Titans streams new episodes on Friday’s via the DC Universe platform. The second season will debut internationally on Netflix later in 2019.
Synopsis
With Dick still in prison and Gar under the microscope at Cadmus, the remaining Titans are called together to save their teammates.
Review
HelloIn light of last week’s episode (reviewed here), I went in to “E.L._.O.” concerned about how Titans was setting itself up for its finale. Presumptions I had made about what was going on were thrown out of the window and the future was looking uncertain.
Then in strode Iain Glen in his most Bruce Wayne scenes to date and suddenly the pieces all began to fall in to place.
Overall, Titans sophomore season has been a huge improvement over a largely enjoyable season one. I’ve criticised it a couple of times for falling back on bad habits but it has been impressive to see how the writing style has changed and adapted.
Last week it felt very much like the show was struggling to find a transition for Dick from his civilian persona in to becoming Nightwing and I was heavily critical of the show for separating the team once again. But this week Titans was able to prove that those potential missteps were worthwhile.
There are still some heavy contrivances in the plot, for instance how did all the female Titans arrive at the diner within minutes of each other? How did Bruce Wayne hack in to Rachel’s visions as well as Donna’s phone, Dawn’s radio and Kory’s TV? These are totally forgivable though as Titans delivers one of it’s most balanced and well paced episodes ever.
There’s a substantial about of Iain Glen in this episode, both as his “real life” and vision self. Whilst Dick grapples with his vision of Bruce, the lady-Titans meet with the real one to get caught up on what’s going on. Both versions are Glen’s best performance to date as the character and I left this episode believing that he could actually be Batman.
The fight sequence between Bruce and Dick is one of the season’s best and manages to paint Glen as a formidable foe against Brenton Thwaites. It cleverly acts to move the story forwards on two different fronts: firstly it’s the final push to make Dick take up the Nightwing persona and secondly it brings us to a realisation about Jericho.
The Jericho twist is one which I had predicted although it played out different to how I had expected. The added touch of the sign language to help put the story across to viewers struggling to keep up was a nice touch. It will be interesting to see where the story goes to tie things up over the remaining two episodes.
“E.L._.O.” also has some great developments for Jason Todd (Curran Walters) as he hides out in Gotham with Rose (Chelsea Zhang). We don’t linger with them too much, apart from to learn some key info about Rose, but whilst they are sharing screen time we get some great background on their pre-Titans lives. If this is the Titans equivalent of The Judas Contract storyline then its clear that Jason is Gar and Rose is Terra.
Speaking of Gar there are some truly gory scenes of his exposed, squishy brain being worked on by Mercy Graves and the Cadmus team. It all adds up to a plot twist which could prove lethal to the rest of the team. But I hope that it brings about a much more interesting and important character arc for the character. Though he’s become a more central figure he’s still very much not at the forefront of these episodes.
Verdict
The (female) Titans are back bitches! After a season low point, Titans absolutely pulls it out of the bag with an excellently paced, beautifully balanced episode which pushes the season towards its endgame.
8/10
Titans stars Brenton Thwaites as Dick Grayson/Robin, Anna Diop as Starfire, Teagan Croft as Raven, Ryan Potter as Beast Boy, Alan Ritchson as Hawk and Minka Kelly as Dove.
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