Previously on TITANS…
After the darkness that permeated throughout the first season of the DC Universe series, the second season seems like it’s finally going to bring in a little bit more light.
Of course I don’t mean to the way the show is shot – it’s still pretty dark. The light in the second season of Titans is coming from classic Teen Titans villain Doctor Light. The villain is a bit more dangerous than his more traditional appearances, before he became a psychopathic threat in the 2004 miniseries IDENTITY CRISIS, where it was revealed that members of the Justice League wiped his mind and turned him into a simpering joke after he tried to rape Sue Dibney.
The early 2000s were a dark time for DC Comics.
In the latest episode of Titans, Doctor Light escapes from prison and starts sending messages to his former foes, in the form of exploding people. Somehow it’s still not as dark as the show’s first season.
It’s also not the main focus of the episode, which continues the show’s course correction into putting more of a focus on the positives about the relationships between the heroes. While Dick Grayson is training Beast Boy, Raven and the new Robin in San Francisco, Donna Troy and Starfire are doing stakeouts together to hunt down a villain named Shimmer. And Hawk and Dove are living on a ranch while Hawk recovers from his addictions to alcohol and being a hero.
When Grayson takes in a mysterious young woman with some talented fighting techniques, it leads the heroes in his charge to try and find out more about her, leading to the discovery that her father is Slade Wilson, the mercenary known as Deathstroke, one of the Titans greatest threats. With Hawk, Dove, Starfire and Donna coming to San Francisco to deal with the threat of Doctor Light’s exploding humans, and his daughter now connected to the team, it seems like the perfect time for Slade to strike.
I’m really looking forward to where this second season is going after this episode. Having the team established as a team, willing to watch out for each other, is so much better than the angst that felt so heavy in each episode of the first season.