Teen Titans S01E09 Review: Red X

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 9: Masks

Each season generally focuses on a Titan for its 'plot' episodes, and this is the first plot episode for the first season. We get the focus on Robin in this season, where his investigations about Slade starts to reach nowhere, and he starts treading the line between good and evil by posing as the supercriminal thief Red X to steal several items and try to get into Slade's good graces and infiltrate his organization.

Of course, the big point of Robin's plan is that he doesn't tell his friends so he can make the fights look authentic, with the excuse that Robin has been defeated by Red X earlier (with a prepared hologram at one point) or having him be elsewhere when Red X battles the other four Titans. It's a pretty well-executed little gimmick, and while older audiences would see it coming around the second Red X scene, it's a pretty awesome twist for younger ones, and the scripting for Starfire and Robin is top-notch in this episode.

Slade makes it clear that he knows all along that Robin is Red X and he's just stringing the kid along, to play on Robin's obsession at bringing Slade down... which ends up causing a rift between Robin and his friends. This episode has Slade saving Robin from certain death, which really is the first hint at why Slade is such a conventional and surprisingly dark villain. He isn't really interested in stealing the chips or domination or whatever. His endgame goal is to corrupt the Titans for the sake of corrupting them, and we'll see more of this in the season finale. It's pretty creepy and pretty dark, especially since for a younger me, the villains I've seen fighting good guys are people like Joker and Lex Luthor who want to kill people just for laughs or for power, whereas Slade? Slade just wants to corrupt heroes, turning Robin into a miniature version of him, and to break the Teen Titans apart from the inside.

Red X is a pretty cool costume, isn't it? A cool skull-head, the ability to shoot bloody X beams and just generally being awesome... it also shows how despite being the only member of the team with no real superpowers, Robin was able to disable and take down the rest of the team, a testament to his skill. Yeah, granted, he knows where all their weak points are, but still, it's a cool Batman-esque moment right there. 

I thought the final scene of this episode is one of the most poignant moments of the series, with Starfire confronting Robin in his darkened room, saying sadly that Robin and Slade have one thing in common: they don't trust anyone. And that's a surprisingly sad and somber ending to a Teen Titans episode. A really excellent episode that really focuses on Robin's character, with both Slade and Starfire being excellent foils to him.