DC Universe’s Titans season 2 premiere recap: Trigon

The Titans are back! Can they stop Trigon before the evil demon destroys the team, and turns Rachel into the monster she was afraid of becoming?

Titans returns for season two, picking up the story where we left off. Dick Grayson has been put under a spell by Trigon, who is hoping to break his daughter Rachel Roth’s heart and get her to help him annihilate the Earth. Trigon doesn’t contend for Rachel’s resilience and that Garfield Logan is by her side. The two of them attempt an escape, but Trigon sends Dick to chase after them.

The Birds to the Rescue

In season one of Titans, Rachel had sent a subliminal message to Hank Hall/ Hawk and Dawn Granger/ Dove, to find Jason Todd/Robin 2.0. Now that Dawn has recovered from being pushed off a building, they locate Jason at Wayne Manor. He’s on his own, and up to no good, of course. Bit of a daredevil, this one.

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As soon as Jason hears about Dick having gone missing, he insists on joining Hank and Dawn in their search – not out of altruism, but to rub Dick’s nose in it. Jason can track Dick using a secondary tracker that Bruce Wayne/ Batman put in him. Talk about trust issues!

The three birds follow Dick’s tracker to Rachel’s mother’s house. They find Donna Troy/ Wonder Girl and Kory Anders/ Starfire almost at each other’s throats, frustrated at their inability to break through the force field. Donna is displeased to find someone different in the Robin costume, but there are bigger matters at hand. How do they get in and save their teammates?

Trigon’s Tricks

Dick chases Rachel and Gar throughout the house, while Trigon warps reality. The horror movie vibe is strong with these scenes, down to Dick breaking through a door ala The Shining. But hope is in the offing as Gar catches sight of the cavalry waiting outside the force field. Trigon sees them too and opens up the force field. With hesitation, Donna orders the Titans, and ‘new Robin’, to go in. This is a bad idea.

Kory enters the house and finds Rachel and Gar. But it’s obvious that something is not right here when Rachel says the only way to stop Trigon is if Kory kills her. Kory gives in, killing Rachel and turning to the dark side like Dick.

Meanwhile, Donna returns to the past, on the day her father was killed in an arson attack. She sees the culprit, and enraged, kills him, thus falling into Trigon’s trap. Another Titan is down.

Jason ends up in the Batcave – the same one that Dick had destroyed and killed Batman in during the season one finale. Dick, dressed in his Robin costume, baits Jason into attacking him, the two Robins go head to head brutally attacking each other. As they careen into Batman’s artifacts, Jason knocks over the case holding the gun that Bruce’s parents were killed with. Jason points it at Dick, but surely Bruce doesn’t keep that gun loaded, right? Bruce doesn’t, but Jason does. Jason shoots Dick in the head and joins the rest of the converted Titans.

Hank and Dawn re-visit the day after they took their first steps towards becoming vigilantes. In this scenario, Trigon arrives with drugs for Hank and Dawn injects herself to take the pain away. Now, these two have also been converted.

Trigon Wins?

There is only one Titan standing in the way of Trigon breaking Rachel’s heart – Gar. He and Rachel are unable to escape the house. With Dick as the leader of the evil Titans, he commands the team to attack Gar. Rachel can’t stop them as they beat Gar senseless, only for Dick to finally deliver the killing blow. Gar seemingly being killed is the last straw – Rachel, who has been stoic and brave for all 12 episodes of the show, finally breaks and Trigon wins.

Trigon extracts Rachel’s broken heart and turns it into a ruby that he uses to bring Rachel back to life, and under his sway. Now Trigon turns to his original form, which is close to the comic book version of his demon self, but lacks the imposing grandeur that a bigger budget would have given it. Trigon kills Rachel’s mother and begins the first stage of decimating the planet.

While Trigon is strutting about outside, a green snake appears next to Rachel and turns into Gar. Looks like it took a near-death experience for him to unlock his true changeling abilities. Gar grabs Rachel’s hand and is able to get her back to herself.

But they can’t defeat Trigon alone. Rachel has to get through to Dick. Her dream in the first season of the show was all about finding Dick. ‘It’s all in the dreams’, she realizes as Rachel confronts Dick, challenging him to let her die in the circus where his parents were murdered. Dick doesn’t let her fall, and he snaps back to his normal self.

Rachel, now back to her confident self, confronts Trigon, unleashing her true Raven powers to destroy him and knock the rest of the team back to their senses. That’s a surprisingly quick resolution for an arc that’s taken over a season to reach its fruition. The end of Trigon certainly feels rushed.

With the villain vanquished, the police are thankful for the work done by this new group of masked vigilantes. Jason hops on camera to announce that the Titans are back, thereby setting in motion the arc for this second season.

It’s Time for Season Two

Dick takes Rachel, Gar and Jason on a road trip, while Kory decides to go solo and figure out her life as an alien. Hank and Dawn want nothing more to do with Dick (for the time being), while Donna looks set to return to her normal life.

Dick stops to meet Bruce at Wayne Manor. He’s come to clear the air with Iain Glen’s Bruce Wayne. There’s a very old-Roger Moore-as-James Bond vibe to Glen’s Bruce. While it doesn’t quite fit the comic book persona we’ve all become used to, Glen certainly has the charisma to carry off the character in brief cameos.

After years of blaming the darkness inside him on how Bruce raised him and ‘weaponized his childhood’, Dick has realized that Bruce did a lot of good as well. Dick informs Bruce that he’s thinking of starting the Titans again. Bruce is pleased but on one condition. While they don’t reveal that condition, since Dick invites Rachel, Gar, and Jason to the Titans Tower in San Francisco, my guess is that Bruce insisted Dick take Jason in as a Titan.

We move to a faraway cottage where Slade Wilson (Esai Morales) is living a quiet, rustic life. He’s a bit eccentric but appears to be struggling physically or emotionally with some ailment. Slade’s life is disrupted when he sees Jason’s declaration on TV. The Titans are back, which means Deathstroke must also return.

Despite rushing through the Trigon storyline in this season two premiere, this episode of Titans was a fun and exciting return to the series. There was a good mix of darkness, humor and comic book epicness. Tonally, the rest of the season is likely to feel very different from this episode, but I think the show is planning to embrace a lighter and more optimistic tone.