With “Nightwing,” Titans wraps up their poopstorm of a season with Dick finally adopting the identity of Nightwing, the Titans finally taking on Deathstroke, and the group rescuing Gar and Conner from Cadmus.
You know, it was a pretty decent finale too… until they completely and stupidly messed it up in a character death that could have garnered its own Darwin Award for being so head-slappingly ridiculous that it basically canceled out all of the emotional impact.
Spoiler warning if you care.
So, the confrontation with Deathstroke was short, sweet, and pretty underwhelming. Titans is apparently a show that doesn’t like doing a lot of holdover for later seasons, not wanting to leave bad guys running around for later. In some ways, I respect that, but in others, I really softens the villain overall. Deathstroke was a great bad guy… he went out like a punk, distracted by the oldest trick in the book.
The resolution to the Gar/Conner plot was better, if a little cliched. It was fun to actually see characters use their superpowers since Titans is annoying conservative when it comes to superheroes actually being superheroes. The throwdown between Donna and Conner was pretty great, I enjoyed the brief fight between Beast Boy and Superboy even if, by comic book logic, Superboy should have taken his head off with the first punch. I even have to commend the tiger special effects which seems to have inexplicably improved.
So, yeah… it wasn’t great, but it was fun.
And then they ruined it in the most crazy stupid way possible.
So, yeah… Donna. Seriously. What in the entirity of Hades was that?
I don’t have the words. The battle is over and then Donna dies in what is basically an accident? The woman who took punch after punch from Superboy and didn’t flinch dies of accidental electrocution? For reals? Who wrote this sequence and thought, “Yeah, this is necessary and awesome!”
It was, without a doubt, the stupidest thing this show has done. I don’t really care that they killed off Donna Troy, I really don’t… but to kill her off in such a tacked on and unnecessary way that, in all actuality, had no relationship to the plot at all, was so dumb and unnecessary that I honestly don’t have words.
Yes, I get that they’re setting up her resurrection next season, but she could have died in the battle or stepped in front of a kryptonite bullet to save Conner or something.
I’m impressed. Titans is a show that I watch because I hope it will get better, but this finale brings about a whole new level of flat-out incompetence that I’m starting to doubt that the show is capable of improving at all.
Jason Gaston 