A/N: I probably should space these Teen Titans reviews out, but after my latest poll, this won unanimously, and I gotta honor the results. Funny to think coverage of any kind on Teen Titans ranked so lowly, but now the shoe is on the other foot.
ALSO SPOILERS, IF YOU READ ON AND HAVEN'T SEEN THE EPISODE IT'S YOUR FAULT
Ordinarily I'd take it upon myself to steer clear of obvious targets, but given how far I've gone when it came to reviews of other Teen Titans episodes, it'd be fair to throw in my two cents on this finale. I don't know what new I can bring to the table... I don't know.
Context
This was the last episode ever of the original Teen Titans, full stop, no charge, no weddings inconceivable... whatever the name of the last King of the Hill episode is.
However you feel about the show as a whole, this episode had a very negative impact that can reach to many different areas.
First off, this episode followed the typical battle team-up episode commonplace in many action shows. You had a good closure to the show that fit with the nature of it, heroes fighting a major threat for the sake of the earth... and reducing it by reminding us of a, quite frankly, clunky arc wrought through monetary issues of all things. Not to mention it was a slap in the face for those who rooted for that ship.
Then my personal one, it played a role in the anti-Teen Titans Go spiel that took up a huge chunk of the early-2010s. That needs no introduction, just an explanation, which I'll get into when we wrap up, but for an appetizer, by leaving people with a letdown, they wanted the show to go on. When the one chance of a revival is blown out the window by a comedy, people lost their minds and it led to a negative stigma that persists to this very day.
Think of it like how MoBrosStudios helped etch a permanent target into MrEnter's back because the latter was influenced by the former's angry reviews of SpongeBob, another show I'm starting to stray from.
I would make a section on my personal thoughts on the episode, but I didn't have that big of an opinion on it back then, though I did avoid it around the time I was looking up episodes of the show online.
Going Down
What better way to follow a major battle that brought rivals and a redeemed villain against a grander evil than unrequited love?
To get you up to speed, this is a Terra episode. Terra had the ability to control the Earth, hence that unintentional pun, she and Beast Boy cut the fat, we find she has no control of her powers which causes a clunky breakdown and her abandoning the Titans. The way that happened was so heavy-handed, any implication would be lost on me.
Then she either joins Slade or had been with him the entire time, I'd like to say I have seen at least the essential Terra episodes, I never got any implication of what happened in-between, unless it was put to words. Then she becomes Slade's protege and takes out the Titans one-by-one, and I question if she was meant to reflect the dumb blonde type because of how easily she could be manipulated.
Manipulation is both too obvious and makes the most sense.
Following a conflict of conscious, she loses control of her powers and causes a cave-in that buries Slade in lava and... just burns his skin away. The mystique can only last so long with him. Oh, and Terra is reduced to stone. That reminds me of the Static Shock episode Junior, where Edwin through over exposure to the bang baby formula causes his molecular structure to dissipate and reduce him to stone.
I'm not saying Teen Titans ripped Static Shock off, I'm just saying the concept of someone turning to stone was done better in one show compared to the other. We didn't expect Edwin to turn to stone through that exposure, even the foreshadowing wasn't that obvious. In Teen Titans, it fell into the cliche sacrifice for the greater good deal.
Worse yet, this was undone in Things Change, for some reason.
Now the Episode
Beast Boy finds a girl who looks very identical to Terra and tries to bring her back to the Teen Titans, that accounts for a stark bulk of what I can discuss for the plot, in terms of the key aspects to it.
Along with being a big letdown for a finale, that followed an episode that could've been the actual finale, it isn't very well written. Along with the aforementioned lack of meat to the plot, this is another example of an episode with missed opportunities.
This could've worked as an equivalent to the episode where Robin believes he sees Slade, where Beast Boy plays stalker. Had the stonified Terra been submerged in the lava we'd have no way of knowing for sure if she is still beneath the earth. Terra would, obviously, deny her affiliation with the Titans as someone who never met them and Beast Boy would go insane.
For an added bit of insanity, it can seem like she isn't actually there, just around but not interacting with anyone or anything, and this would be due to Beast Boy never letting her go, which would be how the issue would get resolved. Then we conclude with a question on whether or not Terra actually ever came back (human or spirit) or if it was, in fact part of his mind.
I don't know if my ideas would've worked for this show at all, but what I came up with should be better than what ultimately occurred in this episode.
The conflict in this episode is marginal at best. Just the fact that we see that the stonified Terra is now gone rips out any chance for us to think about what's going on and come to our own conclusions. The average Teen Titans episode is like a one way street, and this episode is like a one way street going toward a dead end. Literally.
So, with that in mind there is absolutely no question that girl is Terra. Long story short, she doesn't want to join back with the Titans, shocker, we don't know for sure if she lost her powers, maybe we were better off not getting another season after this.
Final Thoughts
You can disagree with me on my previous Teen Titans review, but I think I can safely say we can agree this was the worst note to end the show on.
People say the writers on Teen Titans Go were mean-spirited, but this episode isn't filling me with confidence when it comes to its writers. Along with multiple instances of spelling everything out and not giving us a chance to come to our own conclusions, this episode, along with its lack of substance had an unintentional air of cockiness.
Think about it, this episode felt like a dare to the network, would they end the show with an episode like this? It harkens back to Duckman, where they did the same thing when they knew they were on the road to cancellation. Also on season finales it reminds me of how bad Hooky was on the first season of SpongeBob, which wasn't very good compared to season two and three.
This episode had inspired a stigma against comedic reboots that persist to this day, because people wanted a chance for a proper conclusion. I wouldn't be saying this, had there not been the second to last episode of the show.
But on the anti-TTG business, it really showed me just how fundamentally flawed the original show really was. We have rampant hatred toward a dumb comedic show mostly persisting to this day... all for an action show that frankly wasn't very good to begin with. They gave me the idea the original was the best written show ever, and they were wrong.
Things Change was the can-opener to a once well-sealed can of worms, and I'm gonna go fishing.
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