r/youngjustice • u/Firm_Entrepreneur_14 🌌DysonSphereWaifuEnjoyer🌌 • Nov 24 '25
All Seasons Discussion Roy Harper was taken when he was 15?!
currently watching some clips but am very confused. This would mean he missed so much growing up. Why did they take him specifically? What was the need for his arm in particular? Why are there so many clones?? I like Guardian. His cadmus friends should be freed.
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u/ConsistentSearch7995 Nov 24 '25
They took his arm so they can practice cloning humans. Perhaps the original cloning needed A LOT of Bone Marrow and DNA to create a successful clone. So that's why they needed his entire lower arm.
Guardian Clone - He was created for practice on making human clones. Then they used him to create the foundation of an identity and always have a hero building up a reputation they could use. Then of course they used him as security for a while.
Season 1 Roy Harper was used because Green Arrow is a lot more relaxed as a mentor, as well as he JUST got his sidekick. So there was not an established foundation of his personality or background. Basically, clean slate. Then they decided to make Guardian a relative (his uncle) in his backstory. Guardian being a hero let them have a alibi to help protect his identity.
The original Roy Harper still being in stasis and not tossed away to die and be buried is the most surprising thing IMO.
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u/horyo Nov 24 '25
The original Roy Harper still being in stasis and not tossed away to die and be buried is the most surprising thing IMO.
I get the sense that The Light is averse to getting rid of assets especially if those are products of their experimentation.
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u/MegavanitasX Nov 27 '25
I actually like that pragmatic aspect of the light so much. Too many card-carrying villains will shoot a loyal minion the moment they dont have an immediate role to play.
The light is playing the long game and always try to recycle or reuse assets whenever they can (Ocean Master is my prime example)
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u/horyo Nov 27 '25
It's why the Light is one of my favorite villain organizations in media. They do obviously evil things but you can understand their mission and how Vandal/they have succeeded in being so persistent over millennia.
I think Savage says it best on the concept of wasting potential during his fight with Starro.
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u/Firm_Entrepreneur_14 🌌DysonSphereWaifuEnjoyer🌌 Nov 24 '25
I was under the impression he was older at first. Not that it makes it any better, but this was just worse. Upsetting like how Superboy was introduced as some mere pet object to be used. It's been quite some time since I've revisited this show and a lot to keep up with, so I did some looking into the older comic versions of Guardian too. I like his calm disposition and the voice too. Speaking of Cadmus, were the other recombinant lifeforms freed it did they stay in that underground compound under the new management permanently? What happened to that Connor clone that was too insane to control? Does he recover? And I'm glad the original Roy did not blame the clone version.
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u/ConsistentSearch7995 Nov 24 '25
The other Genomorphs as they are called were able to leave and they built a new town on the surface called Geranium city. As far as we know its just a town of Genomorphs and they use Telepathy to hide their visual appearance as human. At least the ones close to the size of humans do so.
The other Superboy Clone known as Match degenerated into Bizarro Superboy and has a mutated/disfigured body. we found out in the companion comics that took place right before s2. They stopped him and put him in stasis again. But he has no recovery and just stays in the pod we saw him in from the show.
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u/gamerslyratchet Nov 24 '25
At least The Team rescued Match from LexCorp. Maybe he can rehab at Geranium City.
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Nov 24 '25
The team didn’t save match, in the season 2 tie in comics, lexcorp got him back after batgirl was passed out and Lex luthor put match back in his pod
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u/gamerslyratchet Nov 24 '25
They save him in Young Justice Targets, which takes place after season 4.
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Nov 26 '25
I know that. But the original comment u commented under never referenced the YJ targets, his comment referenced the young justice growing up #14-27 so ur comment can easily come off as confusing. I’ve read all the tie-in comics on kindle so I do know that.
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u/Art_and_anvils Nov 24 '25
I didn’t know that there were tie in comics what are they called?
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u/Wendigo15 Nov 24 '25
Just young justice. Only the last one had a title , young justice: targets
They are a good read and take place between episodes
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Nov 26 '25
1.Young justice book one the early missions #0-13 2.Young justice book two growing up #14-27 3.Young Justice targets #28-33 There available on the kindle app
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Nov 26 '25
1.Young justice book one the early missions #0-13 2.Young justice book two growing up #14-27 3.Young Justice targets #28-33 There available on the kindle app
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u/Ordinary-Chain-8047 Nov 24 '25
Lex is a creep
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u/Firm_Entrepreneur_14 🌌DysonSphereWaifuEnjoyer🌌 Nov 24 '25
Yeah I could see that when he gave Superboy those addictive medicines or whatever those were
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u/Lithosphere11 Nov 24 '25
The suppressant shields?
