Titans S02E01 Review: Last Season's Finale

Titans, Season 2, Episode 1: Trigon

Well, I've been catching up on other shows that I've missed in catching up, and... we'll see where we go from this, whether we'll be doing episodic reviews or if I'll just do it in bigger clumps like what I did for my recent superhero TV binge in the past couple of months. The premiere episode of Titans' second season, though, is a bit of a strange beast in that it doesn't really feel like a season premiere, but more of a finale. Of course, part of it has to do with the first season of Titans ending in a pretty abrupt manner, ending in a huge 'villain wins, huge cliffhanger' moment. And while I don't expect the second season of Titans to all be about taking down Trigon, it still feels odd when this is basically the last chapter in a book presented as the first chapter in the next one.

And sure, last season's cliffhanger was pretty neat, with this bizarre 'worst timeline' style nightmare where Dick wanders around a version of the world where Batman's gone all loco, and we cut away at the end of the episode to reveal that it's all just an illusion created by Trigon to take over Dick's mind. And this episode... sort of concludes that storyline. All of the Titans and their allies show up and try to save Dick, but a lot of that segment feels a bit more like the show going through the motions? Maybe if I watched this episode immediately after the previous one (like how it was probably originally intended) I wouldn't feel this bizarre gap of detachment. Like, okay, Hawk, Dove, Robin II and Donna Troy show up to try and save the heroes, but Trigon then transforms into his full CGI demon form, takes control of everyone, and only Rachel and Gar are left uncorrupted. We do get a pretty spooky house-of-horrors running around, but ultimately Gar ends up getting beaten up by the rest of the mind-controlled Titans, and Rachel ends up using the power of her bond with Dick to free Dick from Trigon's mind-control.

Which... it's certainly well-acted, and the parental/big-brother figure that Dick has been to Rachel throughout the first season is certainly well-served, but throughout the episode it really does feel like the rest of the cast that's not Rachel, Dick or Gar end up basically as window dressing as Trigon takes control of them very quickly and they basically end up just being puppets for a good chunk of the climax. Rachel confronting Trigon is great, though, as is the fact that she basically stops running and walks up to confront her literal demon of a father. That said, it's pretty obvious what was going to happen and there's no like huge twist or anything, but the visuals of Trigon causing an aura of decay, Rachel and Trigon confronting each other on that barren field, and Rachel basically eating/banishing Trigon and storing him in that iconic Raven forehead crystal is pretty cool, even if it's kind of the most basic way that the story could've ended. Like, it's paced relatively well and at least we had a full episode to see this, but I can't help but feel like we probably could've gotten more? I dunno.

And I feel like that's perhaps the biggest weakness of this episode? It's a functional ending to the first season, but that's all it is, and I'm not sure if that's enough. There's just a missing je ne sais quoi that I feel is lacking in this second season premiere. The bad guy seems to have everything under his control, 'breaking' Rachel and taking control of all the Titans, the power of love comes in and makes everything better, Rachel gets her big character moment of taking down Trigon. And we even have like one-thirds of the episode's runtime devoted to foreshadowing for the next (well, rest of) season!

And don't get me wrong, I'm a longtime fan of the Teen Titans, and so it's always cool to see Raven fight Trigon on-screen, or the nice little showcase of Wintergreen informing an old, grizzled Deathstroke that the Titans are back. And, of course, we get Bruce Wayne showing up as an older man (played by Iain Glen of Game of Thrones fame) meeting with Dick for a brief, fun scene where they really do feel like an estranged father-and-son pair trying to make up after an awkward argument. There's a certain... gruff and somewhat arrogant vibe in this show's Bruce Wayne, as all Bruce Waynes are wont to, but there's undoubtedly a nice warmth and an attempt at reconciliation between Bruce and Dick here. Bruce doesn't feel needlessly dickish, and ends up being more of a father who's trying to do right by his son. And, well, there's of course the episode ending with the New Titans (Dick and the three younger kids) gathering in the Titans Tower, albeit it's just a regular tower and not T-shaped. It's interesting that they decided to shuffle the cast around, too, having Hawk, Dove, Donna and Kory head off to do their own thing, and it seems like we're going to have a bit of a reshuffling of the cast in the next couple of episodes. I approve.

Still, being seemingly filmed or at least edited way after the first season has ended, I do actually like that this episode doesn't quite have the same amount of unneccessary grittiness and violence that the first season has. I feel like the critics do exaggerate a bit on just how much ultra-violence was around in the first season, but it is something that I could definitely do without in this second season. It's ultimately a bit of a shrug as far as huge, eventful season premieres go, though -- in no small part because it feels so much like it's something that we should've gotten in the first season. I dunno. I'm just sort of underwhelmed, but at the same time there really isn't anything particularly glaringly wrong with this episode. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Batman and Alfred (!) are explicitly noted to be running around the globe with the Justice League. Hawk also snidely remarks that they should've gotten "fucking Superman". 
• Throughout the episode, Trigon assumes the horned, four-eyed, red-skinned demonic form that he is usually depicted in the comics. Raven also gets the iconic forehead gem that she has in the comics. 
• Deathstroke, a.k.a. Slade Wilson, has seen a rapid resurgence into one of DC's A-list villains, but he debuted as a Teen Titans villain in the pages of New Titans, before rising to prominence in the 2003 Titans cartoon, and eventually branching out into multiple other projects like the Injustice and Batman: Arkham Origins video game, a recurring main antagonist in the Arrow TV show, various other DC animated movie projects, and recently as part of the stinger in the Justice League movie. He's a one-eyed ex-soldier mercenary that was subjected to a super-soldier project that has a massive fixation with defeating the Titans after several encounters with them, and was basically conceived as an "Anti-Batman" nemesis for Dick Grayson. 
• Billy Wintergreen in the comics is Slade's trusted butler and housekeeper, and, again, is essentially conceived as a counterpart to Alfred to Slade's Batman. 
• The various incarnations of the Teen Titans have been based on Titans Tower, a T-shaped building off the coast of a city.