The Young Justice: Outsiders panel at SDCC begins with a “trailer” recapping the first two seasons of the animated series. Fans cheer as favorite characters like Aqualad, Robin, Superboy, Miss Martian, and others showcase their abilites.
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The creators and producers of the show enter the stage and they thank fans for their support. They tell the fans that they are the reason the show return. They also continued by saying that they had incredible success on a “certain streaming service.”
The social media response was an incredible factor in bringing Young Justice back. People can get online and make their voices heard, and that made an impact for the show.
Phil Bourassa, Greg Weisman, and Brandon Vieti all talk about their desire to bring the show back. They decided to include the Darkseid scene at the end of Season 2 even though they knew they weren’t coming back.
On approaching the new season, the creators said that they had strict guidelines while airing on Cartoon Network. With DC‘s new streaming service, they can get more into adult storylines and themes.
“We have 12 scripts final and another 10 or so in the works. We’ve recorded all or part of 10 episodes with our amazing cast of returning and new actors.”
On how many episodes there are in Season 3:
“26 total. The last four we haven’t started yet. We know where we’re going with them.”
The creators then share a couple of the art pieces they used to pitch the show to Cartoon Network. These include a couple of teaser posters of Superboy and Robin, followed by the original character designs for the main characters.
Aqualad looked much more spaced-out in the original design, and the Red Arrow design shown never made it to the series.
Outsiders
The first art from Young Justice: Outsiders debuts on the screen. The characters on the screen include Robin, Blue Beetle, Kid Flash, Static, Wonder Girl, Beast Boy, and Arsenal.
New characters are about to come onto the screen. Spoiler and Arrowette come onto the screen, along with new character Thirteen.ย
Young Justice will work kind of like high school. The characters from the original series are moving up, like a senior year. The new characters will be more like freshman. It’s all about evolution, as Stephanie became Spoiler and Sissy became Arrowette. This is the natural evolution for Arrowette after watching her father be saved by the other Young Justice characters.
“There’s a Season 4 storyboard. And there are things we know we wanna do for Season 5.”
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Audience Questions
Are some of the old characters getting definitive ends as the new characters come in?
“We have some general ideas to where most of the characters are going but we’re leaving it open to change and surprise us.”
Greg Weisman’s favorite moment or storyline of the show was the arc with Zatanna, while Brand Vieti loved the first two episodes of the series.ย
“It set the whole tone of the show.”
Phil Bourasa: “I think I loved everything about episode 6. The exchanges between Artemis and Wally were great. Now we’ve got the whole group together.”
The creative team always wanted to have powerful villains, not just the ones who were immensely popular. It was important to have villains that could bring a lot to the table.
Greg Weisman:
“We think of Sportsmaster as the blue-collar Deathstroke. He just gets the job done. He turned out so cool and I thought if we made Sportsmaster cool, we could make anything cool.”
Phil Bourasa:
“Because these villains hadn’t been dusted off in a while, they were ripe for the picking. Everyone’s done the Joker, but with these villains you could cut loose. There were no limitations.”
Brandon Vieti:
“It gave this show its own identity and it helped separate Young Justice out from the other superhero shows out there.”
A fan asked about how the creators chose the romantic couples.
“Wally and Artemis were both so insecure and they hide those insecurities. Those two are destined for each other. Superboy and Miss Martian were both so far outside of everything else and we could just see them moving toward each other in the best way.”
“Dick and Zatanna dated for a while and broke up but probably stayed friends. Not every relationship lasts forever.”
“it started with a big lift of 75 or so teenage heroes. They have four teenage blonde female archers.
“initially we weren’t allowed to use either Wonder Girl but they told us toward the end of Season 1 that we were then actually allowed to use her.
“I wanted to get some sort of tribute to the original 1960sย Teen Titans.
“We kind of had a fight over Red Arrow. I wanted Roy in the show, and Brandon was smarter and wanted to use Artemis. So we used both.”
Will diversity be a continued focus in Season 3?
“Yeah, I think we’re always trying to reflect the world around us.”
“That’s been a priority of mine since I did Gargoyles back in the ’90s. That’s always going to be an ongoing thing for us.”
What’s the deal with Jason Todd?
The creators just shake their heads and won’t share any spoilers.
After being asked about Deathstroke, the creators said that the character was always so vital to the history of Teen Titans that they always had the notion to use him.
One last piece of art.
We see the team of Black Lightning, Artemis, Dick Grayson and Superbly in black military suits like a covert ops mission. They have graduated.