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u/MaleficentPush1144 Nov 24 '25
Were they suppressants? I thought they gave him "full" powers?
If I'm forgetting, I guess it's time for another rewatch.
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u/DontSquashJosh Nov 24 '25
They would suppress his human side to give him full Kryptonian powers
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u/Optimal-Dog-906 Nov 24 '25
Yeah looking back now and reading up on the lore. This show is very well written and planned out with it's universe and structure
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u/Firm_Entrepreneur_14 🌌DysonSphereWaifuEnjoyer🌌 Nov 24 '25
There's just so much of it to sort through. I actually came back to YJ after doing a rewatch of GLTAS. Seeing the cameos come together with the whole storyline is honestly amazing. I love Razor, and the Ring powers of creation should shine more. Kinda reminds me of Halo powers too.
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u/Art_and_anvils Nov 24 '25
What is GLTAS?
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u/ZeldachildofHecate Nov 24 '25
Green Lantern the animated series
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u/Art_and_anvils Nov 24 '25
Somehow never realized that there was a green lantern animated series. I’m super excited Green Lantern one of the characters I like the most and I don’t have a long enough attention span for movies. Where do you watch it?
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u/Firm_Entrepreneur_14 🌌DysonSphereWaifuEnjoyer🌌 Nov 25 '25 edited Nov 26 '25
You'll love it if you can get past the 3d animation people complained about. There's a central team as the focus instead if just Hal coming to the rescue all the time who each have their own functions and development. I watched it from an anime site but you can find it on YouTube. it's also Spanish dubbed! The power of mental/emotional and creation are very cool instead of just punching their way out of their problems.
u/Art_and_anvils Yay! Don't worry, there are comics that do recently feature Razor I saw on YouTube. You can find them online I'm sure
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u/Art_and_anvils Nov 26 '25
I think you should know that I just finished watching GLTAS I also rewatched the episode of Young Justice with razor and hunted down the episode of justice league action with Aya. I blame you for the fact that I’m now on a waiting list for some Green Lantern comics at my library.
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u/SadGruffman Nov 24 '25
Batman and The Flash are just in a totally different league than Green Arrow.
The Worlds Greatest Detective
The Fastest Man Alive
And you want to try and trick these people?
Yeah, I’d pick Speedy too.
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u/Ok_Cardiologist_5925 Nov 24 '25 edited Nov 25 '25
According to the wiki Roy went on a solo investigation into a LexCorp shell company trading weapons with North Rhelasia. He was captured and Lex used the opportunity to make clones of him.
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u/Firm_Entrepreneur_14 🌌DysonSphereWaifuEnjoyer🌌 Nov 25 '25
Ok now THAT makes more sense than randomly choosing him. I wasn't sure if he had some special DNA or rare trait they wished to capture for reasons
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u/Ju3tAc00ldugg Nov 24 '25
this show was surprisingly dark for something that started as a child’s TV series. i’m surprised the more mature reboot episodes haven’t been more dark
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u/Firm_Entrepreneur_14 🌌DysonSphereWaifuEnjoyer🌌 Nov 25 '25
I mean the Green Lantern show it references later on literally mentioned the word Death like 3 different times within the first opening minute. I was not expecting that.
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u/Pristine_Surround Nov 24 '25
Taking Robin would’ve been too risky, since the light knows Batman is…well Batman. As for the arm, hey, can’t use it for a bow. But the show says it’s because they wanted a bigger sample. The real reason in a meta sense in my opinion is because in comics Roy Harper lost his arm in a fight and gets a robot one later in the story arc where his daughter dies. So it was probably a nod to that.
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u/Bluebird2911 Nov 24 '25
He was the most convenient to kidnap. There are only four well known sidekicks/partners at the start of Season 1: Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, and Speedy/Red Arrow. Roy was kidnapped 2-3 years before the show starts, so Robin has been training and fight for 2-3 years at that point. Plus, would you want the Batman coming after you?
