Movie Review: Teen Titans - The Judas Contract

Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017)

I know I should've been excited for this, but the end result is honestly a bit underwhelming. I've watched two adaptations of the Judas Contract now, the epic storyline that pushed the New Teen Titans title in the 80's into prominence. It was the plot that the second season of Teen Titans (relatively recently I reviewed every single episode of it) was loosely adapted on, and it was also one of the first graphic novels that I read. As part of an ongoing, and as part of a storyline that really sold Deathstroke as this master manipulator, it was an amazing experience.

Yet this DC animated movie adaptation felt... I don't know. Lackluster, I guess? It acts as a sequel to Justice League vs. Teen Titans, and is therefore also in the same New-52-based animated movie continuity spearheaded by Justice League: War, and its cast of Titans follows the format of that continuity. Starfire and Nightwing as the trainers, and Damian Wayne/Robin, Blue Beetle, Raven and Beast Boy to round up the Teen Titans. Oh, and, of course, Terra. Who, in this movie, is just quickly introduced as this weird new addition to the team that almost as quickly shows that she's a rather unpleasant girl. Even when bonding with Beast Boy, she's more brusque than friendly, and I never really bought just why the Titans really felt at ease with Terra so much that they'd let their guard down that much. Though I guess Damian Wayne is such a Grade A douchebag that they're obliged to do so?

I realize comparing it to both the source material and a different adaptation isn't exactly fair, but in the New Teen Titans comic, Terra was a recurring character even before the Judas Contract storyline, and she's obfuscating niceness to Beast Boy (or, well, Changeling as he's known in the comics at that time) so even though the audience knows that she's a sleeper agent for Deathstroke, the reactions of the Titans to her betrayal is something I'm invested in. Ditto for the cartoon, which took a different approach and have Terra actually be an innocent that the Titans befriend, and later corrupted by Deathstroke with promises of acceptance and power, and then sent back in. 

Here? Here is where an adaptation tries to adapt all the big moments and the broad strokes of the Judas Contract storyline, but loses sight of what makes it so appealing. If anything else, it treats the Brother Blood storyline of draining the powers of the Titans and becoming a god as more of the 'main' storyline, and not just a peripheral subplot that happens to intersect. The voice acting is pretty amazing (with Deathstroke and Terrra being particularly well-acted ones) and I love seeing some classic comic book panels and action sequences reproduced on-screen, but at the same time it just lacks... I dunno, it lacks oomph, I guess?

Part of it is that the movie tries to tack on a lot of things. The Terra/Raven rivalry and Terra/Beast Boy romance was always part of the original source material, as is the creepy Terra/Deathstroke romance (which they thankfully changed to Deathstroke declining Terra's underage advances), but at the same time not really enough is spent to dwell on any of the relationships that when Terra turns on Beast Boy and later on Deathstroke it just seems like an 'eh, makes sense' plot twist that doesn't really push the emotional buttons that it did a decade ago when I first discovered and read the comic for the first time. Add that to things that they didn't really do enough of but tacked on anyway -- like Blue Beetle's father issues, or Nightwing/Starfire moving on to the next step in their relationship, or the (admittedly very enjoyable) Nightwing/Robin dynamic where they've developed from their antagonistic headbutting in 'Son of Batman' into something brotherly.

A good chunk of the characterization screentime is, thankfully, delivered to Terra herself, so while the scripting and pacing isn't as well done as I would've wished, the voice acting and the script does put a fair amount of focus on Terra as a dark, tortured and confused character. At the end it kind of reduces her into a screaming angry girl instead of the more complex incarnations that the 00's cartoon or the original comic book versions, but she's at least somewhat enjoyable.

Deathstroke in particular, despite the excellent voice work, a point of contention for me. I don't mind, really, having a reduced role for the likes of Raven or Nightwing, and even Beast Boy getting reduced roles as a satellite love interest definitely works if the timeframe is relatively constricted. But Deathstroke suffers from the burden of the strange decision to change him from an independent mercenary with an obsession for control into a disgraced League of Assassins member. And unfortunately, thanks to his motivations here being set to just having revenge on Damian, it makes the character look way too petty and one-dimensional. And while removing Deathstroke's backstory or the admittance of his son Jericho into the Teen Titans would bloat up the movie even further, at least one of these two would've worked in nicely with some of the surplus filler material for the lesser Titans being cut out. 

Of course, it's still a superhero action movie at the end of the day, and it still has enough appeal on terms of that. Terra's powers, as well as those of Raven and Brother Blood, look relatively fantastic. But other than Terra, Robin and Deathstroke, it might be a little mean to say that the rest of the voice work are... merely perfunctory. None of them stand out as being annoying, but here I am, two hours after watching the movie, and I can barely remember what Blue Beetle or Raven sounded like -- something I have no problem remembering with a stronger voice cast. I'm severely underwhelmed by what really should have been a great triumph, but cutting out too much things from the original source material, adding unnecessary plotlines and the lack of buildup all hurt the movie from being good to being merely watchable. It's worth a decent look, but don't expect the same level of greatness that these 'greatest hits adapted into movies' things should be.

(No DC Easter Eggs Corner for these movies, I think -- they are more or less huge love letters to the original comic book arcs that the movies are based upon, and there's no point in listing every single thing there.)

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.

Teen Titans S05 Movie Review: Official Couple

Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo

After the ending to season five, Cartoon Network released a feature film for Teen Titans, titled 'Trouble in Tokyo'. But I feel it works better as a standalone episode that happened after the Brotherhood of Evil stuff, but before the weird and reflective epilogue that's Things Change. Because, well, despite the higher production quality of Trouble in Tokyo, it still felt at its heart like any other Teen Titans episode, just one that's stretched over the runtime of an animated movie, and one with a lot of fancy backgrounds. It's not that impressive compared to more modern DC movie attempts, but it's still quite pretty to look at.

The plot is pretty simple. A mysterious villain, Saiko-tek, shows up and attacks the Teen Titans, causing them to bugger off and investigate matters in Tokyo, Japan. Robin is in serious detective mode, Starfire wants to explore their relationship in a more meaningful manner, Beast Boy just wanna read manga and flirt with Japanese girls while Cyborg and Raven are just kind of along for the ride. Of course, they find out that Japan's protected by this super-competent police force that take down Godzillas (quite literally a trademark-friendly Godzilla) every weekend, and Robin's only real lead is the mysterious urban legend of Brushogun, a superpowered villain that sold his soul to demons and was able to create anything he painted turn to life.

There's a bit where Robin was framed for "killing" a second Saiko-tek, and while Saiko-tek bleeds ink, the horror when Robin realized he might be beating down on what might be a living being is pretty well-portrayed. While the fact that the overly friendly and somewhat-dismissive head of the Japanese Defense Force, Daigo, ends up being the actual villain of the piece is honestly a bit obvious even as a kid, it's still a pretty decent twist. Brushogun is trapped in a huge printing press, forced to create monsters for Daigo to combat and make himself look good.

Oh, and all throughout this Starfire wants to become Robin's girlfriend, and actually confronts him on the rooftop for it, but Robin just refuses to let her get too close. Eventually, though, Robin realizes that he's a human being in addition to being a superhero, and he and Starfire kiss. It's not quite as well-written or well-handled as the 'Stranded' episode, but at least it kind of makes the coupling official. And with no more Teen Titans episodes left they gotta do what they gotta do. It's not as well-written as I would like, but it definitely could've been worse.

It's a fun romp that didn't quite deserve the big movie hype stamped onto it, and really felt like a two-parter or even a single episode that's drawn out to fill seventy minutes of screentime. A good chunk of it is mostly focusing on Cyborg and Beast Boy being funky tourists, a bunch of brief musical numbers, and the four non-Robin Titans fighting against ink demons that take different aspects of Japanese pop culture. Though that one multi-faced yokai thing that fought Raven was actually quite scary. But there's definitely a feeling of things being padded out in the middle of the movie.

I mean, yeah, I get it, they're paying homage to the anime inspiration of Teen Titans' animation style (and their Puffy Ami-Yumi soundtrack, which I don't think I've mentioned in the reviews) so they kind of have to try and make Japan seem bigger than life and whatnot. I did like how a fair amount of the background characters speak in actually pretty appropriate non-subtitled Japanese that got me a few chuckles now that I have somewhat of a decent grasp on the language.

