There’s ghouls and ghosts and all sorts of spooky fun in the new episode of Titans. Let’s get into “Souls”.
Liz Large: Cori, would you say that the cast reaches the Backdoor to Heaven in this episode? And that Raven had to take some Bad Medicine?
Cori McCreery: Any Other Day I might cringe at you making these puns, but not today. Today I won’t consider them Out of Bounds.
Liz: Look, we’re doing this Because We Can. We can just Blame It On The Love Of Rock & Roll. This is now a Bon Jovi themed recap, and I make No Apologies.
Cori: I guess we should talk about the episode though right? I mean it can’t have happened Only In My Dreams, right? (note to the editor, the random capitalization is intentional as these are Bon Jovi song titles)
Mystery Train
Cori: So this episode… I had to double check it wasn’t a Doom Patrol episode because we got WEIRD folks. Like REAL weird. So after last episode’s cliffhanger with Tim getting SHOT THROUGH THE HEART (HOW DARE YOU SCARECROW) he wakes up on a black and white train (but not a Homebound Train, sadly) and from there things just go… well off the rails. What did you think about this opening?
Liz: I thought this representation of the afterlife was really cool. Some light metaphor, some Inception-esque dream logic, ghouls, and a whole world of people who have made a home in the lands between the living and the dead? Sign me up for more of this. I was also pretty excited about seeing more of Tim—we’re now One Step Closer to getting to Tim as Robin, hopefully.
Cori: Tim was probably asking himself “Why Aren’t You Dead?” Because on the afterlife train, he runs into recently deceased Titan Donna Troy, and promptly makes her feel old by ma’aming her. It’s really Lucky that he finds her though, because she sees the distress he’s in and being a good person she has to help him escape the ghost train. It was great to see Donna, I’ve missed her, even if she’s still kinda dead here.
Liz: Their interaction was top notch. Even though Donna’s dead and knows it, she’s still The Fighter who’s willing to step up and help someone who’s afraid. In addition to running from the train conductors, the afterlife also has ghouls. When they attack, there’s a cool effect that blurs and duplicates their victim, and I really liked the way it looked. I thought the next sequence of events could only happen in Secret Dreams, but it’s real: as the ghouls seem about to overpower them, a car speeds up to them, and I think I can say that The Radio Saved My Life Tonight.
Postcards From The Wasteland
Cori: Talk about a Reunion! Because who is it behind the Fast Car other than our old buddy (no not really I hate this guy) Hank fucking Hall. I’ll say this about Hawk though, he has excellent taste in driving music as he rolls up blasting Bon Jovi’s classic “Livin’ On A Prayer.” This is before his great conversation with Donna in which he pretty much demands that Dawn be on the Edge of a Broken Heart.
Liz: I cannot believe this show figured out how to get us excited about Hank’s return. Will we Learn to Love him? He expositions to Donna and Tim about how this world works, and then has to break the incredibly embarrassing news to Donna that he was murdered by Jason FUCKING Todd. God, how humiliating for him. I could Learn to Love this. Donna’s doing her best to be a supportive friend, and Hank’s offended “she better be!” when Donna says Dawn must miss him is just chef’s-kiss-perfect. It’s like you said earlier—I get Doom Patrol vibes from this weird mix of bizarreness, humor, and sadness, and that’s the highest of praise.
Cori: Truly, this is the best Hank has ever been on this show, aside from when he ate dog food. He’s really only good for comic relief and he was that in spades this episode. One of the things he tells Tim and Donna is the Complicated way to Breakout of the afterlife, by finding an upside down tree and then following a bridge back to being Ordinary People. They get to the bridge and a fight scene with the ghouls erupts, with the two Titans manifesting weapons to fight them with. And I’ve gotta say… Donna breaking beer bottles and going at the demons? Fuckin hot. This might be Real Love.
Liz: She’s a real Knockout. The ghouls are really just defeated by one hit, but their numbers are overwhelming—and it gets worse when a chasm opens up on the bridge, separating the group. Tim makes it across (with an assist from Donna’s lasso), while Hank is the Last Man Standing (Cori’s note: you might say he’s a One Man Army) on the other side as the opening gets even wider. Add to that, he’s having issues generating more weapons—first he gets Robin-branded throwing stars, then nunchucks he immediately hits himself in the face with. He’s Nobody’s Hero, but in this moment he throws his weapons at the ghoul menacing Tim, gives Donna a message for Dawn, and decides to go down fighting to buy them time. God Bless This Mess.
