Titans S02E02-03 Review: New Titans, Old Enemies

Titans, Season 2, Episode 2: Rose; Episode 3: Ghosts

Episode 2: Rose
So "Rose", which technically acts as the season's proper season premiere, doesn't waste time in throwing us almost immediately into the new status quo. As the "New Titans" settle in with Dick teaching the younger members (Rachel, Gar and Jason) in Titans Tower, things happen in the background. Mostly, it involves training to fight while blindfolded, which I'm sure will come into play in the future. I do also like that there's a couple of months of timeskip between the whole Trigon stuff and this episode, making it truly feel like a proper fresh start. We get to see what the other older Titans are doing -- Hank and Dawn are hanging out helping kids on rehab, while Kory and Donna are out being vigilantes, staking out in vans and stuff. It's neat stuff. More importantly, it allows the New Titans quartet to feel a lot more settled in. Rachel probably isn't full-on Raven yet, but she feels more settled in after the trauma of banishing her father and everything that happened in the previous season's finale, and Jason has a bit more of a rapport with the rest of his teammates.

There's still a fair amount of conflict between Dick and Jason, mind you -- we get a scene where Jason, in frustration, gets angry at Dick for essentially sidelining him (something that's far more prominent across episodes 2 and 3 combined), and calls them only a 'bunch of sidekicks'. Dick, on the other hand, apparently agrees with Bruce that Jason's not quite ready yet. There is of course the question of who Dick is now that he's no longer Robin, although the show stops short from giving us a Nightwing suit just yet. We get an amazing scene between Dick and Bruce yet, with Bruce going into length about how, yes, his parenting methods might not be the best one ever, but his intention was partially to give Dick a target to focus his anger at instead of lashing out at the world. It's done out of good intentions, and while even Bruce himself admits that it's not perfect, it's also something that Dick seems to take to heart when dealing with the newest recruit... a mysterious one-eyed white-haired girl called Rose Wilson who they catch doing cool action scenes while escaping the cops. (Bruce doesn't suggest nine trackers implanted into her, but at least to keep her safe until she's in a frame of mind to be making decisions)

That's the main focus of our episode, really, and there's something to question Dick's immediate willingness to see a girl with above-average martial arts skills and decide "okay, she's our next recruit for the New Titans" without running a background check on her. But I suppose that spontaneity was also how he and Rachel came to hang out together. As anyone with any sort of knowledge on DC's Teen Titans would be able to tell you, though, the enigmatic "Rose" turns out to be the daughter of Slade Wilson, a.k.a. Deathstroke the Terminator. Who, judging by Jason's commentary in this episode, is well-known and well-dreaded by the superhero community. And, well, Rose gets to be the target of Dr. Light as well in this episode when Dick plans to cut her loose as she chooses to.

The rest of the episode mostly deals with the rest of the cast, cutting back and forth between the New Titans and the rest of their crew. Kory and Donna gossip around and throw around fun easter egg names like Roy Harper and beat up the supervillain gangster Shimmer in a pretty subdued scene (especially compared to the very impressive Rose Wilson ones) but then Kory gets kidnapped by a mysterious person. Kory's a lot more improved now that the show doesn't focus exclusively on her being angry and amnesiac, and allowing her to come to her own character as a buddy-cop with Donna is a lot more likable. She's easily the worst part of the first season, but thankfully the show writers seem to be intent on fixing it, if these two episodes are anything to go by.

Hank and Dawn hang out as retired heroes helping troubled youths, but turns out that Dawn is going out at night and beating up drug dealers that are putting pressure on Ellis, the kid they're helping right now, and this leads into a fight between the two... just as Ellis gets tragically murdered via exploding light-bomb. Pretty tragic for sure, and while I'm not especially invested in Dawn and Hank's little argument about addiction and stuff, the idyllic scenes we see the Hawk-and-Dove duo in do make it a lot harder when the nice kid that they're helping gets burned inside-out and explodes.

Because, well, Deathstroke's not the only game in town, and Dr. Light gets to break out of prison in a pretty creepy scene. We get to see that this version of Dr. Light is able to absorb light from like, lamps and stuff and then direct them as energy beams to burn people, and this Dr. Light also has beef with the original Titans. Poor Ellis gets to be the first casualty of Dr. Light's seeming roaring rampage of revenge against the Titans, and between Deathstroke and Dr. Light, the show's building up to the old guard confronting the sins of their past.

Ultimately, this is a pretty strong, if slow-paced, premiere, setting up the dread for the two villains and bringing in the various members of the cast together with a shared premise -- if nothing else, Dick, Rose, Hank and Dawn are all being targeted by Dr. Light one way or another, and while the younger "New Titans" are mostly kept in reserve, it's a matter of time before they get caught up into things. We get a lot of great scenes between the characters, and while there are some that still feel like the weaker links of the show (Gar, Kory) a lot of the cast work and balance off each other a lot better.
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Episode 3: Ghosts
"Ghosts" is a relatively somber episode, and I really do like this direction that Titans has been taking across these three episodes. It's still more melancholic and 'dark' compared to most of the other DC live-action shows (particularly the CW shows) but it's no longer falling back to gratuitous violence and eye-rolling "we say bad words now 'cause we are R-rated" scenes. Hell, even Rose's off-handed 'pussy' line feels very natural in this episode. I do think that after essentially shooting their load with making everything a bit too grim'n'dark last season, this one can finally be allowed to breathe a bit more easier.