It's overall a pretty basic, light-hearted adventure that felt odd watching after the huge epic that was the Brotherhood of Evil two-parter, or the somber and simply flat-out bitterweet Things Change, and felt like something that worked better in the middle of a season. But while it won't win any awards for being the best DC animated movie or the best Teen Titans episode, it's still a fun little story nonetheless.

Teen Titans S05E12 Review: You Know Who To Call

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 11: Titans Together

While the quality of the fifth season has been... fluctuative, with several really good episodes and several underwhelming ones, episodes 10 and 11 at least ended the series with a huge, explosive finale that, well, isn't all bad! Considering the sheer amount of heroes and villains being featured in the two-parter (and let's not kid ourselves, it's a two-parter), they juggled it pretty well. While the show did get into a bit of an awkward phase by introducing like six or seven new Titans last episode, this episode tried their best to make do with Beast Boy leading a smattering of new characters and returning supporting characters in an attempt to infiltrate the Brotherhood of Evil.

It's a pretty cool opening as we see a montage of the Brain's minions take down a good number of the Titans -- including Cyborg, Starfire and Raven -- as the Brain monologues to a captive Robin and noting how this is all his fault and how his soldiers are stronger than Robin's soldiers... cutting away to a pretty badass scene of Beast Boy, having proven victorious against the villains that ambushed him (he apparently survived a second wave of robots after beating Kardiak last episode) blowing up the robot goons.

Beast Boy, after establishing a base in a hidden Titans base in a jungle (really wished this was foreshadowed, but no matter) leads the group of ragtag Titans -- Mas (who is more or less useless since he's unable to activate his powers without his twin), as well as newcomers Jericho, Pantha and Herald -- to infiltrate the Brotherhood. The 'we've lost' bit hangs over their head with so many of their comrades captured by the Brotherhood, and Beast Boy is easily one of the least responsible among the core Titans, but he manages to rile up the group to fight. Jericho, who was dismissed by Pantha, ended up being the centerpiece of their plan with his before-unseen powers of possession allowing him to hijack Cinderblock and allow them entry into the Brotherhood's base. Speaking of which, how cool is that ambush scene with Beast Boy's splinter team taking down Cinderblock?

Now no idea why the Doom Patrol isn't mentioned anywhere here, but hey, seeing Beast Boy as a leader is pretty cool, innit? Pantha is also awesome, remaining absolutely UNDEFEATED, and, of course, Jericho's pretty cool with his possession powers -- proving himself after almost everyone thought he was useless. I still cannot understand a thing Mas is saying, but thankfully Pantha translates the gist of it. Why couldn't we have this in, like, Mas y Menos's second appearance? Jeez. Also, side-note, Herald's Gabriel trumpet is funny.

It's a nice bit of spotlight for Beast Boy and the new characters, and while the villains eventually discover them, Beast Boy leads the five against decidedly outnumbered odds. While it's a bit of a foolish plan considering that, well, they are easily outnumbered five to one... they did deliver a pretty cool fight, taking down a fair amount of the lesser villains. Pantha just beating the fuck out of everyone, Mas punching Puppet King, Beast Boy just rampaging as a T-rex, Herald creating random portals to send villains through, Jericho possessing Control Freak and taking on villains with a four-bladed lightsaber... of course, numbers do overwhelm them.

But it's not all lost for them because apparently Cyborg, Starfire and Raven manage to best their foes, and arrive with reinforcements. Kole, Gnarrk, Bumblebee, the three babysitting kids and, um, a suddenly-alive Red Star. Granted it's a bit stupid that the villains leave them behind after their ambiguous demise (Cyborg drops down a crevice, Raven gets thrown into a random Psimon portal, Starfire get swarmed by moths) but hey, the episode is so energetic that I didn't mind. Huge action scene! And then the other captured Titans are freed, and what follows is a pretty awesome beat-them-up starring like forty characters unleashing all sorts of powers at each other and it's definitely very fun to see. Some highlights include Pantha doing a huge wrestling press down onto a group of villains, the three toddlers riding a giant demon teddy bear to fight Mallah, Aqualad creating a tsunami to take out General Immortus, Raven one-shotting Plasmus using her soul-self, Mas managing to escape in all the chaos and free his brother, Killowat sucking all of Overload's powers, Thunder simply clapping and sending like five villains flying, Mallah and Beast Boy's gorilla war, Pantha ripping off Wrestling Star's mask after defeating him, the big orchestral rendition of the main theme as the core five Titans stand together and take down a crapton of villains...

Two characters absent from the first part, Kid Flash and Jinx, show up too in this episode and while I would've preferred them to have done some more subterfuge beyond 'hey by the way I quit' and have Jinx make use of her double agent role to do... something... Oh, and the reaction that Gizmo and the other HIVE Five had to finding out Jinx's betrayal is hilarious. But it's pretty cool to see Jinx give a bit of a big fuck you against her idol Madame Rogue, simply snapping her fingers to disable Madame Rogue after she took out several Titans in one shot, allowing Wildebeest and Hot Spot to get their vengeance and knock the good Madame down.

There's also a bit of a theme from the starting scene of the previous episode, where Beast Boy makes clear his distaste for Robin's split-up plan, and here he advocates the small team to stick together... after Pantha and Herald both decide to bugger off after seeing none of the real 'Teen Titans' around... and ultimately, Beast Boy's "stick together and attack the enemy with tactics" plan end up working, even if it did end up requiring some rescue. It's a bit corny and thankfully not brought up too much, but it is the Titans sticking together that allowed them to defeat the Brotherhood of Evil. It's epitomized by the brief action scenes of Starfire and Raven combining their energy blasts, or Mas and Menos literally being stronger together, or Robin and Cyborg doing their sonic-boom combo attack all the way back from the first (or third) episode.

I've been talking about the Titans, but the villains themselves deserve some credit. Brain's monotone monologues are pretty cool throughout the whole Brotherhood of Evil episodes, and Madame Rogue gets a bit of a spotlight for her short scenes taunting the heroes. Granted, there's no real rhyme or reason to just why Brain is capturing all the Titans, no real master plan of domination or corruption, but who cares? It's fun, and Brain's monologues, despite being delivered in a neutral monotone, still makes him a lot hammier and interesting to listen to than Brother Blood.

It's just a big huge dose of action scene featuring a lot of Titans, the eventual freezing of every single one of the villains (having three superheroes with superspeed helps), Herald trumpeting Brain's 'I have left behind a bomb mwahaha!' plan, and the day is won, with the episode ending with a short scene of poor, luckless Doctor Light robbing a bank and facing a twenty-something-strong Teen Titans team. Robin's "Titans, go!" closes off the episode perfectly, showing how much the Teen Titans have grown both as a show and an organization.

Overall it's mostly a huge, gorgeous action episode after the initial Beast Boy and the remnants of the Titans scene, but it's all very decent fun and a huge, explosive action-packed end to the Teen Titans. There's just something seeing all the allies they've gathered over the course of the series (even if a good half of them only showed up this season) fight against nearly all of their enemies. It would've been a fine finale, if only it were the case. We've got two more episodes to cover, a trippy 'epilogue' final episode that's still contested and argued about even until now, and a big mo-vee.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Featured Titans: Cyborg, Pantha, Starfire, Argent, Beast Boy, Jericho, Raven, Herald, Robin, Kole, Gnarrk, Bumblebee, Cyborg, Aqualad, Tramm, Speedy, Hot Spot, Wildebeest, Mas y Menos, Tramm, Aqualad, Lightning, Thunder, Killowat, Red Star, Melvin, Timmy, Teether, Kid Flash, Jinx
• Featured Villains: Brain, Madame Rogue, Angel, Punk Rocket, Kitten, Killer Moth, Mammoth, Trident, Plasmus, Psimon, Kyd Wykkyd, Professor Chang, Cinderblock, Control Freak, Katarou, General Immortus, Monsieur Mallah, Andre LeBlanc, Adonis, Mammoth, Private HIVE, Billy Numerous, Mad Mod, See-More, Johnny Rancid, Master of Games, Mumbo, Atlas, Kardiak, Wrestling Star, Wintergreen, Overload, Fang, Gizmo, Cheshire, Warp, Steamroller, INSTIGATOR, Ding Dong Daddy, XL Terrestrial, HIVE Headmistress, Phobia, Malchior, Mother Mae-Eye
• Poor Phobia only shows up for a brief scene in Homecoming and a brief scene of running and fighting in this episode, not even a chance to get to show off her powers. In the comics she is Angela Hawkins III, born with the ability to manipulate people's centers of fear, and a member of Brain's second Brotherhood of Evil.
• "Titans Together", which Beast Boy actually called out in the episode, is the battlecry that the Titans use in the comics in the same way that the show uses "Titans go".
• Considering the huge amount of characters involved, there are a couple of animation errors -- Hot Spot is seen among the villains after the first battle, while Puppet King and XL Terrestrial are seen in different shots of the assembled Titans after their victory.

