TV Review: Titans Season 2 Episode 13

Titans Season 2 Episode 13 “Nightwing”

Director: Carol Banker

Starring: Brenton Thwaites, Teagan Croft, Anna Diop, Ryan Potter, Curran Walters, Conor Leslie, Minka Kelly, Alan Ritchson, Chelsea Zhang, Esai Morales, Joshua Orpin, Iain Glen

Rating: TV-MA

Runtime: 49 minutes

I’ve tried to write about this finale to Titans a few different times now. It’s a little hard to do since there’s a lot that happens in the episode, and I kind of just explain the whole plot. That’s not what I’m trying to do. This time around, I’ll try and stick to the major points, and why I think they’re respectively good and bad and really dumb. Because this episode has all three of those. Buckle your metaphorical seatbelts, because there will be SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS to follow.

The Titans team split up, but have slowly been working their way back to San Francisco. While trying to stop Conner and Gar from hurting innocent people, some of the team is ambushed by Deathstroke. But who should save them? None other than Dick Grayson in his new suit. Following a team-up fight between Nightwing and Rose Wilson, everyone continues to stop the brainwashed Conner and Gar, and things don’t entirely go as planned.

First of all, the Nightwing suit kicks all the ass. Every ass. Mine, yours, everyone’s. The shot where they reveal the suit is a great callback to the very first episode of Titans, and the first time we see Robin in costume. It’s amazing. The fight with Deathstroke isn’t the best in the choreography department, but it’s not the worst. As much as I like Brenton Thwaites, it’s clear as day he’s not the guy flipping around.

I don’t mind some of the things I’ve seen people complaining about. Rachel’s powers are all over the place, but as far as this show has gone, they’ve never been defined. Like, at all. She’s the daughter of an interdimensional demon, I don’t think there’s a cap on her powers. The first half of the episode is all action pretty much, and the second half is the characters sitting around and talking mostly. It’s not something I mind, because these actors have great chemistry with each other. It’s one of the best parts of this show. By the end of the episode, the team is back together, and we literally see them all go out to fight crime as a group. It rocks. 

When this show is good, it’s great. When it’s bad it is bad. There’s something that happens in this episode that literally had me shouting at my TV about how stupid it is. If you don’t want to read spoilers, stop reading here. I’d suggest watching the show since you clearly haven’t. 

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Everyone who hasn’t seen the finale left, hopefully, so I will say this pretty bluntly. They killed Donna Troy. I’m fine with characters dying in a show like this, it can make stories more compelling and give the other characters more depth going forward. But they killed her in the dumbest possible way that I’m still angry about it. After Conner and Gar are saved (another thing that could’ve been done a lot better, but I won’t get into it), a carnival ride is falling and is heading straight towards Dawn. Donna catches it, but apparently it’s too much power and she gets electrocuted to death. S;JKLFGPJIONGPJIOOFSDD.

That jumbled nonsense at the end there is me slamming on my keyboard in anger. It’s such a dumb and avoidable death that I am still angry thinking about it. ELECTRICITY?!?! REALLY? Even if someone had to die, for story reasons or behind the scenes stuff, you could do it so much better. You could have had Deathstroke kill her, and give the team extra motivation to take him down. Hell, do it exactly like Aqualad where she steps in the way to save someone. But electricity? You dropped the damn ball on this one Titans. Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron had a more reasonable death. 

“Hey, good work stopping Thanos and his armies, Iron Man. You even managed to survive snapping your fingers and the energies that come with it. Oh no! You slipped on a banana peel on the battlefield and snapped your neck and died!” That’s how dumb it is. END OF SPOILERS.

There’s more I can go on about. A lot more I think is pretty cool, and a lot more that I think could’ve been done way better. Overall as a whole, I like this season of Titans. It’s a lot better than the first in almost every way. But this final episode drops the ball and drops it hard. It’s not without its positives though. I still like most of it, but the parts that are bad shine a little brighter than the good parts.

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