Teen Titans S05E13 Review: Epilogue

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 13: Things Change

It's a bit of a contested episode, this one, and honestly it makes more sense to slot the light-hearted movie before this rather final epilogue. Teen Titans has gone through five seasons and battled against various evil organizations, finally finding time to relax... only to find that, hey, Jump City's changed. Familiar shops have closed down, locations have moved... and Beast Boy himself finds a familiar face in the crowd. Terra.

It's one of the biggest loose end that Teen Titans have had, and arguably season two's story about Slade and Terra is the strongest, most emotional story that the show has ever done. Sure, season five's plot is so much bigger in terms of the characters included and the scale of conflict, and season four features the most powerful villain the Titans has ever paced, but Slade has always been the uncontested, most impressive villain in the show's history.

Now just what is the Terra that we saw here? Last we saw, Terra was turned into stone after rescuing the world at the end of the second season. She was a popular character -- and I did like her a fair bit -- and seeing Beast Boy try so desperately to talk to this random schoolgirl that looks and talks like Terra... but claims that she is not Terra and tells Beast Boy that he needs to move on... is quite mysterious. The episode raises a lot of questions. There is no real explanation for her sudden appearance (though fans hazarded that the reversal of Trigon's spell in season four restored Terra back to life), but she definitely is the Terra we know from bits of dialogue where she lets slip knowledge that only the real Terra could've known. But she wants to deny her past so much -- either she truly forgot, or she simply wants to turn over a new leaf -- that she pushes Beast Boy away. She's a school girl with new friends and allegedly no knowledge of her past life, and tells Beast Boy to, well, move on. Because Beast Boy is a hero, and he has to continue being a hero, whereas Terra wants to just... forget? It's all wonky and mysterious, and I'm honestly fine with it.

What complicates matters, though, is Slade showing up to attack Beast Boy in the iconic funhouse where he two of them fought in season two. Or, rather, a Slade robot. Slade tells Beast Boy to leave Terra alone, adding to the mystery of Terra's sudden resurrection, and the brief fight and dialogue against the Slade facsimile doesn't add any answers. It's a nice breather from the rest of the season that has been relatively predictable, and I am honestly happy with such an open-ended ending. While watching this episode for the first time I was all like 'man, that didn't answer anything at all!', the more I think of it, the more I liked how Teen Titans ended. It doesn't just try to wrap everything up hurriedly, but rather closes it by having Beast Boy move on and continue being a superhero. Brain, Trigon and the other big villains may have been defeated, but there are definitely a lot more questions left unanswered. How did Terra get back to life? Was Slade involved in Terra's return? Who activated the Slade mask in season three? Who is the man behind Red X? What is Slade doing after his resurrection? Just who is Slade? What the fuck is the white monster in this episode?

Ultimately the answers to the questions don't matter to Beast Boy. All he knows is that Terra is back. It might not be the Terra that is able to create earthquakes and dresses in black and yellow, but it's the same Terra that he can laugh with, that he can go to carnivals with... and refuses to take a communicator or be involved with Beast Boy's heroism. A combination of Beast Boy's audible sadness in his voicework and the absolutely wonderful score adds to the melancholy of the scene.

The rest of the Titans, meanwhile, fight this mysterious ever-shifting monster while all the emotional Beast boy stuff is going on, which adds some heavy-handed allusions to the whole 'things change' thing in addition to Terra's speech, Slade's speech and the early scenes where they talk about the city changing. And, well, things change and shows end, and it's a nice, melancholic and bittersweet end to Teen Titans, an unexpectedly heavy ending to such a fun madcap show. It might not be the most appropriate ending, but the final scene of Beast Boy answering Robin's call to action and running towards the light.

See, as much as it focused on so many other new guest stars and a slew of characters, writing a review for the series finale kind of got me thinking that season five is kind of Beast Boy's season, despite the dude already having season two to himself. Yes, season one is Robin's, season two is Beast Boy's, season three is Cyborg's, season four is Raven's... but as much as season five's main plot at a glance seemed to be about the expansion of the Teen Titans to include so many more other superheroes, it's also about Beast Boy's journey. The fifth season opened with an origin story about the Doom Patrol and Beast Boy having to face against his past -- how he used to be a kid, babied around by Elasti-girl and unquestioningly obeying Mento's orders no matter how harsh they may be. The two-parter season finale against the Brotherhood of Evil also had Beast Boy be the one that question Robin's orders at the beginning of "Calling All Titans", and as much as he is panicking, he is the first Titan to recover from the Brotherhood attack, and he's the one that quickly took charge of Pantha, Herald and the other less experienced Titans. As much as Beast Boy settles into the role of the team clown, the two-parters that open and close the fifth season show that as much as he tries to deny it, Beast Boy has grown and changed.

And closing the series overall with a Beast Boy centric episode does kind of return back to the heart of the show. As much as the fifth season try to star other characters, it's about the main five characters at heart... except that with some reflection, all the other four main Titans has gone through and fought their own demons and have grown to accept it. Robin went from the obsessive solo fighter who didn't trust his team in season one (the whole Red X debacle) into someone that trusts his allies enough. The whole point of the fifth season was Robin getting to grow out of his paranoid mini-Batman shell and accepting all these other allies, and trusting that even when he himself was taken out of the picture, his friends can come to help him.