Teen Titans S05E11 Review: All Out War

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 11: Calling All Titans

The big confrontation between the Teen Titans and the Brotherhood of Evil is, if nothing else, a huge treat in the animation department, with huge beat-them-ups between the army of heroes and the army of villains. I just really wished that a lot of these Titans have been introduced earlier... both in earlier seasons and earlier in season five. Maybe if we had less filler, or had some of the more interesting Titans like Argent or Jericho be stars of episodes instead of the horrible Control Freak/Titans East episode, or having one of them co-star alongside Raven in the babysitting one... the episode is absolutely entertaining enough on its own, but I have to admit that when I was a kid watching this I thought I missed a huge chunk of episodes that introduced Argent, Jericho, Bushido, Herald, Pantha and the rest. Instead what we got in this episode -- short scenes of the five main Titans splitting up and contacting these dudes we've never seen before -- are all the introduction we got for them. I mean, yeah, Pantha is a friend of Wildebeest's, but it's not like Wildebeest actually got a scene where he's developed as a character.

Again, it's the huge switch from having a limited cast in the first four seasons to shoehorning in a huge chunk of new superheroes in the final season, and it's something that... well, wasn't done all that elegantly, I'm afraid. There are way too many characters involved, and while I'm a big fan of the comics and greedily devour all the delicious cameos, there's such a thing as too much. It does deliver the sheer scale that the show is attempting to convey, but it's really hard to care about Kilowatt or Herald when we've only met them for a single scene before the Brotherhood attacks them.

That said, posh British Argent and mute guitar-playing Jericho are two of my favourite characters and I'm mad that we got a Gnarrk episode but these two are relegated to short cameos.

Still, the action scenes are fun enough even if the plot is a bit dumb... The Titans deliver communicators to every single superpowered child in the world, only for the communicators to become homing beacons for the Brotherhood's agents to attack. Really, the T-Communicator plotline could've been given some exploration over the season, even if it's just one scene or two of Brain or Mallah or Rogue talking about how they're hunting down the Titans or whatever, or having 'Teen Titans recruit Argent/Herald/Jericho' taking place as the B-plot on some of the 'Teen Titans are absent on a mission' episodes. The last time the communicator bit was brought up was, what, the Hot Spot/Madame Rogue episode?

The action scenes in the episode really make up for the lack of season-wide planning, though -- it's easily one of my favourite episodes to just play back and see the villains do battle against the Titans. Robin being absolutely overwhelmed as he realizes that, hey, splitting the Titans up when the Brotherhood finally makes their move with a crapton of villains is kind of a dumb move. And it's credit to the show when the split-up manages to make chronic losers like Gizmo and Mammoth threatening by having them gang up on a single Titan or two.

Herald's dimension is very cool-looking and it's a shame we spend so little time there. Psimon and Kyd Wykkyd fighting Raven is also very cool, and their team-up to take down Raven is a pretty awesome scene. Those two are two villains that I really wished had gotten more exposure instead of idiots like Control Freak. Speaking of which, Kilowatt absolutely fucking over Control Freak's TV constructs is hilarious. Also did anyone expect Tramm to have giantification powers? That bit where he fought... uh... XL Terrestrial, I think he's called? That was hilarious. Trident riding fish-Plasmus... Puppet King being full-on creepy with just being this clattering thing... Johnny Rancid going full-on Ghost Rider on Mas y Menos... and my favourite, the airborne battle as Bumblebee gets attacked by a guitar-surfing Punk Rocket and Angel is another very cool scene that just highlights how disorganized the Titans ended up being.

Gnarrk is still shit, by the way. You're a caveman with a friend who can turn into an indestructible bludgeon for you to wield, and you're afraid of... Gizmo of all people? Jeez. Look at Herald and Jericho. They defeat their foes off-screen. They're awesome. Herald like leaves See-More and five dozen eyeballs floating around in the twisting void. That's awesome.

Speaking about the characters themselves, we don't... really get to see much. The newcomers are mostly silent (Kilowatt has no lines, and Jericho is mute) or have a quick line or two to encapsulate their personalities (Pantha is a hammy wrestling lady, Argent is posh, Herald is mysterious), we get short scenes to show some old friends, but the majority of the heroes have mostly generic lines, with only Robin being confused and overwhelmed, and Beast Boy panicking and finding himself alone without help being pretty cool.

The ending shows that a good chunk of the Titans, including Robin, are captured and... flash-frozen by the Brain, because this is a kid's show and death isn't allowed to be shown on-screen to happen for the good guys. Hot Spot and Wildebeest, who we saw getting taken out in a previous episode, had been trophies. That bit is a bit of a letdown, because it's obvious that next episode will feature the survivors undoing the process... maybe, I dunno, imprison them in an alternate dimension or something, awaiting execution? I dunno.

Still, can't complain. It's a pretty cool 'everyone is in trouble and the villains are moving very quickly to eliminate all our heroes globally' thing. The action scenews and the sheer amount of characters make this a very entertaining and well-paced episode, if not a particularly well-written one.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Featured Titans: Robin, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Raven, Starfire, Hot Spot, Wildebeest, Argent, Bushido, Pantha, Jericho, Herald, Kole, Gnarrk, Mas y Menos, Speedy, Kilowatt, Thunder, Lightning, Bumblebee, Aqualad, Tramm
• Notable absentees include Kid Flash and Red Star, who actually shows up in Beast Boy's flashback-photographs, as well as the three little babysat kids.
• Featured Villains: Brain, Monsieur Mallah, General Immortus, Trident, Plasmus, Billy Numerous, Gizmo, Kardiak, Johnny Rancid, Punk Rocket, Angel, Mammoth, Kyd Wykkyd, Psimon, Kitten, Killer Moth, XL Terrestrial, Cinderblock, Katarou, Chesire, Atlas, Private HIVE, Fang, See-More, Warp, Control Freak, Puppet King, Adonis, Overload, Steamroller, INSTIGATOR, Madame Rogue
• Quick newcomer lores:
• Jericho: Joseph Wilson is the son of Slade Wilson (yes, that Slade). While young, Joseph was kidnapped by one of Slade's enemies, and while you don't mess with Slade Wilson, his overconfidence in his fighting abilities caused one of his enemies to start to cut into Joseph's throat and render the child mute. Joseph was born with the mutant ability to possess anyone he makes eye contact with, and joined the Titans in opposition of his father briefly after the whole incident with Terra. Tragically he was possessed by Trigon and was mercy-killed by his father. Nevermind the death scenes, really, why didn't the Son of Slade get any focus in the series? Jeez.
• Argent: Toni Monetti (who isn't a little lolita in the comics) is a half-alien with a H'san Natall parent, one of several children that had a parent from the H'san Natall race (others include Hot Spot, Risk, Prism and Fringe, who didn't make it into the show). Argent refused to be a sleeper agent for the aliens and became a hero instead. She had the ability to create silver energy projections. 
• Pantha: Known as Rosabella Mendez as well as Subject X-24, Pantha's origins are enigmatic due to her amnesia, only that she was mutated to having the strength of a panther by the mysterious Wildebeest Society. Pantha eventually grew to become the surrogate mother of Baby Wildebeest, but was mostly hostile to the rest of the Titans.
• Herald: Malcolm Duncan (also known as Guardian, Vox and Hornblower) created the Gabriel Horn, a highly advanced (sometimes mystical) horn able to creating spatial portals after he accidentally released Gargoyle, a villain, from his imprisonment, and went on to join the Titans in taking him down. He would later marry Bumblebee and retire from superheroics.
• Bushido: Ryuku Orsono's mother was murdered by the demonic entity Tengu, and swearing revenge, he donned the magically-enchanted armour and sword passed down through his family. He came into conflict with the Titans, and after an altercation with the Tengu, ended up joining them briefly.
• Killowat: Charlie Watkins is sent from a post-apocalyptic future into the past. Augmented with electrical powers, Killowat briefly joined the Teen Titans before being sent back to the future. He's actually a pretty minor Titan, even compared to the others.
• Psimon: Psimon (Simon Jones) is one of the members of the Fearsome Five, one of the Teen Titans' constant adversaries in the comics -- a group that traditionally encompassed Psimon, Mammoth, Gizmo, Jinx and Shimmer. Transformed by Trigon into a powerful psychic, Psimon is a powerful psychic and telepath that menaced the Titans on various occasions. He was actually slated to appear in the show's first season, but was replaced by original character Fixit.
• Cheshire: Jade Nguyen is one of the world's deadliest assassins, and a frequent adversary of the Teen Titans. She entered a relationship with Roy Harper (Speedy) when he infiltrated her organization, and the union resulted in a daughter, Lian. Cheshire cared for her daughter, but could not leave behind her career and left Lian in the care of her father. As her name implies, she often uses cat masks and cat-claw-blades in combat.
• This is the first time we really see the HIVE students Angel, INSTIGATOR and XL Terrestrial in action. Most of the other HIVE students (bar Wrestling Star) have already participated as part of the HIVE Five. All of them are, of course, original characters to the show.
• When Robin summons all the Titans, Wonder Girl appears as a mugshot among the many Titans assembled, but does not show up in any scenes in this episode and the next. Despite being a very prominent member of the Teen Titans in the comics (and one of the five founding members -- and the only one not to show up earlier in the series) the showmakers never got the chance to use Wonder Girl, possibly due to some stupid embargo that was common during that period.
• Herald's dimension reuses some artwork from the Justice League Unlimited episode Kid Stuff, specifically the weird trippy magical dimension that Mordred sends all adults to. Considering Herald's powers, regardless of whether Teen Titans or JLU takes place in the same universe or not, this may very well be the same dimension. 
• Speedy fighting Chesire is probably an allusion to their relationship in the comics -- the two fell in love and had a daughter together, despite Chesire still technically being a villain.

