Nightwing's "Secrets" Claim Breaks His Entire Young Justice Story
Despite his claims that he dislikes keeping secrets from his friends and teammates, Young Justice's Nightwing has a long history of hiding things.
Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Young Justice season 4.
Secrets and lies are part and parcel of a superhero's life, but Nightwing seems to go out of his way to hide things in Young Justice despite claiming to hate lying. The first Robin often went out of his way to keep secrets from his teammates purely for his own amusement early in his career. While Dick Grayson later grew out of this habit, he continued to withhold information from his closest allies while leading the covert team of the Justice League, despite knowing that many of his friends, like Conner "Superboy" Kent, had severe trust issues.
The central story of Young Justice season 4 found Nightwing leading the effort to find Superboy, who was presumed to have sacrificed himself to stop the detonation of a viral weapon on Mars just before his wedding to Miss Martian. The magician Zatanna later determined that Superboy had been sent into the Phantom Zone, leading his oldest friends to search for a magic school bus that had once made the journey into the otherworldly prison while being possessed by Klarion the Witch Boy. Once the bus was located, Tigress asked why they weren't bringing Miss Martian with them on the mission to save Superboy from the Phantom Zone. Nightwing replied, "I hate keeping secrets, but we can't get her hopes up. If we're wrong or if this doesn't work, I think it would kill her."
As noble as Nightwing's intentions might have been in this instance, his statement that he hated keeping secrets from his friends is highly questionable. In Young Justice season 1, Dick Grayson reveled in the fact that Batman required he hide his secret identity from his teammates and made a big deal about wearing sunglasses that obscured his face whenever he was out of costume with them. He also took a selfie with Artemis on her first day as a transfer student to Gotham Academy in the episode "Homefront," having recognized her without the mask she wore as Green Arrow's new sidekick. Dick told the confused Artemis, "We'll laugh about this someday," clearly loving that he knew her secret identity yet she had no clue who he was.
While Dick Grayson largely outgrew these pranks by the time he became Nightwing in Young Justice season 2, he still made a habit of hiding things from his teammates when he thought it was best to keep them in the dark about certain covert missions. This came to hurt the team after Aqualad pretended to go rogue and kill Artemis as part of a plan to infiltrate the criminal organization known as the Light. Miss Martian, ignorant of the secret mission, psychically attacked her former teammate, nearly blowing his cover after she put him in a coma.
The problem repeated itself in Young Justice season 3 when Nightwing seemingly started a new independent secret superhero team while coordinating with the Justice League on the sly. While this was all part of Batman's plan to divide and conquer against the Light, the revelation that Nightwing had been lying to his friends again nearly tore his new squad apart. While Nightwing's decision to cut Miss Martian out of the loop in Young Justice season 4 is born of similar good intentions, it seems likely, given her recent experiences, that she'd want to be part of any effort to find her lost fiancé, no matter the ultimate outcome.
More: Why Young Justice Should Have A Proper Ending
New episodes of Young Justice release Thursdays on HBO Max.
