"...You Can't Trust Him"!

In many ways this episode is not focused on Artemis, as it focuses mainly on Kaldur; but their are still quite a few moments to pick apart with her character in this part of her journey. So the episode starts with the repercussions of the finale of 'Home Front', with the team recovering from the apparent betrayal of 'Red Tornado'. Conner overhears Kaldur speaking with Bruce; revealing that he knew that there was potential for a traitor. Conner reacts in his typical form in getting angry with Kaldur for putting Me'gan life in danger. In any way this shows that although Conner is a hothead, he does channel the anger for his friends protection. The rest of the team responds in kind; wondering why Kaldur kept a secret that, how Artemis puts it, "...could have saved our lives". Feeling like they are being pulled by the chain, the team begrudgingly goes on a mission where they are sent to find out why Hamilton Hill was killed by, reportedly, giant Gorillas. They, however, do not leave without 'Captain Marvel' joining them.

Once the team hits the ground, they immediately split up, all of them pairing with their respective team mate they trust. So Artemis goes with Me'gan; which makes plenty of sense with Artemis. Given one sniff of trouble, or evidence of a lack of trust from a male member, Artemis is not necessarily back to square one in trusting no one on the team, but at this point it seems that she would only trust the single female member, aside from herself, on the team. The other pairs consist of: Dick and Wally, Kaldur and Billy, and Conner goes off on his own, due to the fact that he tends to go off alone whenever he has a fight with anyone.

After a discussion with Billy about what it takes to be a good leader when your teammates despise you for a controversial decision, Kaldur discovers that the team is attacked by animals mixed with 'Kobra Venom'. Once the team takes down their respective animals, Kaldur puts his foot down, essentially saying that if they do not like him as a leader they can elect a new one; but they do have to cooperate with each other for the remainder for the mission, because it is not good leadership to elect a new leader mid-mission. What goads Kaldur to get the courage to be stubborn for a short amount of time is that the team starts a psychic-link argument. The essential lines in this for the entire teams dialogue during this entire verbal war; Artemis states,"trust is a two-way street". Robin states that, "Good leaders do not keep secrets that are essential to the well-being of the team". Me'gan and Artemis state similar things along the lines, "Not that we have secrets".

Though the rest of the episode is focused mostly on other character moments, there is some piece with Artemis at the end. The team decides that they at least need to know why Kaldur hid the information before they make any decision about a change in leadership. Once Kaldur mentions that he got the tip from 'Sports Master', Artemis immediately understands and passionately states that, "You can't trust him". The team ultimately get to the point that while Kaldur got questionable information, they understood why he had to at least investigate it as a legitimate source. I think the entire teams attitude about Kaldur and there understanding of his reasons for keeping secrets, I think, shows Artemis(at least giving her a taste) how they could potentially react to her secrets. In this way, one could read, that this is the beginning of her comfort with revealing her personal information with these people.

That is all for this part guys. I am aware that this one is slightly longer than I have been trying to keep these lately; but I did want to get all this information out in a single blog. Not wanting to get into another mini-series of blogs like I did with 'Home Front', at least not immediately(but we will get to those again, relatively soon). Next time, I will be combining the two part comic arc 'Monkey Business' and the episode 'Revelation'. As neither have enough meat, on Artemis' side anyway, they are dense on their own; neither on her character though. Could be this blog's length, but I think this is the way to go. Hope you enjoyed guys, farewell.