Teen Titans S05E10 Review: Origin Story

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 10: Go

Oh hey, surprise prequel episode! It's an episode that... really felt like it needed some revisions. After Teen Titans' staunch stance at never touching superhero origin stories, we get the origin story of... well, the team, with brief allusions to Starfire and Cyborg's origins. It really should be exciting and deliver big revelations, but there really isn't anything big that got revealed here. It really is an episode that would've fit better in the first two seasons, and while it's cool to see how the Titans first met each other, it's also a bit unnecessary to take twenty minutes to tell the whole story. "Oh, Starfire got kidnapped by Gordanian slave traders, she rampages a bit, meets the other four Titans, they become buddies and beat up the aliens." There are several cool moments with Beast Boy trying to shake off the shackles of his past in the Doom Patrol, Robin trying to shake off his shackles of being Batman's apprentice, and both Raven and Cyborg just being full of self-loathing and angry at the world (until Beast Boy's like all 'cool'!)... but it's nothing we haven't already seen before.

I don't know, I think I would've liked this episode a lot more if it took place earlier in the series, but even then the plot and scripting isn't anything too  special after the novelty of 'oh, look how awkward Raven is!' and angry rampaging Starfire wears off. Though to the show's credit, having Starfire explore a very different side of her and being utterly this angry rampaging monster speaking in an alien tongue is a cool side to the character we've never really seen explored in the series, and makes me somewhat sad that Starfire never got a chance to really be explored as a character.

I don't know why this episode felt so generic. Maybe it's because the whole 'origin' story ended up taking like two or three minutes each with the show's insistence on still keeping things vague, and the bulk of it is just boring Gordanian fighting? It's a bit strange to make an origin episode while still not actually showing us Robin's origin as Batman's protege or Cyborg's accident that caused his transformation or Beast Boy leaving the Doom Patrol. So despite the coolness of having a prequel episode, it all ended up being a bit uninteresting. And honestly the fifth season biggest problem isn't the fact that it features the main cast so little, it's just that the underwhelming episodes outweigh the good ones.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Gordanians are a race of reptilian slave-traders in the comics, and their depiction in the comics and their antagonism with the Tamaraneans are more or less similar with their comic counterparts.
• The robber talking to Robin about how "this isn't your town, Aren't you supposed to be with-" is definitely an allusion to Batman. Additionally, we get some allusions to Robin's theme from The New Batman Adventures. 
• Robotman is briefly mentioned by Beast Boy when he first meets Cyborg.

Teen Titans S05E09 Review: Velocitron

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 9: Revved Up

It's one of the few wacky episodes in the fifth season, this time featuring the obligatory race episode. It's not quite as insanely hilarious as the one in Batman: Brave and the Bold (one of the few episodes I've seen) but it's still good fun. The main villain, Ding Dong Daddy, stole a briefcase containing something important -- but classified -- to Robin, and the only way to get it back is through a race... that eventually involves like the entirety of the zanier part of the Teen Titans cast. It's a refreshing bit of madcap fun that returns to the Titans' older roots.

The contents of the case is never really revealed, and I thought it's a bit weird (a Pulp Fiction reference?) but it doesn't matter. The main point of the episode is, after all, the race! And boy, what insanity we got in the race. Between the insane look of the villains' race cars, and the cool surprise team-up between Robin and Red X -- always cool to have Red X back in the show -- it's a very fun episode that doesn't take itself seriously. Maybe the whole point of the briefcase's contents being a secret to the audience is an allusion to how Red X's identity is never revealed to us either? I dunno.

There are a lot of stupidly fun moments in the episode, with Gizmo making a very welcome minor role as the most vocal of the villain racers with his very weird single-wheel car, and Starfire and Raven's attempt to blend in with a bunch of cosplayers.

But easily the best part is the weird cars that the villains drive. They don't really talk, but Mumbo drives a huge top-hat with wheels, Puppet King drives a huge jack-in-the-box, Control Freak drives a remote-themed car, Dr Light drives a fucking lightbulb, Mad Mod drives a the god damned BIG BEN... and Red X destroying all of them is a hoot. Does it make sense in the whole bigger picture of the Brotherhood of Evil plot, that a huge chunk of them would just participate in the race? And for Red X to randomly betray the Brotherhood? No, but hey, it's fun so I don't care. Beast Boy and Cyborg's rather long scene with the car-destroying gremlins is probably the only one that didn't work for me, and Ding Dong Daddy alternates between being ridiculous fun and being annoying, but it's a pretty decent fun episode.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Ding Dong Daddy is an actual villain from the comics! He was in one of the earliest Teen Titans issues that functioned more of a PSA than an actual superhero story, where "Ding Dong Daddy" Dowd is this criminal that hired high school dropouts using his hot rod store as a front. Of course, needless to say, this version of the character is twenty times more entertaining than his comic-book counterpart.
• Other villains that participated in the race include: Gizmo, Mumbo, Puppet King, Control Freak, Johnny Rancid, Fang, Kitten, Mad Mod, Dr Light and... whoever is in that yellow car. Adonis, I think?
• There's a small cameo of Slade as a doll in one of the Robin baby pictures.

Teen Titans S05E08 Review: Fastest Kid Alive

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 8: Lightspeed

Every superhero series generally likes to have an episode that has the POV from the villains of the show, and it's surprising that it took Teen Titans five seasons before doing one. Having Slade or Trigon be the POV character would be too dark and serious for Teen Titans, so they used the HIVE Five instead, including a fun fourth wall moment where they crash the opening credits and walk up the screen.

This is actually one of my favourite episodes of Teen Titans's fifth season, where it shows that, yes, they can introduce interesting conflict with older supporting characters like Jinx and introduce a honorary Titan that isn't just cool-and-heroic. Kid Flash is impulsive, flirty and scarily competent. Part of it is the awesome power of super-speed that allow him to beguile the six members of the HIVE Five (yes, they lampshade how the name makes no sense in-universe as well).

