The following contains spoilers for Young Justice: Phantoms, Episode 22, "Rescue and Search," now streaming on HBO Max.
DC's Justice League movie fell short of fans' high expectations. The pacing of the film struggled and many scenes didn't seem to connect, either with other scenes or with audiences themselves. However, one action sequence that viewers did enjoy was a scary moment involving Superman -- which was one of the most frightening scenes ever to feature the Man of Steel.
When Kal-El was resurrected by the League using a Mother Box, he went berserk and tried to murder the heroes. It led to a brutal battle in which the Man of Steel faced the rest of the League single-handedly. Flash tried to put a stop to the madness, but Superman literally threw him aside, along with the rest of the League, before Lois Lane could calm him down. To see Superman decimate his friends was shocking, but the latest Young Justice episode followed a similar path with its villain Lor-Zod.
In "Rescue and Search," Lor-Zod and M'comm boarded the Legion of Super Heroes' Bioship after losing their Phantom Zone projector to the heroes. That had been their best chance at bringing Lor-Zod's father, General Dru-Zod, back from the Phantom Zone. Lor subsequently took the Legion hostage because that idea was all he lived for -- he believed that once his father returned, they could finish off the House of El and the League.
The Legion needed a plan and Kid Flash -- who was running the newly invented Cosmic Treadmill allowing the ship to cut through space and time -- decided to do exactly what his Justice League counterpart had done. He tapped into the Speed Force and ran, hoping to grab collars that would restrict Lor-Zod and M'comm's powers. However, just like Superman in the film, Lor-Zod was not entirely frozen and the movement of his eyes gave him away.
A stunned Kid Flash couldn't get out of the way, with Lor-Zod using his heat vision to blow the collars up and then similarly toss him aside. That key moment allowed Lor-Zod to take control of the Bioship. Furthermore, by applying another collar to Kid Flash, he also gained the opportunity to potentially control space and time. This was where Young Justice deviated from Justice League, because in the TV show, the maddened Kryptonian couldn't be cured.
While Superman had been corrupted, Lor-Zod was merely obsessed with causing chaos in the cosmos by opening a portal to the Phantom Zone. So while the film's heroes had Lois to calm Superman down, the show's heroes don't have anyone who can speak to Lor-Zod. This episode also took away their primary advantage by incapacitating Kid Flash, and therefore, the Cosmic Treadmill. While Justice League had big-screen scares, Young Justice created its own tension on the small screen, too.
New episodes of Young Justice: Phantoms debut every Thursday on HBO Max.