Titans S02E04 Review: Year One

Titans, Season 2, Episode 4: Aqualad

So, in a bit of a surprising change, we end up having a whole episode telling us what happened to the original Teen Titans, something that the past couple of episodes have been great at hinting at some sort of old encounter with Deathstroke and some huge fallout that caused the team to be fractured. And this episode ends up showing it all to us and it's... it's an interesting one. I'm certainly not opposed to seeing what Dick, Donna, Hank and Dawn acted like when they were rookies themselves (let's pretend they're actually teenagers and they didn't just wrote teen dialogue for the adult actors) but for this to work I really would've liked a bit more of contrast between the OG Titans when they were rookies against the New Titans as they are now. And it's kind of a shame. The episode itself isn't bad by any means, but I kinda felt like maybe it could've been placed a bit later on in the season.

The episode itself ends up sort of being more informative than epic, highlighting the dynamic between the original Titans (the four we know, plus Aqualad) and... there's not a whole ton of surprises here. Aqualad not showing up in the present-day scenes while the original team having a huge grudge against Deathstroke makes it not difficult to connect the dots, and while the episode itself doesn't really treat its audience as idiots or whatever, it also means that I did feel like this episode didn't have a whole lot of oomph for its runtime.

And the episode itself is a pretty solid story, yeah? We see the Titans when they were all fun and games and all happy and making jokes and birthday parties and the biggest problem they had was whether Donna Troy will lighten up and finally return Garth's affections. I did feel like they perhaps overplayed the Donna/Garth romance angle because I really didn't care much for it, but considering this incarnation of Garth basically only exists to be a backstory death-drama character, I guess they had to lay on the romance thick to make Garth's loss feel like it meant something major to one member of the main cast.

A good chunk of the episode is basically setting these characters as basically being the happy-go-lucky teenage heroes that would fit better in a more optimistic setting, or at least a show or story that has its focus more on teenage drama. We don't actually see much conflict in the Dick/Dawn/Hank love triangle at this point, but Donna is basically kind of an introvert and Garth really is in love with her. There are parts where Garth's dialogue does feel rather dumb-sounding, but at least he's supposed to be a dumb teenager, y'know? Plus, as with most costumes in Titans, his Aqualad costume is pretty cool. He's really trying to get it on with Donna, while Donna's basically all confused and stuff because she's not ready to commit to a relationship or whatever. At the middle point of the episode Donna gets so flustered about this that she tells her fellow Amazonian, Jillian, that she needs to go home to Themyscira and please act like mommy told her she needs to come home.

While all the Titans are hanging out in their fun teenage romp, we get a neat, smooth scene of Deathstroke being shown to be this super-badass taking out a bunch of dudes connected to a murder trial with his sniper rifle, and while it's not quite the degree of superhuman awesomeness that these supervillains are usually portrayed with, it's a cool scene for him. Meanwhile, Dr. Light is arguing with his former scientist friend and is torturing him for an 'activator', and after a series of crimes heads off to attack a military convoy. The action scenes are... they're serviceable, but not particularly spectacular.

That said, while the Dr. Light stuff isn't anything particularly exciting beyond establishing Dr. Light's history with the old guard Titans, it's a neat way to basically take up the plot-of-the-week. Garth and Donna eventually sleep together at the very night that Donna heads off and leaves the world of mortals to return to Themyscira, and Garth follows up to try and talk about true love and stuff. And just as Donna decides to return with Garth... Deathstroke shows up and shoots Garth dead. It's kind of obvious, really, and while there's nothing particularly wrong with the episode, I do wonder if maybe it would've worked better if Deathstroke was a bit more involved with the episode, either with Dr. Light or with the Titans. Eventually, as Dawn tells Dick to 'be Batman', they track down Deathstroke and as all of the happy birthday party and teenage love drama nonsense get torn down, the final scene is Dick befriending Slade's mute son Jericho and I'm curious how far their manipulations will go towards this relative innocent.

Ultimately, there are definitely parts of this episode that could've been done better, but I'm not complaining too much. It's a pretty solid offering all around.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Aqualad, a.k.a. Garth, is the sidekick of Aquaman. Garth was born with purple eyes, a bad omen in Atlantean culture, causing him to be banished and left to die until he was adopted by Aquaman, himself also an outcast due to his mixed-race heritage. Aqualad would form the original incarnation of the Teen Titans in the comics alongside the first incartnations of Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and Speedy. His relationship with Donna (Garth was IIRC the only one out of the original team to not be involved in the love triangle mess) and his death at the hands of Slade is original to the show, though.
• Aqualad's costume in this show is heavily inspired by the original Aqualad costume in the comics. 
• Donna Troy mentions both Diana (Wonder Woman) and Themyscira, the mystical homeland of the Amazons.
• Jacob Finley is the creator of the Dr. Light suit that Arthur Light accidentally killed and eventually stole the suit from in the comics, only appearing briefly in Dr. Light's origin story.