"Welcome Back".

Alright guys, maybe finishing up 'Depths' today, but no promises. As I mentioned in the last blog, for those of you who do not care about about timeline theories, there will be much more character analysis here. With all that background being told, let's get back into the analysis of 'Depths'.

So once the mission is set into motion, and the teams are divided into their own positions, there is a scene between Dick and Artemis in a way that makes it seem like a calm before the storm moment. In this scene Artemis says what most could infer anyway, while Wally doesn't her doing this mission for the temptation of becoming addicted to that lifestyle once again; Dick response is that he understands what she means. What is interesting about this to me is that it does show that any kind of addiction can be unhealthy, regardless of whether it is for selfish or unselfish reasons. Not many people would argue that addictions(sticking with the lifestyles) to the criminal lifestyle is an unhealthy way to go on in ones' life, but this shows the flip of that in a way one could easily become addicted to getting the attention of helping someone else in any way; and in some cases, be a way for someone to work away their problems with beating people up that "deserve" it. This scenario has already been shown in another Artemis centered episode in season 1 titled "Secrets', where she states that she needed something to beat up after Zatanna says you need to talk about what's bothering you. So in this way, Wally easily has a legitimate argument because there is no way that was the only time Artemis every acted like that in the years they were on the team. It doesn't help that we know her family background and that it seems almost genetic that all these members have to have some sort of all-out lifestyle, there is never a mention of any member of that family having a "normal" life. Sure, Jade and Roy do intend to raise their child later on in the series, or at least can be assumed, outside of the one time each we will get to in a later episode; but that is after nearly have a lifetime with this counter-culture lifestyle.

After the talk between the two, Dick and Artemis go into the mission. The only things worth mentioning during this series of scenes is that there is this continuing joke about Artemis being "rusty"; starting with her nearly jumping into a firefight only after a few seconds of scanning out the field, as Dick pulls her down he says I didn't think you were that "rusty". Once the battle starts though, Artemis' childhood training comes through and to emphasize the fact that she can be very much aware of her surroundings we get a scene where we go into a bullet-time shot where one of Kaldur's men pulls a knife running toward Artemis and with a blink she assesses the situation and blocks the attempt with a kick and shoots an arrow into his chest. To finish the scene Artemis says that, "I'm not that rusty".

Once a round of Kaldur's men have been taken care of, the man himself comes out of the water to fight his former teammates. Dick and Artemis try to plead with Kaldur saying that he doesn't want to do this, his response being that he does. During this time, there is a whole sequence of events with Me'gan sending the missile back into one of Manta's control panels to stop them from blowing up the rocket being sent to Mars mentioned earlier in the episode. When the missile fails, Kaldur attempts to destroy the rocket with a smaller missile in his armour, shot down by Artemis. Before she can realize it, Kaldur runs toward her with his mystic weapons, taking out Dick before stabbing Artemis through the chest. After he stabs her, Kaldur tells Artemis "Welcome Back". We then catch up to the events of the intro of the episode where we see Dick's struggle to resuscitate Artemis before claiming that she is dead.

Before the episode ends we get a scene of several members mourning the loss of one of their own. We will see in a later episode that these people are not unfamiliar with loss, as we see a shrine of fallen heroes in the cave. But this is the first official member of the team that has died. Everyone reacts in their own way, with Me'gan seemingly take it the hardest. Zatanna is the only member absent that would make sense to be here, but as she is a member of the League, it makes sense that this is supposed to be the reactions of the team as this does seem much more like a close-knit family than the League has ever knowingly been. The scene closes with Mal asking Conner where Dick is? Conner answers with he went to go talk to Wally; and both understand that he will have a much harder job than anyone in that room does.

That's all for this part guys. The next one may be a little short, but I could not do the next scene justice with squeezing it into this blog post. Till then, hope you guys enjoyed this second part of what turns out to be the 'Depths' trilogy.