"Teen Titans Season 2" From Twinkling to Shining
I'll preface this by saying that I already sort of had an idea of what was going to happen by the end of this season. After all, I was pretty familiar with the Judas Contract, and its pretty rare choices of having both an (unnecessary) underage relationship and an actual Teen Titan dying. Despite this knowledge, this season still managed to blow me away.
While I didn't actually have any major complaints involving last season, it was certainly lacking this sort of strong narrative or voice that I found so endearing with other animated TV shows such as Young Justice. However, with the second season Teen Titans really turns it up a notch, going from a show that I'd play in the background while multitasking, to a show that demanded my absolute attention because of how compelling it was.
Even from the first couple of episodes, the show introduces concepts that are much more captivating, moving away from stories such as "Cyborg builds a car" to "Starfire is stuck in a future where the Titans are gone". For me, it finally felt as if the writers figured out how to write the squad, with storylines that still had a focus on character growth, but with much stronger voices emphasizing the teen in Teen Titans.
Not to mention, this season's focus Terra was fantastic, and even if I felt that she should have been more involved in this season, it was great for them to actually flesh her character out with real and believable motivations. Too often in comic book stories are there flimsy reasons for characters to act irrationally but by Terra actually did feel like a real teenager, who was simply looking for control in powers that have stripped her of any sort of stability in life.
However, despite this strong praise I do have some critiques from this season. Specifically why does episode 11 of season 2 exist? The episode is called "Fractured" and revolves around this nonsensical storyline that feels much more filler than anything else. Frankly it felt more like season 1 with its sort of hit or miss storylines while also being shoved in the middle of the climax of the Terra arc, which I so desperately wanted to see. Many times have I seen this show make odd continuity decisions that almost certainly would leave most viewers confused and grasping for straws.
Take for example episode 9 "Winner Takes All" which revolves around an intergalactic tournament involving the best teenage superheroes (and gizmo) to determine the strongest of them all. This is only the 3rd time Gizmo shows up despite the fact that the pilot of the entire series sets up HIVE as this opposing supervillain team to the Teen Titans. I just felt like it was odd to barely show them in the first two seasons even if the show deviated heavily from what the original pilot showed.
Moreover, why wasn't there more Terra? I understand not wanting to show what she did with Slade in order to maintain this level of secrecy involving how he functions, but surely they could have done more to flesh out her character. Despite being the focus of this season, she leaves the Titans after about 1 episode and is never seen for a large portion of the middle season until she attempts to rejoin. As someone who really enjoyed the parts that focused on her this season it would have been cool to see her more incorporated even if I did enjoy many of the middle episodes.
Final Score: 80/100
Overall, this season was fantastic and I think the show really started to show its true colours by the end of it. The writers finally found a way to have the voices of basically all characters to shine through and frankly, the Terra-Slade storyline was much more interesting than the overarching Slade-Robin storyline of the previous season. While I still would recommend people watch the first season of Teen Titans I do have to admit that the magic really starts taking place with the second.
While I didn't actually have any major complaints involving last season, it was certainly lacking this sort of strong narrative or voice that I found so endearing with other animated TV shows such as Young Justice. However, with the second season Teen Titans really turns it up a notch, going from a show that I'd play in the background while multitasking, to a show that demanded my absolute attention because of how compelling it was.
Even from the first couple of episodes, the show introduces concepts that are much more captivating, moving away from stories such as "Cyborg builds a car" to "Starfire is stuck in a future where the Titans are gone". For me, it finally felt as if the writers figured out how to write the squad, with storylines that still had a focus on character growth, but with much stronger voices emphasizing the teen in Teen Titans.
Not to mention, this season's focus Terra was fantastic, and even if I felt that she should have been more involved in this season, it was great for them to actually flesh her character out with real and believable motivations. Too often in comic book stories are there flimsy reasons for characters to act irrationally but by Terra actually did feel like a real teenager, who was simply looking for control in powers that have stripped her of any sort of stability in life.
However, despite this strong praise I do have some critiques from this season. Specifically why does episode 11 of season 2 exist? The episode is called "Fractured" and revolves around this nonsensical storyline that feels much more filler than anything else. Frankly it felt more like season 1 with its sort of hit or miss storylines while also being shoved in the middle of the climax of the Terra arc, which I so desperately wanted to see. Many times have I seen this show make odd continuity decisions that almost certainly would leave most viewers confused and grasping for straws.
Take for example episode 9 "Winner Takes All" which revolves around an intergalactic tournament involving the best teenage superheroes (and gizmo) to determine the strongest of them all. This is only the 3rd time Gizmo shows up despite the fact that the pilot of the entire series sets up HIVE as this opposing supervillain team to the Teen Titans. I just felt like it was odd to barely show them in the first two seasons even if the show deviated heavily from what the original pilot showed.
Moreover, why wasn't there more Terra? I understand not wanting to show what she did with Slade in order to maintain this level of secrecy involving how he functions, but surely they could have done more to flesh out her character. Despite being the focus of this season, she leaves the Titans after about 1 episode and is never seen for a large portion of the middle season until she attempts to rejoin. As someone who really enjoyed the parts that focused on her this season it would have been cool to see her more incorporated even if I did enjoy many of the middle episodes.
Final Score: 80/100
Overall, this season was fantastic and I think the show really started to show its true colours by the end of it. The writers finally found a way to have the voices of basically all characters to shine through and frankly, the Terra-Slade storyline was much more interesting than the overarching Slade-Robin storyline of the previous season. While I still would recommend people watch the first season of Teen Titans I do have to admit that the magic really starts taking place with the second.
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