But the star of the episode is actually Jinx, a character that barely got much screentime. The main member of the HIVE trio throughout Teen Titans' run has always been Gizmo, who even appeared in several other episodes without Mammoth and Jinx tagging along. But here we see an aspect of Jinx we never saw before -- that she craves respect. And after four seasons of constantly being defeated and humiliated by the Titans despite being introduced as top of their class in HIVE Academy, well, they've grown to basically Team Rocket levels of being punching bags. Jinx sees the initiation into the Brotherhood of Evil as their big break for being taken seriously. And from Madame Rogue's interactions with Jinx this episode, it's fair to see why Jinx is so desperate for respect. Despite being equals with the Teen Titans in the earlier seasons, here the Brotherhood sees the Titans as this threat that requires a huge assembly of villains to take down, whereas the HIVE Five are just... well, those villain kids.

And honestly, considering the rankings of the HIVE Five, poor Jinx has her work cut out for her. Billy Numerous is dumb and Mammoth is even dumber, Gizmo is crazy and childish, and Kyd Wykkyd, despite looking cool with all his magic Batman thing, is silent and passive. Only See-More is competent in a way, and despite having like five lines throughout the entirety of the show, See-More is the only one that wants to lend Jinx assistance in her attempt to take down Kid Flash. The other more vocal members of the HIVE Five -- Gizmo, Billy and Mammoth -- are all like 'yeah, whatevs' regarding the Brotherhood.

Only Jinx and See-More (really, really wished See-More shows up more in the series with his weirdly gross eyeball balloon powers) end up taking the whole thing seriously enough to hunt down Kid Flash, and end up actually capturing him with a mixture of Jinx pretending to defect and an ambush... but Kid Flash himself breaks free and trashes the HIVE Five's base... right when Madame Rogue shows up to collect their prize. Jinx idolizes Madame Rogue a lot, but Rogue sees the HIVE Five only as incompetent little shits unable to even retain a superhero they captured.

The final leg of the episode has Jinx (and See-More) race against Madame Rogue to capture Kid Flash, and it's a fun bit where you aren't sure who you're rooting for. Jinx's plight of wanting to be recognized by her idol and her frustration at the world in general, and her own insecurities of whether being a supervillain is what she wants for her life, is very relatable... but on the other hand, Kid Flash is the good guy and you want him to escape, which would totally ruin Jinx's plans.

This ends with a pretty cool moment where Jinx actually manages to capture Kid Flash (who, by the way, managed to defeat Rogue), but Madame Rogue just knocks Jinx aside and insults her. Now idol or no idol, Jinx has enough respect and dignity (plus all the doubts that Kid Flash inserted within her) to free Kid Flash and blast the shit out of Madame Rogue with her hex blasts. It's a pretty cool moment for her, and this actually causes Rogue to respect her more than actually capturing Kid Flash.

The end of the episode features her still going back with her HIVE buddies, but she picks up the rose that Kid Flash leaves behind, leaving her ultimate decision still ambiguous. She ended up getting the respect she so craves from Madame Rogue... but is that what she really wants?

This is how you do guest star roles, really, developing Jinx from just a one-note evil-bitch villain into a far more interesting character that went through a fair bit of character development over the course of twenty minutes, while also giving newcomer Kid Flash and returning characters See-More and Madame Rogue a fair chance to show off their personalities as well. Compared to the rather generic Kole, Gnarrk, babysitting kids and Titans East, this episode just stands so much higher in terms of character writing... granted, I'd rather wished Jinx reached the 'maybe I can be a good hero' conclusion herself instead of having Kid Flash spell it out for her so many times, but I can live with it. Shame that a good chunk of the fandom can't look past the episode not starring any of the Teen Titans and ruining Cyborg-Jinx shipping.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Kid Flash, a.k.a. Wally West, is the sidekick of (of course) the Flash. After Barry Allen's death he would take over the mantle of the Flash and become the third bearer of the name. Wally is pretty notable in the comics as being one of the first five Teen Titans, and stars as the Flash in Justice League and as Kid Flash in Young Justice. Michael Rosenbaum, voice actor of Flash in Justice League, reprises his role as Kid Flash here.
• The Fearsome HIVE Five have replaced Private HIVE with Kyd Wykkyd and Billy Numerous since the events of 'Mother Mae-Eye'. While Billy has starred in an episode before, this is Kyd Wykkyd's first role in a non-cameo manner.

Teen Titans S05E07 Review: Babysitting

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 7: Hide and Seek

After two episodes with the 'whole team + side guest' formula, we return to a 'one Titan + guest stars' formula used in Trust. This time, it's Raven that gets the starring slot, with the other Titans apparently in a mission elsewhere and Beast Boy acting as the unhelpful mission control over Raven's T-communicator. The whole concept of the episode is a setup for zany hijinks. What happens when Raven, Little Miss Antisocial herself, is forced to babysit a bunch of four-year-old kids, having to play entertainer as well as protector when Monsieur Mallah shows up to fuck them up? 

Raven was scripted wonderfully in this episode, with her irritation at being stuck on a mission that's absolutely counter to her personality being conveyed wonderfully as her goth/emo passive-aggressiveness absolutely fails when dealing with five-year-olds fighting over a blanket or vomiting over travel-sickness. It's also hilarious to have Raven try to entertain the kids by telling stories and absolutely scaring the shit out of them and quickly concluding it with "my friends saved me and we all ate cake the end." We get some utterly awesome fighting scenes too with a couple of cool set pieces when Mallah attacks them on the cable car and later on the train. And the battle between Mallah and the imagination-created giant teddy bear is pretty fun, too.

Of course, just why they couldn't have taken the T-jet or Cyborg's T-car or even used Raven's ability to cloak people within her shadow-raven form is never explained. Yeah, Teether gets sick when you use platforms, but what about all the other ways? And why bring them to the monks, who prove to be immediately unable to protect the kids when Mallah decides to attack with a tank? 

Add that to the fact that Melvin, Timmy and Teether are actually all quite annoying little shits, too, that it's a bit hard to really care for the little brats. The constant reminders that, hey, Melvin has a imaginary friend and Timmy is a little shit that needs some proper discipline really makes it hard to care for the kids. Maybe have another Titan (Starfire feels clueless and is basically a big baby that can tick Raven off) show up to be a less-irritating character for Raven to bounce dialogue off of, and reduce the kids from three to two or one? I dunno.

Despite this the episode is still quite decent fun, with Raven managing to carry the episode mostly on her own back, so despite the strange logical holes that the episode wants us to jump through, it's still a pretty decent episode if you can get over the kids' annoyance factor. Definitely not the best episode in the fifth season, but it's one that I liked a fair bit more than I remembered it to be.

Teen Titans S05E06 Review: Odd Couple

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 6: Kole

It's another episode that uses the 'Teen Titans hang out with a guest star' thing again, this time featuring a weird Savage Land-esque location in the middle of the Antarctic, as well as the relatively more obscure titans Kole and Gnarrk. It's a fun little concept that... really didn't do that much with its concept. The episode starts with the Titans fighting Doctor Light (have I told you how much I love Teen Titans' version of Dr Light?) in the Antarctic where he's trying to siphon the aurora or something to empower his light-based doomsday weapon. After several episodes of disappointing action that never lives up to the big action scenes promised with the Doom Patrol opener (though to be fair, Snowblind's plot really didn't lend itself to good action scenes) we get a couple of impressive bit both in the beginning and the end of the episode with Doctor Light being this final boss in the center fighting the Titans, and later combined with Kole and Gnarrk.

The thing, really, is probably how similar it is to previous episodes guest-starring a single (or two, in this case) character. While the setting and the characters and the powers are different, it's retreading most of the same ground and the somewhat-interesting Savage Land setting ended up being nothing but a backdrop. The two new honorary Titans are Kole and Gnarrk... who are both two relatively obscure Titans that never interacted in the comics. Kole is pretty cute, this little pink-haired excited girl that's just happy to hang out with the Titans, while Gnarrk is a dumb caveman that's jealous that Kole is having such good time with Cyborg that are so obviously superior to Gnark's caveman ugga-ugga-ing. I find Gnarrk somewhat irritating, honestly. Not every character with a speech impediment can be Groot, and Gnarrk's just... well, very one-note.