All the Titans sans Kory reunite in Titans Tower, and they gather together initially to form a team-up to take down Dr. Light... who, as the audience learns and the Titans figure out, is actually working alongside Deathstroke. Dick also immediately shares Rose's existence to his old teammates, and none of them are particularly pleased that they have to deal with Deathstroke again. Hank's abrasive and angry as usual, but I do really like that there seems to be something that's deeply personal about their fear of Deathstroke. There's a scene between Dick and Donna around halfway through in the episode where Donna keeps reminding Dick about some mysterious 'old sin' that they had to deal with and how they need to tell the New Titans about it if they don't want the younger heroes to repeat the same mistakes that they did. I also really like the dynamic between Dick, Donna, Hank and Dawn -- there are a lot of scenes between them that really do highlight that they are brothers and sisters in arms, despite the friction that are clearly between some of them.

More importantly, Dick seems to be taking this particularly personally, shutting out Gar and Rachel from a lot of the information dump regarding Deathstroke, and even the actually-established Jason, which adds to the growing rift between the Robin and the ex-Robin. Speaking of conflict, during a spat of training, a particularly aggressive move from Jason causes Rachel to transform into a demonic Raven form and very nearly shishkebab Jason with a rack full of swords.

Rose, on the other hand... is somehow avoiding conflicts? She gets a pretty cool scene with Dick, and between the previous episode and this one, Dick's basically everyone's big brother figure. Rose helps supply us with some neat exposition about Deathstroke, but her best sccene has to be her bonding with Rachel over terrible fathers, and I absolutely love the impressed look on Rose's face when Rachel nonchalantly tells Rose about how she 'dealt' with her own villainous demon father.

The rest of the episode mostly deals with some back-and-forth about how they're going supervillain hunting, putting Gar in charge of hunting for power surges, while Deathstroke and Dr. Light make their plans to basically divide and conquer after they have a better grasp of the Titans' power structure (and also, making eye puns). We do get a cool action scene in a stadium where the old Titans fail to take down Dr. Light. Eventually, with Jason feeling inadequate and chomping at the bit to prove himself, ends up convincing Gar to go with him on a solo mission to totally just 'recon' the place they found out, which leads to Dr. Light (in his dumb-looking Iron-Man-meets-Sparctacus suit) beating up and abducting Jason. I do like that the writing and the actor balances Jason being a massive twerp and also needing desperately to prove himself, giving him a neat balance of sympathetic and unlikable qualities.

Perhaps the scene that doesn't work quite as well for me is Kory's scenes, once more. Thankfully, none of them are actively terrible (like Kory's subplot in the first season), and the chemistry between Kory and the Looney-Tunes-watching royal guard Faddei help us to establish that this version of Kory isn't just a bounty hunter, but also shares her comic-book counterpart's 'reluctant princess' backstory. There's a lot of fun dialogue between the two, but every scene we see of Kory and Faddei flirting with each other just feels like it's a bit of an interruption in an episode that deals more about the Titans dealing with the 'ghosts' of their past.. But hey, Kory locks Faddei in her ship and sends him back to Tamaran when Donna calls for her help later on, so hooray, that's all members of the Titans together.

Not a perfect episode, but still a pretty well-done one. Titans is really a lot more cohesive in this second season when it's not just jumping back and forth between guest characters, huh? Again, the younger squad (and that includes Rose) does feel a bit off of the spotlight this time around, but keeping the focus on the original Titans is admittedly a very smart move that does make us get really interesting as to what this mysterious 'ghost' that Dick is covering up.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Rachel briefly floats the name "New Titans" when referring to the group, which, of course, is the title of the comics run (New Teen Titans) that this show draws the most inspiration for its material from.
• In various discussions in the second episode, a lot of the point is noted to how the original Teen Titans are just a collection of sidekicks, which is also true regarding the first incarnation of the Teen Titans in the comics. Aqualad is name-dropped, as is Roy Harper (Speedy), and they are sidekicks to Aquaman and Green Arrow respectively. 
• Starfire joking about going to Florida is a reference to her 2015-era title, where she does exactly that.
• Rose Wilson, sometimes known as "Ravager", is the daughter of Slade "Deathstroke" Wilson, born out of wedlock and inheriting part of her father's superpowers. After finding out of her existence, Slade would leave Rose at the care of the Titans in hopes for something better for her, although their relationship would vary from comic run to comic run. 
• Shimmer, a.k.a. Selinda Flinders, in the comics is a member of the supervillain group Fearsome Five, a metahuman born with the ability to transmute the elements of any object she touches. As part of the Fearsome Five, she faced off against multiple iterations of the Teen Titans many times. 
• Dr. Light, a.k.a. Arthur Light, was introduced as an enemy of the Justice League, having the ability to control light beams, having stolen a prototype suit from his STAR Labs scientist. Later depictions would be inconsistent whether Dr. Light needs his suit to access his powers. Throughout a good chunk of his career in the comics, Dr. Light keeps suffering from more and more embarrassing losses at the hands of the Teen Titans, before eventually being recruited into the Suicide Squad, and then being prominently portrayed in the sometimes-controversial Identity Crisis storyline.
• Blackfire, Starfire's evil sister, is name-dropped by Faddei. 
• Deathstroke is noted to be formerly associated with HIVE in episode 3, and Deathstroke does notably work under the employ of HIVE during his more notable appearances in the New Titans run.
• Deathstroke's son Jericho, a.k.a. Joey Wilson, is briefly mentioned when they were going over his files, and it's implied that in this continuity, Slade is responsible for Jericho's death? I'm not going to say too much here since it seems like we're going to actually be covering this in the show itself. 
• I can't catch any of the other names on the cell doors in Dr. Light's prison breakout scene, but on Deathstroke's dossier you can make out ARGUS typed as one of Deathstroke's old affiliations.