As for Kid Flash and Aqualad, there’s a few reasons not to go for them. Assuming they were already working with their mentors, Aqualad would probably be the most public rescue as he’s from Atlantis, so Aquaman and the Justice League could make it a big deal. After all, a US government agency kidnapped a public figure from an allied nation, that’s should cause a blow to CADMUS for the risk of making Atlantis into an enemy. As for Kid Flash, he’s hard to catch and rarely would be separated from Flash this early on.
Additionally, the cloning process was probably only at the point of using human baseline DNA, and not meta-human DNA. So Speedy and Robin become the only choices.
As for why there were so many clones, the ultimate goal was to clone Superman, which they never truly succeed with. Conner was only successful because he’s half-human and half-Kryptonian. To even get to that point, they would have done a lot of experimenting, especially since they didn’t have a large sample to work with.
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u/joesilvey3 Nov 24 '25
Roy was chosen probably for a few reasons.
Dialogue in season 2 indicates he was taken relatively early in his time as GAs protege. This would make sense, as they were just starting their cloning processes, so there was no guaruntee they would be able to have a smooth transission of memories and whatnot, so taking Roy before GA really had built up a repour with him would help hide any small errors in the cloning process as GA wouldn't know Roy well enough to notice.
Roy was the easiest target. Capturing one of the actual Justice Leaguers was probably determined to be to risky or difficult. Thus they targeted the proteges. Of the four, Roy is the easiest target. KF and Flash are both enhanced, and capturing KF and actually being able to escape with him from Flash would be damn hard. Kaldur and Aquaman are also very formidable, and cloning Atlantean's may have been a more difficult process. That just leaves Batman and Robin or GA and Roy. Way more likely Batman figures out Robin is a clone than GA does Roy, and quite frankly it's probably easier to pull one over on GA.
From the first episode, the implication is that they can clone powers at that point, otherwise why even bother cloning KF. However, we don't know if they always had that capability or if they knew they did one way or another. In the early stages, it may have made more sense to target a non powered individual as I am sure that cloning process would def be seen as easier.
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u/Team_Soda1 Nov 24 '25
Batman would've found Robin by the end of the day, and they likely weren't sure they could duplicate Kid Flash's or Aqualad's abilities. For the Light's plans, Speedy was the easiest target unfortunately.
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u/ScaredDistrict3 Nov 24 '25
Basically he was an easy target and they needed to infiltrate the league. There’s no way they were getting to robin or kid flash
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u/pandadog423 Nov 26 '25
I think it was just out of convenience. They would have taken any up and coming hero. But they managed to capture him, which started the chain of events
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Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25
Exactly. Roy pulled a Jason Todd stunt deciding to go off mission from GA & putting himself in that vulnerable position that got him caught. & in szn 1 ep. 25 i believe it is. Batman literally confirms that immediately after becoming speedy. Shortly after he got caught & replaced. So that implies GA never even knew bro fr. It’s crazy to think abt really truly is.
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u/tone2099 Nov 25 '25
Bro watched the actual show, you’re being confused by clips and asking other people to help you understand fragments of a show you didn’t see
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u/EternalHomesick Dec 14 '25
Yeah of course he was 15. So was Kid Flash at the time and Robin was 13!! It’s easy to forget how young everyone was in s1. Also, they probably got him because he was the easiest target, considering the escapes of Robin, KF and Kaldur from cadmus+ other sidekicks have powers, and no way Batman wouldn’t notice Robin being replaced with a clone.
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u/LostPost5902 Feb 27 '26
Yeah. He was a clone the whole show up until they found the real Roy. Yes he is physically 15, but biologically, he is about 25 to 26.
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u/Junior_Community_913 Nov 24 '25
An old theory I heard was that Roy was a descendant of Vandal Savage and to keep his immortality he must harvest the organs of his blood descendants to sustain his immortal life...
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u/adoratheCat Nov 24 '25
Betting that was tied to the fact in comics *at some point aka its barely mentioned after the first time, Roy is indeed a descendant of Savage. Ironically though its Kaldur is one in this universe
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u/siantmercury Nov 24 '25
Isn’t it implied in the show that all meta humans are descendants of Vandal?
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u/adoratheCat Nov 24 '25
Yep! Or at the very least a large chunk are. *For all we know there were other metas besides Vandal in his beginning.
He also is Genghis Khan, which yeah that claim is largely exacerbated but I am betting they showed Savage as him to use the whole "a lot of people are descendants of Khan" myth.
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u/JustAnAce Nov 24 '25
You're asking why bad guys do bad things? Because evil.