The little sub-plot of Gnarrk's jealousy and inadequacy is self-imposed and unimpressive, though Dr. Light kidnapping Kole to use her as a prism in his doomsday weapon is a nice way to integrate the villain to the new-Titan-introduction plot. All things considered the plot felt quite generic, and despite the cool redesign of Kole (Kole's design is one of my favourite comic-to-cartoon translations that this show makes) both she and Gnarrk really failed to be interesting, and I think that's one of the biggest problems of the guest stars like Speedy, Aqualad, Mas y Menos, Hot Spot, Kole, et cetera. While the Teen Titans themselves are very interesting and fleshed-out, the guest stars tend to be one-note and generically heroic, with one or two small conflict balls like Gnarrk's jealousy or Red Star's cowardice that's ironed out at the end of the episode... and they really cold afford to be far more interesting than that. Justice League Unlimited manages to do this with a far larger cast and far smaller screentime for the characters it features, so it's a bit of a shame that Teen Titans never quite got the same amount of grip on its guest stars. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• In the comics, Kole Weathers was genetically modified by her paranoid scientist father to survive a nuclear holocaust, and gained the ability to create silicon crystals at will -- instead of transforming into super-hard crystals as she did in this cartoon. Kole never officially joined the Teen Titans team, but was considered a member by most characters involved. She was killed during Crisis of the Infinite Earths, and has remained dead ever since. 
• Gnarrk is a time-displaced neanderthal that was frozen in ice with some mystical comet thing keeping him alive for a relatively long time until Lilith Clay/Omen (who was Gnarrk's love interest instead of Kole in the comics) of the Teen Titans discovered him frozen in ice. While still grunting and gnarrking all the time, the comet gave him heightened intelligence beyond normal cavemen, and he served as a member of the Teen Titans until the comet's power ran out and he expired. 
• The Journey to the Center of the Earth/Savage Land style land that the Titans find themselves in is probably supposed to be Skartaris if we're going by DC lore, which is the setting of the Warlord comic book series. When we reach Justice League Unlimited's "Chaos at the Earth's Core" episode, we'll talk more about it.

Teen Titans S05E05 Review: Comrade

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 5: Snowblind

After two episodes that are mostly disappointing and confusing respectively, Teen Titans finally got a pretty good episode with Snowblind, which manages to both introduce yet another new character while still delivering a good story and putting a nice highlight on a member of the central cast. Teen Titans' sudden change in tone from a Superfriends-style divorced-from-normal-DC-continuity comedy-action show into something that suddenly tries to incorporate a huge chunk of comic-book Teen Titans lore is a bit jarring, but it's one that would've been great if it was all handled the way that Snowblind was, where the main cast isn't unceremoniously shoved aside, but still participated in the plot even if in a reduced role.

It's a bit of a shame that the plot was honestly a bit predictable and the episode suffers a little for it. A rampaging energy monster in a Russian town, as well as the locals' insistence that one of their own caused the disaster, causes the Titans to hunt down and find Red Star. It's a pretty common sci-fi and superhero story to tell, where the person with monstrous power isn't actually responsible for the monster plaguing the local town, though here there's a small twist to the formula that it isn't the villain-of-the-week that's responsible, but rather Red Star himself is tangentially responsible -- his excess siphoned energy has manifested into an energy monster.

Starfire is the Titan that the episode focuses the most on in this episode, being the one that can withstand radiation due to her own starbolt powers, and she meets and befriends Red Star, who's holed himself up in a military bunker. There's a bit of a strange character moment where Starfire charges into battle and leaves the other Titans behind recklessly and collapses in the cold, but her subsequent scenes of bonding with Red Star over being outcasts of some kind finding a place in the world is pretty well-done. This leads to Starfire confronting Red Star over his 'cowardice', which is something Starfire herself has had problems with before -- her focus episodes in the first two seasons all revolve around her lack of self-esteem and fitting in.

There's also something slightly different compared to traditional Teen Titans episodes where we get a short backstory at Red Star's powers, where he was part of a super-soldier program, which is something I appreciate but might be jarring for viewers not used to it. Red Star's role as a tragic being that's forced to painfully store his excess energy every now and then is well-told and portrayed, which is a shame that he was forced to undergo a heroic sacrifice at the end, happy to have briefly made friends and set the villagers straight before he brings the radiation monster into orbit and explodes with it.

I think the episode could've done a lot better by not being so damned depressing, really, though for the most part I actually liked it for trying different avenues at storytelling instead of repeating yet another 'insane' episode format from the first four seasons. I really think throwing in the Brotherhood of Evil plotline -- maybe they're after Red Star too -- could've spiced things up, though that would kind of defeat the whole 'your inner monsters' thing that the episode probably meant to tell us. Could've been better if we had more focus on exploring Red Star's character beyond his guilt-riddled moping instead of focusing on the mystery, but it's still a nice, melancholic episode.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Red Star, real name Lenoid Kovar, is the first Russian superhero in the DC universe after he was exposed to radiation from a crashed spaceship and obtained radiation powers. Red Star's first superhero name was actually Starfire (which probably explains why he was paired up with Starfire in this cartoon) before Leonid changes his codename to Red Star. He doesn't have the fancy furry hat in the comics, though.

Teen Titans S05E04 Review: Fuck Control Freak

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 4: For Real

One of my least favourite episodes of the Teen Titans is definitely this episode. The premise of the episode is decent enough, bring back Titans East and have them fight Control Freak in wacky hijinks. Except that, well, the wacky hijinks that Control Freak designs for them are so underwhelming and non-threatening that it's hard to even enjoy it. A robotic shark? A bomb under a train? Please. They had so much insanity designing the last Control Freak episode, seriously, this one was absolutely boring. Add that to the fact that Control Freak is an insanely irritating piece of shit only salvaged by the weird pop culture references he makes... yeah. Control Freak in this episode is just utterly irritating. No, the odd fourth-wall-breaking doesn't immediately elevate a character to Deadpool-level meta fun.

The episode spends so much time having Control Freak talk about how the main Teen Titans team aren't around, zooming around with his new 'travel through TV signals' power... and then proceeding to do absolutely nothing with them. Yeah, the main Titans team are off on a mission to like Antarctica or something... but couldn't we have actually seen the Titans leave the tower and fight a little instead of two lines from Cyborg on the T-communicator? JLU had several times showing the main team doing stuff off-screen without really involving them, why couldn't the Titans move the main team aside more gently?

The Titans East team isn't one that I dislike, though there's a lot of hatred directed their way by the fandom. Possibly because their episodes kind of suck. Not the Titans East members themselves, but the episodes they star in generally tend to suck. Maybe because neither Speedy nor Aqualad really had much of a personality beyond being 'cool Robin clones', Bumblebee is just an exasperated Team Mom, and Mas y Menos is hilarious for like the first ten seconds you know them before they are just a borderline-irritating visual gag. The episode really could've given them actual focus, given Speedy or Aqualad something more distinctive beyond 'cool arrow guy' and 'cool fish guy'. But also the character receiving the main bulk of the screentime is Control Freak, which, wow, fuck that dude. Between his nasal voice acting, his silly fourth-wall-breaking "let's talk to people in internet forums" bullshit, it all adds up to nothing but irritation.

And it would be interesting, really, if this B-team was given something interesting to do, but after a boring and quick Control Freak chase scene, we get... 'threats tailored to fit the individual Titan'... which meant... Aqualad has to fight a robot shark, Bumblebee had to stop an exploding bomb, Mas y Menos had to press two buttons at the same time, Speedy had to... do some shit that involves saving people, I totally forgot and it was an hour ago that I watched this episode. This episode had such a boring one, and my brief notes end up being three dozen variations of "fuck Control Freak" and "Control Freak is annoying".

Overall... yeah, I dunno what else I can say. Control Freak is annoying. Thankfully this is his last speaking role, so he can fuck off and die. Compared to the Mad Mod episodes, or the Mumbo episodes, or even Control Freak's last outing, this one is just so bland.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Andre LeBlanc is a master jewel thief from France that fought the Teen Titans several times. That's... all there is about the character, really. 

