We had the chance to attend the Young Justice: Outsiders panel and press room here at San Diego Comic-Con! Here’s what we learned about the return of one of the best superhero squads!

Young Justice is one of the all-time best superhero shows, bar none. The first two seasons gave us emotional narrative arcs with weight and depth, complex characters and rich, layered writing. If you haven’t watched the show — first off, what are you even doing with your life? And secondly, head on over to your iTunes, Amazon Prime or Google Play and buy the first two seasons. I promise it’s worth your time (and money).

For everyone else, I’m sure that you were as excited as I was to hear that Young Justice would be back for a third season. I was super pumped to be able to attend the very first official Young Justice: Outsiders panel, which started off by debuting a brand new sizzle reel, which both recapped the story thus far and gave us a preview for things to come in Young Justice: Outsiders.

After we all lost our minds at the trailer, the host introduced our panel, which had creators/producers Brandon Vietti and Greg Weisman, art director Phil Bourassa, voice director Jamie Thomasson, Troy Baker, who voices new character Brion Markov/Geo-Force, and Stephaine Lemelin, who voices returning character Artemis.

Greg and Brandon kicked things off by again thanking the fans for bringing the show back. They described Young Justice as the perfect bingewatching series — except for the fact that they created it about five years too soon. However, because fans watched the hell out of it on Netflix, bought the DVDs and just generally demonstrated to WB and DC that there was great love for the show and that a lot of people wanted more, WB/DC allowed them to continue making the show.

It was a great way to kick off the panel and a perfect reminder of all the ways in which fandom can be a wonderful, special and productive community of support.

From there, Greg and Brandon gave a brief overview of season 3, in which the main focus will be metahuman trafficking. With the reveal at the end of season 2 of the existence of the meta gene in a percentage of the population, we now come back to a planet where everyone is trying to capitalize on the meta gene. Everyone from the first world, developing nations, corporations and supervillains are looking to weaponize the meta gene. This, of course, leads to trafficking, which has become a big thing for the Earth 16 DC Universe.

We also got a bit of information from Troy Baker, who plays new character Brion Markov/Geo-Force. Troy described himself as a fan of the show and was super genuinely excited to be a part of it, which is always fun to see. He talked about how there are often two types of heroic characters — those who seek greatness and those who have greatness thrust upon them. What’s interesting about Brion is the fact that as crown prince of Markovia, he is literally born into greatness. However, because he tests positive for the metagene, he also has greatness thrust upon him. Much of his arc will be exploring that second type of greatness and what that looks like for him.

Unfortunately, with Young Justice: Outsiders not set to premiere until 2019 on the new DC Universe streaming platform, specific details are still a bit thin on the ground. However, here are some of the most exciting tidbits that we were able to learn in both the panel and press room:

• There are currently seven episodes in the can, with a full order of 26 for the season.
• No one would say how much time had officially passed, although they did make frequent reference to everyone being older and in different stages of their lives.
• Stephanie Lemelin described Artemis as still very much grieving, even while trying to move on in her life.
• The move to DC Universe from Cartoon Network allowed them to age up stories without doing anything gratuitous.
• No official confirmation on whether the title of Young Justice: Outsiders has anything to do with the Outsiders team from the comics, though Greg and Brandon did say they were influenced by some Outsiders comics for this season.
• One character that they’re really excited for us to see is Forager, who will be played by Jason Spisak and bring a lot of levity to the group (just like Jason’s original character, Wally West, RIP).
• Halo, a character from the Outsiders comic book team, will also be a part of the upcoming season.
• They see the show as embracing the entire DC universe — digging into the history and lore of the characters and thinking about how they’re used in our narrative.
• Greg and Brandon said they are trying to get into every nook and cranny of the DC universe and that they haven’t been told that any character is off-limits to them, which means we may see a lot of awesome cameos in the upcoming season.
• The new season was described as having a “darker, more mature energy.” Stephanie said the new platform allowed them to be a lot more intense and sexier and funnier and scarier. She also said that it’s so much sadder.
• Stephanie said that so much in her life changed and evolved over the last five years (including having three kids!) and that she definitely drew a lot from her own life and love of the show to put into her performance for the upcoming season.
• This season’s roster differs from the first two in that the first two seasons were populated with characters who have grown up wanting to be heroes. This season, you have more characters who find out about their powers and don’t know what they want to be when they grow up.
• The season will show what it’s like for young people to be growing up in this world where it’s known that a certain number of people have superpowers and show how they’re affected by that world around them