Raven grew, very gradually, from an antisocial goth to someone that became somewhat more open with Beast Boy and later Robin, dealing through her self-worth and personal demons (quite literally, too) before emerging a changed person who truly cares for her friends, angry emo persona aside. It's a bit odd yet appropriate in hindsight that the showmakers decided to reflect this by having her grow to care for the three little munchkins in this season.

Starfire and Cyborg have a less pronounced character growth, mostly due to Starfire having very few spotlight episodes and Cyborg having... a lot of spotlight episodes but mostly badly-written ones, but they too have grown past their own personal problems. Starfire's difficulty at fitting on Earth and her rivalry with Blackfire are all gradually worked through in several different episodes, and her romance with Robin was dealt with in season four, as well as the post-S5 movie. Again, season five shows how much more mature Starfire has become. She's still a bit clueless and ditzy sometimes, but she is confident enough in her role in the universe that she can talk Red Star out of his funk in this season, as well as confident enough to face Robin in the movie. Cyborg's personal demons isn't very prominent, with him being the most level-headed of the team, though his little 'man vs machine' struggle was never that brought up to the forefront -- the Fixit and the 'Stone' episode both dealt with this more wonderfully than the Brother Blood ones ever did.

Beast Boy? Beast Boy has one of the best, most tragic stories throughout Teen Titans, with his doomed romance with Terra, and being a pawn in Slade's machinations. While he spends a good chunk of his screentime being the team clown, being the immature brat of the team, the episodes that actually show Beast Boy in a more serious light -- the Terra and the Doom Patrol episodes -- kind of show us that, yeah, Beast Boy is quite conflicted inside, but all that he's gone through has made him grow into a more mature and confident hero. And that's what he's grown into. Yes, the Terra bit might be kind of blurred by the shipping lenses and the whole 'WTF is happening' questions you have, but it's Beast Boy needing to move on and, well, grow up in a sense. There's a reason the 'Teen Titans' title in the comics stopped being called that and simply called 'Titans', because, well, everyone needs to grow up. And one could interpret that Terra, Slade and Robin in this episode are different aspects telling Beast Boy to let go of this one remnant of his childhood, with Beast Boy's constant "why can't things go back to how we were before" reflecting both his increasing responsibility as an adult as well as his relationship with Terra. It's basically the world telling Beast Boy to stop being an immature child and go be a hero. And Beast Boy can never let go and grow up without getting some closure with Terra.

Is it a satisfying closure? Definitely not. Hell, we still have no idea who brought Terra back to life. But is it a closure? Yeah. See, a lot of people, myself included initially, are pissed that they bought Terra back to life... without having her be Terra. But honestly, from a storytelling perspective, it's a bit difficult to return Terra and have her be a good guy without giving her a huge ball of self-loathing for her betrayal of the Teen Titans (and that's probably why she doesn't want anything to do with Beast Boy -- he reminds her of all the mistakes she's done before, and she's not quite ready yet), and bringing her a villain would do her final heroic sacrifice a huge disservice. It's a closure on Terra as well, because, well, as least she's found some peace in the world. It's a strange way to put a full stop on Terra's story, and one that doesn't sit well with some people, and I get that. I just think that it's a pretty neat, different way to cap of a resurrection without cheapening the death and the loss.

No, "Things Change" is not the perfect ending, but it's a beautiful, melancholic stop to what has been a series that moved at a breakneck, high-octane pace, a nice bit of reflection after so many action scenes and laughs over the series. I've often said that Teen Titans is a series that can change from silly to serious at the drop of a hat. This is just a different, more introspective, more symbolic and more reflective type of serious. It's not the most satisfying ending out there, but when is the ending to a show ever satisfying? A bit punch-them-out like Justice League or Avatar or Ben Ten is epic, and satisfactory, but never truly satisfying. This is at least different, putting a nice little tie to everything that the characters has gone through without resorting to a personal flashback for each of the characters or a flash-forward to 'where are they now ten years later' which is a way to tell a finale that I loathe.

It's... a thought provoking finale, is what I'm trying to say. Teen Titans has gone through so much, from the emotionally-charged Slade and Terra arcs, to insane madcap fun with Mad Mod episodes, to allegories of drug abuse and racism, to a refreshing new take on a bunch of before-this relatively obscure characters, and to re-introduce the general public to a take on superheroes that's a bit zanier and less serious than traditional superhero adaptations like the then-decade-old DCAU. Not to say that this is superior to DCAU in any way -- both are equally awesome in their own right, and tell their own story at their own pace and tone.

And, wow, we've gone through five seasons and a movie of Teen Titans, which has been a blast. It's a show that holds up to viewing even as an older adult, and, yeah, as much as my life has changed since the responsibility-less Saturday mornings where I can sit all day in front of Cartoon Network and see Robin, Beast Boy, Raven, Starfire and Cyborg beat up bad guys and laugh without a care of just what else I have to do today, but at the same time that doesn't mean that I have to abandon everything I care about as a child either. Teen Titans is over, and has been over for nearly a decade at the time of the writing, and it still holds up as one of the most interesting cartoons I've seen in my life. And ending this pretty awesome project (we went through every single episode, holy shit) at this point was not something I thought I would be able to do. Let's see if we can't do the same with whatever next project I decide to do.