Teen Titans S05E03 Review: Kidnapping Titans

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 3: Trust

The first in the many episodes to focus on the 'Titan Hunt', the fifth season tries to not follow the steps that the fourth season did, which was to alternate super-serious-demons-are-coming episode with insane Tofu Aliens Invading ones. 

This is also the first of many episodes to just feature only one or two of the core Titans (this episode features almost exclusively Robin, with Starfire having around a minute of screentime early on) and have a different guest star superhero, trying to ape the way that Justice League Unlimited operates. And honestly I'm fine with it! If anything, it kind of highlights the more global and high-stakes tone that the fifth season had. That's not the problem with this episode. Really, the biggest problem was the stupidity that Robin and Hot Spot had throughout this episode.

The episode starts off quite promising, showing Wildebeest, one of the guest Titans from one of the best season two episodes, be hunted down, knocked out and his communicator destroyed. We then cut away to Hot Spot, who's awesome and being a superhero -- Hot Spot does give the showmakers ample opportunities to deliver some insane-looking fire action. 

But between Madame Rogue trying to trick Hot Spot by pretending to be Robin, the real Robin shows up, the two Robins fight, Rogue is actually impersonating Hot Spot, et cetera, et cetera. The shapeshifting bit ends up being quite confusing, and honestly both Robin and Hot Spot made some really stupid calls. Rogue being obviously Rogue when she tells Hot Spot to power down like two dozen times ends up being a dead giveaway too, and Hot Spot being so reckless and brash causes the dude to feel like a bit of a moron. The resulting ending, with Hot Spot apparently buried under a building and Wildebeest apparently left for dead (we know they're not, but still) and Madame Rogue winning and obtaining the T-communicator, ends as a depressing ending to a pretty confusing and bland episode.

Overall, while Madame Rogue had some pretty menacing and threatening appearances with her paranoia-inducing powers,the attempt to keep the audience guessing which of the superheroes is actually Madame Rogue ends up kind of falling short, leading to a muddled mess where both Robin and Hot Spot come off as incompetent. 

Teen Titans S05E01-02 Review: The Doom Patrol & A Change of Tone

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episodes 1-2: Homecoming

Season Five is one of the most contested seasons of Teen Titans for being the one that's the most... different. It tries to shake up the formula by actually being more serious, in a way, but also by suddenly introducing so much DC lore. It's nowhere as overloading as Justice League Unlimited or Young Justice is, and it still retains its insane fun attitude towards most of everything, but a lot of people dislike it for, well, trying out so many different things at the same time. We'll see about the five main Titans being out of focus in future episodes, but right now let's just take a moment to note how bizarre (and awesome) it is to suddenly have origin stories, real names, and adult mentor figures!

It's a bit of a soft origin story for Beast Boy. We don't exactly learn how he got his powers, but we do know that Beast Boy had a stint when he was younger as a member of this superhero group, the Doom Patrol, which we meet here. The Doom Patrol sends a distress call that Beast Boy and the Titans respond to... only for Beast Boy to find that the team's leader, Mento, is still cold-hearted and still treats Beast Boy (and by association the Titans) as children. There's a nice moment of nine superheroes letting loose with their powers as they fight the Brotherhood of Evil, led by the Brain and his French gorilla butler buddy Monsieur Mallah (comic book villains are awesome).

While one doomsday weapon was destroyed, Beast Boy is forced between a decision of stopping Brain and Mallah (and probably fail, considering how Brain took out several of the others on his own) or rescue his teammates. While Robin is supportive of Beast Boy's decision and notes how the two groups are now able to hunt down the Brotherhood, Mento is angry at Beast Boy for unable to make the hard decisions. In cartoon-land, I mean, Beast Boy's actions might be justified, but in real world what's to say that the delay that they had didn't cause Brain to unleash his Armageddon weapon on a city? It's something that's a bit deep than your normal Teen Titans fare, but it's one that I welcome wholeheartedly.

The first part ends up there as a pretty great introduction to the Doom Patrol, with its core four members given decent screentime, even if Mento and Robot-Man do get the bulk of the interactions. It's very, very interesting how the Doom Patrol and Beast Boy just alternate between calling them by their code names and their real names on the drop of a hat when literally no one else in the entire series has been called by their real name for four whole seasons, unless you count Cyborg masquerading as 'Stone' and the brief background 'Dick Grayson' cameo.

But the second part was... a bit more irritating. The fight scenes in the second part were absolutely amazing, of course, but the storytelling leaves something to be desired after the strong first part. We get Mento's jerkassiness ramped up to eleven. While in the first part he just felt like a harder yet ultimately logical leader, here he's just a bit of an idiot, and more than that he's a huge jackass. The rest of the Patrol devolve from being somewhat interesting in their limited screentime last episode to being generic yes-men in the second one, and honestly it just sucks out a lot of the joy from the Doom Patrol scenes... which lasted, like, the entire episode. None of the 'we're victims to our powers' bit from the comics surfaced, and Elasti-Girl, Robotman and Negative Man can all be lumped together as a single sentence: "we follow Mento, but we think he's too hard, but we follow him anyway."

Was it really necessary to spend nearly the entirety of the twenty-minute episode runtime to show the Doom Patrol being taken out one by one and apparently-left-for-dead-except-we-know-it-isn't-the-case? And even so, there's really no reason for Mento to refuse the Teen Titans' help. I mean, yeah, he doesn't want to risk any more than he has to, maybe, but Starfire and Raven alone are big enough guns that they might not even lose a single one. Of course near the end of the episode, Beast Boy gets Mento to realize that he's a huge dick, but fortunately the Titans have apparently rescued the other three Doom Patrol members. They fight Brain and Brain gets away -- identical to the first part, honestly, except the Brotherhood has two new villains in their ranks (General Immortus and Madame Rogue). It's honestly very boring and repetitive, especially coming off the first part.

It really feels a bit redundant, to be honest, since all of these could've been condensed into one episode, or honestly just cut out entirely. Both episodes end with the Brain's superweapon being somewhat disabled and him getting away, and the main catalyst of both shows Beast Boy and Mento disagreeing... only the second part has Mento be an unreasonable jackass. The second part really felt like an unfinished draft of the first episode.

There was a great moment at the end where the Brain looms over several monitor screens showing the Titans and their allies as he monologues to a huge assembly of past Teen Titans villains... which is awesome. But the rest of the second part is quite disappointing.

Still, I quite like the fifth season for its own merits, so don't write it off just yet, eh?


