Teen Titans – Review: Terra

The Titans meet Terra, a small teenage girl with big powers. Gifted with amazing earth-moving abilities, Terra can make rocks fly, mountains crumble, and the ground tremble beneath her feet. At first, it seems like this hip, funny, young hero might make a great addition to the team. But Terra has a terrible secret. And only Slade knows the truth. Will the Titans’ new friend put the whole team in danger?

Review by Bird Boy
Media by Bird Boy

Titans Voices
Greg Cipes as Beast Boy
Scott Menville as Robin
Khary Payton as Cyborg
Tara Strong as Raven
Hynden Walch as Starfire
Ashley Johnson as Terra
Rob Perlman as Slade

From start to finish, we get not only an action-packed half hour of cartoons, but also a first for Teen Titans: a love interest.

True, Raven and Starfire swooned over Aqualad, but that was nothing more than drooling over his good looks. With Beast Boy and Terra we see a somewhat softer side of Beast Boy, who, at first, is pretty much incapable of talking to Terra, later comforts her when she loses control of her powers and gains her trust. Of course, the trust is shattered at the end, when
Robin reveals that he knows she “can’t fully control” her powers—something that she made Beast Boy swear not to tell. He hadn’t, Robin had just used his God (or Bat) given detective skills and found out for himself.

But, enough about Terra and Beast Boy, lets get to the real meat and potatoes of this episode: Terra and Slade. That’s right—Slade’s back and he’s found his new apprentice. He’s been watching this girl since he first heard about her—she’s been the cause of recent earthquakes, mudslides and avalanches around the world in her journeys. She can’t stop and help someone without causing more trouble, and Slade promised he could help her through it, that the Titans weren’t really her friends, that Beast Boy would tell the Titans her secret—she half believed him, but turned him away at the end.
He left, but not without telling her one thing: he’d be waiting for her.

There’s also a rather interesting training sequence, which we first see
Cyborg run though. For being teenagers, there were some pretty hazardous things in this course, and Terra, a rookie and her first time training with the Titans, was put through more than Cyborg was—and still beat his time. It showed us how powerful Terra was, what she could do (when she doesn’t lose control, that is), and most importantly, established more of the Beast Boy /
Terra relationship.

Between the episodes intense action, awesome battle scenes and animation (not as great as last weeks “Every Dog As His Day”, but comparable to it in it’s own right), this episode held everything that you come to expect from
Teen Titans. While the stories vary with each week, we can be sure this’ll impact Season 2 more than the rest has: Terra’s already slated to come back two more times this season, so we’re in for a rockin’ (pardon the pun) good time…