TITANS: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON
Label: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
Region Code: A
Duration: 780 Minutes
Rating: Unrated
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.00:1)
Cast: Brenton Thwaites, Anna Diop, Teagan Croft, Ryan Potter, Minka Kelly, Alan Ritchson, Curran Walters, Conor Leslie, Joshua Orpin, Chelsea Zhang, Esai Morales
Synopsis: Titans: The Complete Second Season continues the story of these DC Super Heroes as they face their greatest challenge yet. In season two, following the aftermath of their encounter with Trigon, Dick Grayson reforms the Titans. Under his supervision in their new home at Titans Tower, Rachel aka Raven, Gar aka Beast Boy and Jason Todd aka Robin train together as a team. They are joined by Hank Hall and Dawn Granger aka Hawk and Dove and Donna Troy aka Wonder Girl. Although these original Titans attempt to transition into a regular life, when old enemies resurface everyone must come together to take care of unfinished business. And as this family of old and new Titans – including Conner Kent and Rose Wilson – learn to co-exist, the arrival of Deathstroke, brings to light the sins of the old Titans which threaten to tear this new Titans family apart once more.
If you're a regular reader of this blog you will already know that I am a Marvel-loving boy from way back, no disrespect to DC, but it just wasn't my thing as a kid, I couldn't get into the story lines the way I could with Marvel stuff, so I didn't collect any DC comics stuff until the mid-nineties. Along the way I would pick-up an assortment of DC comics second hand via friends, the local flea markets or a garage sale, and it just so happened that a lot of that stuff turned out to be be the Marv Wolfman and George Perez era of the Teen Titans. As I grew older the breadth of my comic reading expanded beyond the Marvel stuff, but even then my DC purchases were more or less limited to the Grant Morrison run on JLA, and catching up on Alan Moore's Watchmen, Swamp Thing and V For Vendetta, as well as Frank Miller's Sin City and The Dark Knight Returns, and re-discovering the Crisis On Infinite Earth's event. At the same time I was digging more underground stuff from Fantagraphics Books and Kitchen Sink Press, stuff like Black Hole, Duplex, Acme Novelty Comics, Eightball and Mike Mignola's Hellboy from Dark Horse Comics. I was also enamored with the artwork of Robert Crumb, after seeing Terry Zwigoff's fantastic documentary Crumb (1994). All of this is to say I was still not an a huge reader of DC, with most of my DC knowledge coming by way of various live-action and animated films and TV series through the years. Let me say that in my opinion DC has done much better with their animated direct-to-video output than they have with their cinematic universe, and have really put Marvel to shame when it comes to their animated and live-action TV and direct-to-video stuff, which brings us to the DC Universe streaming platform, and the second season of the live-action Titans series.
I have been a subscriber of the DC Universe streaming platform since the inception and I have seen all the original live-action series they have produced so far, and they have some very cool stuff, including the too short-lived Swamp Thing series, and the first season of Doom Patrol, the latter of which I think is the best series on of the three, being a often surreal and madcap superhero team that I cannot recommend highly enough. Anyway, back to the second season of Titans, which picks-up right where I think the first season probably should have actually ended, with Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites), Donna Troy/Wonder Girl (Conor Leslie), Hank/Hawk(Alan Ritchson), Dawn/Dove (Minka Kelly), Gar/Beast Boy (Ryan Potter), Kory/Starfire (Anna Diop), Jason/Robin (Curran Walters), and Rachel/Ravenm (Teagan Croft) battling against the inter-dimensional demon Trigon, the father of Raven. After the demon-baddie is thwarted the big bad this season turns out to be the augmented assassin Slade Wilson/Deathstroke (Esai Morales), who has it out for the Titans, for tragic reasons that are slowly revealed throughout the season. This story comes via plenty flashbacks, revealing that the current incarnation of the Titans is in actuality the second version of the team, the first having disbanded after the death of team member Aqualad (Drew Van Acker) at the hands of Deathstroke. It's a labyrinthine story that brings the arch nemesis's son Jericho (Chella Man), and daughter, Rose (Chelsea Zhang), into the Titans, both of whom have inherited augmented powers from the father, but don't quite see eye to eye with their old man.