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Beast Boy's first name is revealed to be Garfield at the end of the episode, and apparently none of the Teen Titans know this fact. Huh.
• In the comics, before joining the Teen Titans, Beast Boy was indeed part of the Doom Patrol. In fact for a good chunk of the New Teen Titans comic that this cartoon is based on, Beast Boy actually wore a white/red costume and is known as Changeling, while the black-purple suit (and mask) and the Beast Boy name was Garfield's look during his tenure in the Doom Patrol. It's not until the cartoon made the 'Beast Boy' name popular that he re-adapted the name once more in the comics.
• The Doom Patrol was an old DC superhero team that was pretty popular in the 60's and later the 80's for simply taking the weirdness of superheroing and ramping it up, but has been sorely under-represented in modern DC comics, with a few minor roles here and there in the big titles, and brief appearances in Batman: the Brave and the Bold. In fact, most adaptations prefer to focus on Beast Boy and the Brotherhood of Evil, the former being more associated with the Teen Titans group and the latter having fought other superhero teams as well. The roster here is more or less identical to the very first team, sans Chief (Niles Caulder), who's basically Professor X.
• Mento: Steve Dayton is a rich man with a helmet that enhances his telepathic powers, and is one of the main fighters of the Doom Patrol. His personality in the cartoon kind of crosses over a bit with Chief as the unreasonable, rather dickish leader.
• Robotman: Cliff Steele is the only member to have served in every incarnation of the Doom Patrol. After an accident with a race car destroyed his human body, his brain was placed inside a robot by Chief and thus after some soul-searching he joined the Doom Patrol.
• Elasti-Girl: No connection to the Incredibles character, who was created more than 5 decades after DC's Elasti-Girl. Rita Farr is an actress that was exposed to certain strange gases that allow her to shrink or enlarge her body at will. Both in the cartoon and the comics, Rita became Beast Boy's surrogate mother. 
• Negative Man: Larry Trainor was exposed to space radiation while flying a plane, and this caused him to have to be wrapped in bandages almost permanently. He can send out a radioactive projection of himself out of his body, but not for an extended period of time.
• The Brotherhood of Evil was first introduced as the Doom Patrol's enemies, but have fought various other superheroes later on. The lineup here features the four founding members of the Brotherhood, sans Garguax.
• Brain: An until-now-still-nameless scientist was caught in an accident, and he placed his brain in a robotic jar. Can't get more supervillainy than that! The Brain leads the Brotherhood of Evil and has faced off against the Doom Patrol, Justice League and Teen Titans several times. In the comics he became gay lovers with his gorilla butler Mallah, in undoubtedly the weirdest comic book couplings ever and understandably doesn't exist in any of the Brotherhood's adaptations into the various DC cartroons.
• Monsieur Mallah: Mallah is a gorilla who's experimented on by Brain to have heightened intelligence and skill with firearms. He's an intelligent gorilla that speaks in French! How awesome is he? Quite a fair bit.
• Madame Rogue: Laura DeMille was an actress that was disfigured in an accident. The Brain experimented on her and gave her the power to transform her face, and later on augmented with limb-stretchy powers. Basically a less-muddy version of Clayface. 
• General Immortus: A very long-lived man that's a genius at tactical warfare, General Immortus prolonged his life with alchemical potions. He's just an old dude, really. 
• Among the monitors that the Brain observes at the end of the episode, in addition to the five core Teen Titans and the Doom Patrol, we get cameos by:
• Titans we've seen before: Speedy, Aqualad, Bumblebee, Mas y Menos, Hot Spot, Wildebeest, Tramm, Thunder and Lightning.
• Characters that we haven't seen and will see this season: Kid Flash, Red Star, Jericho, Bushido, Kilowatt, Pantha, Argent, Jericho and Wonder Girl.
• The group of villains assembled by Brain, likewise, feature villains that we've both seen before and new ones... including all the students at HIVE academy, some of which aren't named yet.
• Returning villains: Billy Numerous, Dr. Light, Mammoth, Gizmo, Jinx, Cinderblock, Red X, Adonis, Trident, Puppet King, Johnny Rancid, Mumbo Jumbo, Professor Chang, Plasmus, Kyd Wykkyd, Angel, Warp, Punk Rocket, Killer Moth, Kardiak, XL Terrestrial, Atlas, Katarou, Control Freak, Wintergreen, HIVE Headmistress, INSTIGATOR, "Wrestling Star", Kitten, Fang, Mad Mod, Steamroller, Mother Mae-Eye, the Witch, Malchior, Master of Games, Overload, the Source, See-More, Private HIVE
• New villains: Psimon, Phobia, Andre LeBlanc, Chesire, Ding-Dong Daddy
• Of course, among the returning villains there are some that simply doesn't make sense. Warp was last seen turned into a baby, Malchior was sealed in Raven's book, the Witch was from thousands of years in the past, Puppet King's soul was damned to hell or something. Among the villains that the Titans have faced in the past only the major arc villains (Slade, Brother Blood, Trigon) and Blackfire are absent.

Teen Titans S04E13 Review: Azarath Metrion Zinthos

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 13: The End, Part 3

Sadly, the whole Trigon arc ended up being a bit underwhelming. That's not to say that it's flat-out bad (it's still better than Brother Blood in season three), it's just that for all the big foreshadowings and buildup, the final two episodes ended up being a bit m'eh. And definitely compared with the Slade and Terra arcs of the first two seasons, or with the finale episodes like 'Starcrossed' over in Justice League, the Light episodes in Young Justice or the Darkseid episodes in Superman: TAS...yeah, Teen Titans is more about comedy and whatnot, but the epicness of what's supposed to be the series finale honestly just isn't as much as I'd prefer.

A good chunk is simply because, well, Trigon is more of a plot device than an actual villain. And while he's a mite more interesting than Brother Blood due to his interactions with Raven, he's way too content to let his Negaclone Teen Titan army fight the little insects while he sits and does absolutely nothing. He even quickly tells both the audience and the Titans that, yeah, he knows of Robin's attempt to travel through hell and save Raven's soul or whatever, but he just doesn't care, because Raven's gone forever.

Mind you, Raven is kind of gone. She's reduced to a confused little girl, and Robin tries his best to comfort her. Robin's role here is kind of appropriate, and while it might just be favoritism for the 'main male character' of the show, Robin is the one closest to Raven, having the most understanding about her ordeals way back in 'Birthmark'. Yeah, Beast Boy might be the one who shares shippy moments with Raven, but Robin and Raven are kind of bound by a bond of mutual understanding, of shitty imposing fathers and being thrust into a destiny he doesn't want. Sharing a mind back in that one season 3 episode probably helped them to understand each other a fair bit, too.

Sadly, the process of getting little Raven to trust Robin ends up just being him saving her from certain death, then telling her stories of how brave she is. Raven's main problem -- her nihilistic, defeatist attitude, finally comes to form as the amnesiac mini-Raven shouts at Robin about how there's no hope for Trigon has won, and Robin's line, "I'll have to have enough hope for the both of us"... is a bit anticlimactic as far as dramatic revelations go. This whole sequence really isn't bad per se, but definitely could've used a couple more revisions. Honestly the whole Chibi-Raven thing really could've been a good character growth moment for Raven, but the fact that it felt like she was kind of stripped of any agency until she recognizes the good in herself and decides to fight makes her kiddification nothing more than a distraction so the plot can run its course until like near the end of the allotted runtime.

Slade, meanwhile, fights the gatekeeper of hell and kills him, which is a cool action scene, if nothing else but a bit of a distracting subplot from the whole Trigon thing. Slade blows up the demon with a bomb, throwing him into hell lava, before regaining his flesh again. It's at around this point that the three surface-bound Titans switch partners and take out the Negaclones, upon which they're almost immediately routed by another Magma Rager army. Yeah, poor Cyborg, Starfire and Beast Boy are definitely filler here.

Trigon has a random "I WILL ENSLAVE THE UNIVERSE" moment which really felt like he felt bored sitting for almost the entirety of two episodes, while the Teen Titans discuss chibi-Raven's situation. The Titans and a vengeful, demon-axe-wielding Slade, team up and damage Trigon enough to break his horn, but he knocks everyone down. Raven finally stands up and shields her friends, causing Trigon to finally have some personality. Like all abusive fuckers, he tries to assert his authority over his daughter, telling her that he is her creator and her master, that she exists only to serve him, and she is inferior to her father's power.

Raven transforms quite epically into her White Raven form, denies Trigon's shitty excuse of parentage, notes that the (now dead) Azarath monks and the Teen Titans are her true family, and just unleashes the power of white energy blasts unto Trigon's body. One utterly epic Azarath Metrion Zinthos later, and Trigon is gone, and all his evil magic is reversed. Again, it would be nice to have some logic as to where Raven got her power-up from, and a lot of the 'kid Raven' and 'negatitans' screentime really could've been better served being utilized as, like, a subplot to have them go around and try to collect plot coupons from Azarath or something to justify Raven's power-up.

Robin and Raven share a bit of a moment where Robin tells Raven that she is the most hopeful of them and kept up hope and kept on fighting (despite being reduced to a kid for two episodes because she thinks the situation is hopeless okay um) and the Titans are now a big happy family, with Raven back to wearing blue and apparently free of influences of her father, having outgrown a very oppressive parent.

It's a bit of a pretty generic ending, honestly, although Raven's awesome moment of standing up against her father is badass as all hell. Raven suddenly growing up, turning into White Raven and unleashing a plot device blast that kills/seals Trigon is very convenient, kind of like the random instant-Cyborg-healing in season three, but at least with magic and emotional demonic powers in play there's more justification here. There's way too much clutter in this final leg of the plotline, though, which is a shame because Raven and Trigon's story is really fascinating. It's a shame that they couldn't properly juggle it and give the relationship the attention it deserves. It's not outright bad at all, but it just fails to stand up to the buildup that has been done. 

Teen Titans S04E12 Review: Chibi-Raven and Evil Negaclones

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 Sauron Trigon seems to just be a convoluted excuse to get Robin and Slade together.

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.