA" | Joel Stetow
 * Shade
 * class="VA" | James Arnold Taylor
 * colspan="2" | Flash/Barry Allen
 * class="VA" | Mae Whitman
 * colspan="2" | Spoiler
 * class="VA" | Alyson Stoner
 * colspan="2" | Oracle
 * class="VA" | Joel Stetow
 * Shade
 * class="VA" | James Arnold Taylor
 * colspan="2" | Flash/Barry Allen
 * class="VA" | Mae Whitman
 * colspan="2" | Spoiler
 * class="VA" | James Arnold Taylor
 * colspan="2" | Flash/Barry Allen
 * class="VA" | Mae Whitman
 * colspan="2" | Spoiler
 * colspan="2" | Spoiler
 * colspan="2" | Doctor Stone
 * colspan="2" | Orphan
 * colspan="2" | Simon Stagg
 * colspan="2" | Orphan
 * colspan="2" | Simon Stagg
 * colspan="2" | Simon Stagg
 * colspan="2" | Simon Stagg
 * colspan="2" | Simon Stagg



Continuity

 * The Reach device stolen from Star Labs was taken from a ship downed in the events of War.

Title
A triptych is a work of art, such as a painting, divided into three side-by-side panels. The title refers to the three separate stories, each featuring a different team, that tells a complete story about Shade's liberation, subsequent brainwashing, and exploitation.

Cultural references

 * The officers shown arresting Stagg in the GBS broadcast bear a resemblance to Detectives Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya.

Unanswered questions

 * Why was Shade so important?
 * What did Shade do to Stagg?