Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 12: The End, Part 2
We pick up slightly after the events of the previous episode to see that, well, Trigon has brought hell upon Earth. The sky is red, the oceans are lava, everyone's turned to stone and all buildings are destroyed. It's a bit silly, honestly, watching it as an adult now, but back then it's still 'the bad guy has conquered the Earth'. And if you subscribe to the theory that Teen Titans takes place in a small corner of the DCAU, well, this huge explosion kind of fucked any chance of Superman, Batman or any of the more senior heroes coming to the Titans' aid. The four Teen Titans are the only survivors, being protected by Raven's little spell, literally the only four people left alive.
Sadly the progress of this episode felt a bit more formulaic and trying to shove as many concepts in. We've got Raven, despite having most of her essence lost when she turned into the portal, leaving behind part of her power within the Titans. We've got Slade and Robin teaming up as they fight through hell, and Slade's own personal sub-plot. We've got the random appearance by the innocent little girl Raven. We've got the Negative Evil Teen Titans showing up because Trigon couldn't be bothered to get off his ass.
The biggest problem, I think, is that Trigon is kind of weird. He just spends 90% of his screentime in this episode just sitting on the throne made up by buildings. And, yeah, it is very impressive that none of the Titans giving their all, even channeling Raven's wrath with an epic Azarath Metrion Zinthos manages to even make Trigon flinch, but what's his main plan? He just sits in the middle of a ruined city growing bigger and bigger... to what end? Is he going to conquer the universe? Other universes? As it is, the dude just shows up in our universe, causes planetary devastation and just sits.
Slade shows up, quite randomly, apparently having gotten his hands on Rings of Azar that protected him from Trigon's attempt to dismember him last episode. It all honestly came out a bit randomly out of nowhere and beyond me liking the development because Slade is awesome it felt a little forced. Also Slade knowing all about Raven's little piece, talking about how the other three Titans must distract the great all-seeing Eye of
Mind you, it's not a choice that I'm complaining about. After the Titans make their displeasure and distrust with Slade clear, Robin goes off with Slade to walk through hell, and the two have a pretty great team-up that's a pretty sick twist on the classic Dynamic Duo team, and I really wished that Robin's relationship with Batman is shown more overtly here instead of just implied -- would certainly make this moment a bit stronger. Slade talks about his motivations, about how he enjoys other people's suffering, but bringing utter destruction isn't his cup of tea.
During the fights, Slade's mask fall off to reveal Slade Wilson's true state... an undead skeleton with a single glowing red eye. We only see Slade's horrifying visage for a split second, but damn that's effective. And yeah, Slade's main goal for working with Trigon and the deal that he keeps demanding Trigon to uphold is clear -- he's still technically dead, and he wants to be rid of being this shambling undead abomination. Also a nice little way to sneak in confirmation that, yeah, Slade did freaking die in the season two climax, a rarity of acknowledging death in this series.
The other three Titans fight Trigon, with Beast Boy having the most awesome scene as he flies up to a giant demon's ear and transforms into a whale. That has got to hurt. Apparently the Rings of Azar are very effective -- and really, we really should've had some foreshadowing or some explanation as to where Slade got these things -- so Trigon, instead of getting up his chair and fighting... sits back down and summons evil mirror images. Yeah.
To be fair, the fight against the Evil Negaclones are pretty cool, but felt a bit... boring? We know what Cyborg, Beast Boy and Starfire can do, and seeing basically them just launching the same attacks at each other kind of gets repetitive when it's stretched a bit longer than it should. Justice League Unlimited knew to keep the battle between the Justice League and their clones short and sweet, but here they dragged it on a bit. Yeah, there was this sequence where the Negaclones try to unsettle the originals by getting into their heads, but it doesn't work when it's just a couple of simple lines, with only Nega Beast Boy's taunts about Terra sounding half-effective. Nega-Starfire's "Robin will be mine mwa ha ha" is petty and superficial, while Nega-Cyborg's talks about the death of Cyborg's mother really came out of nowhere, and it would've been more effective if it brought up Cyborg's feeling of self-worth or lack of 'humanity' which have been his character's main struggles throughout the series. It's a bit of a missed opportunity that made what should've been a compelling 'fight against thy own self' scene be a boring repetition of every other Teen Titan fight ever.
Robin and Slade part ways as they go to find their respective goals, although not without an obligatory 'we're enemies the next time we meet' line. Robin finds a little de-aged Raven in a white cloak, all scared and amnesiac, which is either a clever bit of writing or another irritating distraction to have the Trigon plot run along through three episodes. I thought the kid Raven bit really could've been handled a lot better.
Honestly one of the biggest failings of the three-parter is how little Raven was in it. She was okay in the first episode that deals with her fatalism and accepting destiny, but she's barely in the second part, the other Titans are fighting random nega-clones that are nothing but filler, Trigon is sitting in a chair... it's a good thing that the Slade and Robin bits are there because, holy shit, Slade is entertaining as all hell, but when the B-plot that barely had five minutes of runtime is more interesting than the entire 'end of the world' episode combined, well, you know there's something wrong.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- A part of the Trigon arc that the season finale adapts (which ran through Tales of the Teen Titans #60-63) does feature Trigon turning the whole world into a dark, comatose state other than the Teen Titans, sitting on a chair for a good chunk of it, as well as the Teen Titans facing against the manifestations of their darkest fears and internal conflict -- although the Nega-titans in this cartoon are far more child-friendly.
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