Retreat (DC Super Hero Girls)

Retreat is the thirty-fifth episode of Season 1 of DC Super Hero Girls.

Plot

Jess, Karen, Babs, Garth, and Hal go on a retreat to a forest cabin, with Jess bringing along Pam despite her reluctance to come. Pam is horrified at the other group members' treatment of plants and runs into the woods, where she turns into Poison Ivy and sends an army of zombie-like plants to attack the campers.

Why It Should Retreat

1. Jessica Cruz is at her worst here as she forces her friends to not use their powers at camp and leave them in a bag at a random tree in the woods which is very stupid of her since she was not only involved in the fights with her powers in pervious episodes, but she is also friends with certain people like Zee Zatara and Kara Danvers who were both born with superpowers, even thanks to Jessica’s stupid actions, the main characters are easily defeated by the plant zombie army to the point where Jessica became more of a antagonist rather than being a member of the Super Hero Girls and basically felt like something Auntie Uncle since the infamous Buddy Thunderstruck episode, Get the Hock Out, Post-movie Patrick Star, and Modern Peter Griffin would do.
   • Garth still has his water powers, so there's barely any reason for Jessica to force him to not have powers, just replace him with someone else like Diana Prince and it would've been fine.
   • This goes to show how hypocritical Jessica Cruz really is as she can be violent at times such as keeping Dexter as a pet who is violent to other people in Rage Cat, threatening to beat up Hal Jordan in Breaking News, being totally careless about the students' fight going way out of control and didn’t even bother stopping them from fighting over an egg at the pier in Scrambled Eggs, fighting over a car and destroying it in SuperWonderBatBeeZeeLanternMobile, and downright trying to kill Steve Trevor in Crushing It despite the fact that she doesn't believe in violence as seen in Sweet Justice, showing her true colors as a huge hypocritical violent hippie girl.
   • Even kind-hearted characters like Felicity Fox from Fantastic Mr. Fox and Katara from Avatar: the Last Airbender uses violence to defend themselves and other people against villains without being hypocritical about it, unlike Jessica.
2. Even though not technically a ripoff, but also it’s premise being a bit similar to the Mickey Mouse short, Roughin' It, but unlike this episode, It actually explains the strengths of both roughing it and camping with an RV and technology and such, but explains the dangers of them when using too much of them. Oh, and also Mickey didn’t force Donald and Goofy to rough it unlike what Jessica did!
3. Much like Breaking News, It showed that some characters from the show don't always stay true to their comic book counterparts and instead just flanderized as ever thought possible.
4. Mediocre writing that doesn't stay true to the show from Ryan Faust who also wrote Shock it to Me and would later redeem himself with All About Zee, School Ghoul, and especially the two-parter episode, League of Shadows.
5. The Ending Is Just SO Atrocious: When the others (including Pamela) left the cabin, Jessica realizes they forgot Hal, who is still locked in the closet.
6. Plot Hole: Why can't Jessica just think about using the cabin phone to call Diana, Kara, Zee, and the cops to save them.
7. The scenes where Garth was eaten and Hal being turned into a plant zombie while the girls were fine comes off as sexist.
8. The plot is extremely dull and uninteresting, and not much happens compared to most episodes, thus making it one of the show's filler episodes which had added nothing to the rest of the series overall, much like Scrambled Eggs.
9. Jessica literaly invites Pamela Lillian Isley/Poison Ivy, a carnivore who fears nature being harmed, over even though the latter tried to kill the former in the previous episodes such as Misgiving Tree similar to Titan giving Zartog a tour and letting him enter Mission Control's Level 5 clearance in Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back.
   • Although, to be fair, Jessica doesn't know that Pamela is Poison Ivy.
10. It's basically a Barbara, Karen, Hal, and Garth torture episode as they are being forced to put their equipment in a bag and getting eaten by plant zombies.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Good animation and voice acting as usual.
2. Jessica at least got her comeuppance from Poison Ivy for her hypocritical actions.
3. The idea of plant zombies was interesting, even though it was ruined by the episode's flaws.
4. Jessica remembered Hal was still at the cabin and likely (off-screen) returned to go get him.
5. The ending can be a bit funny for some, but that isn't enough to save this episode.

Reception

Despite receiving a 7.3/10 on IMDb, the episode, in general, has received negative reception from fans with them calling it one of the worst episodes of the show alongside others such as Breaking News, Crushing It, Frenemies, Tween Titans and Rage Cat.

Youtuber Ryanimation put it as the 11th worst animation of 2020 (tied with Boy Girl Cat Mouse Cheese and another DSHG episode, The Fresh Princess of Ren Faire), criticizing it for Jessica's hypocritical characterization before his video became private.