This season also introduces Super Boy by way of Connor (Joshua Orpin), a genetic clone of Superman and Lex Luthor which was developed by the evil Cadmus Laboratories. Along with him we also get Krypto the Superdog, I shit you not! If you loved the Batman stuff last season we get a lot of Bruce Wayne (Iain Glenn) this season, though mostly as a constant mental-companion of sorts to his former sidekick Dick Grayson, who has since been replaced by the impulsive Jason Todd (Curran Walters), who Wayne ends up sending to San Francisco to join the newly reformed Titans at Titans Towers, but sadly it is not a t-shaped building.
The Titans are more of an actual team this time around, as the first season was sort of a prolonged origin story for the core team, and the action is more robust. The design of Deathstroke is fantastic, by far my favorite live-action incarnation of the character, and we finally get Dick Grayson donning the Nightwing identity, and it's a great looking design as well, with cool electricity-discharging batons.
I have not loved everything about the series so far, I just cannot get into the characters of the crime-fighting couple Hawk and Dove. I totally dig their costumes, which are strikingly true to their various comic incarnations, but their couples melodrama bores me to tears, I could do without them altogether. I also would have loved more of Wonder Girl/Donna Troy, she's a thoroughly compelling character, I loved seeing her action-scenes with the magic lasso, it's all great stuff. Starfire is more fleshed out this season as well, we get a lot more of her cosmic powers, and I dig her as a character, I like her live-action persona more than either the comics and the animated films. This season empath Raven got a chance to dig deeper into her darkness with some cool-looking displays of power, her look changing accordingly. The real highlight for me was the addition of the Jason Todd incarnation of Robin, a hot-headed and impulsive teen. He's so bratty, I loved his interplay with the other characters, challenging the authority of team leader Grayson, often landing his teammates in a bit of trouble. One last thing that sort of irked me was Beast Boy, Ryan Potter is a great Beast Boy but for some reason he can only transform into a tiger, I always thought he could shape-shift into any animal, hopefully season three sees a more diverse catalog of spirit animals.
This also season corrected something sorely missing from the first season, it brought the superhero team together in a way that was way more satisfying, with the Titans actually fighting together as a team. At a certain point Grayson fractures the team, for reasons, and I felt that killed a bit of the season's momentum, but it eventually swings back around in the other direction, leading to the debut of Grayson's bad-ass Nightwing costume and a satisfying final battle with Deathstroke, and set-up up what I believe will be the baddie in the third season.
As only a casual fan of the comics I was quite happy with the second season, it fixed a few issues that bugged me about the first, and I dug the flashbacks to the first incarnation of the Titans, and the superhero action is brisk and fun. If like me you watch a few of the kid-friendly DC series on the CW like Flash and Supergirl let me warn you this is not kid-friendly stuff, it gets fairly dark in places, so I wouldn't recommend you watch it with young kids.
Audio/Video: Titans: The Complete Second Season arrives on Blu-ray from Warner Bros. in 1080p HD framed in 2.00:1 widescreen. It's a strong image with plenty of fine detail and clarity. It's a dark series with lots of shadows, so thankfully black levels are strong throughout. Colors come through nicely when called upon. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround with optional English subtitles, dialogue is always crisp and cleanly delivered, without distortion of any kind. The score sounds great and we get some nice panning effects during the action-ier sequences, a solid A/V presentation.
Extras are more anemic than I would care for with only a 12-min featurette exploring the character of Jason Todd in both the comics and the series, and how fans have been called upon twice to determine if the character should live or die, which is pretty cool but I would have appreciated a lot more extras exploring the legacy of the Teen Titans in comics and in the animated films so far, so that's a bit disappointing, but we do get a digital copy of the episodes, so that's something.
The 2-disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a slipcover featuring the same artwork as the wrap, a cool illustration of the team and Deathstroke. Inside there's a digital code for the second season and an episode guide.
Special Features:
- Jason Todd: Fate by the Fans (12 min)
- Digital Code
Episodes:
1. Trigon
2. Rose
3. Ghosts
4. Aqualad
5. Deathstroke
6. Conner
7. Bruce Wayne
8. Jericho
9. Atonement
10. Fallen
11. E.L._.O.
12. Episode 212
13. Episode 213
If you liked the first season of Titans there is even more to like the second season, it brings the characters together as a true team of superheroes, and there's plenty more action throughout, but I will say that there was nothing this season that I loved as much as the brief bit of Batman/Joker stuff that we got near the end of the first season, that is still my favorite material from either season, it's gonna be hard to top.
