‘Young Justice: Outsiders’: What We Know So Far About Season 3

Young Justice Phantoms

It’s been more than four years since Young Justice last aired on Cartoon Network. After the show’s cancellation, many fans were understandably upset. The end of the second season left the series on a cliffhanger and also had Wally West trapped in the speed force. But after Young Justice debuted on Netflix, it became a much bigger presence and fans who hadn’t already been watching the DC Comics show began binge-watching it on the streaming service.

Four years, and a lot of vocal fans later, Young Justice is coming back for a third season. This time, it’ll be airing on DC’s new Digital Service.

Producers Brandon Vietti and Greg Weisman, along with art director Phil Bourassa were on hand at San Diego Comic-Con this year to, very lightly, tease the upcoming third season, give some background information on seasons one and two, and thank fans for their dedication and support of the show.

Below is some of the information and news gathered from both the panel and the Young Justice roundtable interviews with Vietti, Weisman, and Bourassa.

Two of the new characters who will appear in season three of Young Justice: Outsiders are Tracy 13 and Bash Bashford. The show will have a time jump, but the producers weren’t willing to say how much time has passed between seasons two and three. Besides some of the new characters coming on board, several returning characters will be getting brand new and updated looks to their costumes, as seen below. However, noticeably absent from any of the new season three artwork is Miss Martian.

While any future seasons of Young Justice: Outsiders have obviously not yet been determined, the producers have a plan for seasons four and five, should the show continue. They urged fans to watch season three if they’d like to see the series carry on. For season three, it was confirmed that it will be twenty six episodes and that they’ve currently finished up to episode ten. The voice cast has recorded up through episode ten as well. It was revealed that it takes around one year to make just one episode between the work on animation, script, cast recordings, and so on.

Now that Young Justice: Outsiders will be premiering on DC’s Digital Service, the producers spoke about being able to have a bit more freedom to raise the bar and touch on some more mature themes that they couldn’t always get into while being on Cartoon Network. However, any mature themes they delve into won’t be anything extreme as they want to keep the show’s basic elements intact. There wasn’t very much teased by way of what the season three story arc will be. When asked whether the Apokolips storyline would continue, the producers only touched upon the meta-gene storyline, which will continue to a degree in the sense that everything will be out in the open and no longer hidden in terms of the public.

Conversation then turned to the characters. Many fans (and press) really wanted to know who will and won’t be returning (Wally West chief among them) to the show, and whether Jason Todd would be making a season three appearance. Before answering the question about anyone’s return, the producers spoke about the decision to have Wally disappear into the speed force instead of Barry. The producers wanted his disappearance to be a consequence of the hero life and thought he’d be more effective to have disappear than Barry since the audience, in terms of the show, knew Wally better.

Besides that little bit of information, all the producers would say was that the third season will be very much about the growing up and maturing of the characters, leading and paving the way for a new generation of heroes. It harkens back to how the Justice League were mentors for the Young Justice team at the beginning. Before closing out the panel, another image was unveiled of four characters dressed in fully black gear. Two of the characters are wearing masks over their faces and noticeably absent is Nightwing’s blue insignia. As for any other possible characters that might appear, Weisman teased that we may get to possibly see Mera and Aquaman’s child, as well the Tornado Twins (Barry and Iris’ children) in the third season.

Even in the roundtable interviews, the producers kept many of the season three spoilers very close to the vest. Asked what they really enjoy about the show, they each mentioned that they liked taking characters who were more obscure and giving them backstory. They also discussed not being afraid to grow their characters and phase some of them out. This will be no different in Young Justice’s third season. It was also mentioned that there was supposed to be a character, they didn’t mention which one, who was supposed leave after season three, but that the character just kept coming back to the forefront. And so they ran with it and allowed the characters to take on a life of their own and, in a sense, tell the writers what stories to tell rather than the other way around.

Young Justice: Outsiders will be debuting at some point in 2018. Vietti wasn’t sure how DC’s Digital Service would be handling the release of the episodes and whether the episodes will be airing weekly or ready to stream all at once on DC’s Digital Service. Stay tuned to Heroic Hollywood for more information as the release date gets closer.

Mae Abdulbaki

Mae Abdulbaki

Mae Abdulbaki is an entertainment journalist and Weekend Editor at Heroic Hollywood. She's a geek, a lover of words, superheroes, and all things entertainment.