Cori: Hank doesn’t make it out, but Donna and Tim do. Tim wakes up on an operating table (bad place to wake up) and there’s Blood On Blood as his chest is open from surgery. But hey, he’s Alive. Donna on the other hand, uh well she shows up in Bruce Wayne’s island castle as that dramatic bitch is about to light himself on fire. He wants to go out in a Blaze of Glory, it seems. But Donna saves him, and back in the afterlife Hank gets reunited with his dead brother Don (not to be confused with his lover Dawn) and they decide to help others travel the Lost Highway by being the Hawk and Dove of the afterlife.
Liz: From his brief appearances, Don was a good dude and I’m happy that he’s superheroing in the afterlife. I just think it’s weird that Hank replaced Don with Dawn. It’s Crazy Love.
Starting All Over Again
Cori: That wraps the main plot of the episode, but we also finally got to see Raven this episode. What’s she up to with her Dirty Little Secret?
Liz: After the events of last season, Raven went to Themiscyra, where she’s been figuratively Living With The Ghost. Raven and the Amazons have been trying to put Donna’s soul back into her body. It’s apparently not completely unheard of for an Amazon’s soul to be waiting, asking the others to Love Me Back To Life. Maybe Someday it will work, but it seems as though Raven’s been working on this for a while, and there’s no progress. She seems so Lonely here—even though she’s training with the Amazons, and spending time with them, she’s away from the Titans. Teagan Croft is the cast member who most believably passes for a young hero (she is currently seventeen, was she even allowed to WATCH season one?), and it really makes me worry about her when things get tough.
Cori: She’s very young and sweet, and she will Never Say Goodbye to Donna, no matter what it takes. But she’s Growin’ Up The Hard Way, as she finally realizes that sometimes (It’s Hard) Letting Go, but it needs to be done. What finally convinces her is when Lydia breaks an ancient artifact and asks Raven to restore balance by fixing it. What did you think of her parenting style?
Liz: I think Lydia is on the Right Side Of Wrong here. I don’t know about how the Amazons’ ritual usually goes, but when they all turned on Raven for blaspheming I was pretty worried for her! When Lydia’s punishment turned out to be assembling a puzzle, I was relieved. She’s just trying to help Raven through her grief by giving her time to cool down and really think about what she’s doing. After many tries, Raven has assembled the artifact and it stays together for a few seconds—before crashing to the floor.
Cori: You might as well call Raven Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Mars but it’s that moment that convinces her that she can’t spend the Next 100 Years trying to bring Donna back and that you’ve gotta Live Before You Die. Her friends need her back in Gotham, so it’s time for her to go Save The World (or at least Gotham).
Liz: I Get A Rush at this ending. Raven is mid-packing as she senses something is off—and Donna’s body is gone when she goes to check. (See above re: Bruce Wayne’s attempt to make Fields of Fire in his fancy castle.) I fall In And Out Of Love with this show a lot, but this week? I’m Happy Now. And I think that brings us to The End for this episode!
Final Notes
- The train paperwork lists Tim as “Timothy S. Drake”, which stuck out because his middle name is usually Jackson (no I don’t know why that bothers me).
- Tim tells Hank and Donna that he knows who they (and all the Titans) are and he’s just the best! He knows everything!
- They are so weirded out by this, but they do roll with it.
- TIM THINKS DONNA IS LIKE 30!
- Eagle-eyed readers can find FIFTY Bon Jovi song titles in this review that aren’t the actual name drop of a song or section headings (54 if you count those).
- Cannot believe that we wrote a whole Titans recap about Bon Jovi and never used his Superman song.
- Well Conner wasn’t even IN this episode so that made it tough.
Liz Large is a copywriter with a lot of opinions on mutants.
Yes, it's Cori McCreery—strange visitor from DC fandom who came to Xavier Files with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal critics. Cori, who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, race a speeding bullet to its target, bend steel in her bare hands, and who, also works as an editor for a great Eisner winning website, Women Write About Comics, fights a never-ending battle for truth and justice.
