The Ultimate Superheroines Forum

With the CW about to evaporate, the best superhero show in Western television is now Titans.
It's also the most industrious - they've been cranking out these seasons in short order like nobody's business.

They've got a packed lineup of villains - Lex Luthor, Deathstroke, Brother Blood, and Mother Mayhem - you wonder how they'll have time to fit all those plots in. My guess is that at least three of these characters will join up and/or work together against the Titans.

And Jinx joins the team, which gives them a chance to up the diversity quotient (as does comics legend Bryan Edward Hill writing the 2nd episode). She's a villainess in most of the comics (in the Fearsome Five) but it looks like she might turn over a new leaf here and use her magic for good.

No Dove, no Wonder Girl, no Red Hood maybe? I wonder why they never tried to introduce Terra, Lilith or Bumblebee. Reasons, I suppose.
So as far as heroines, we might just be looking at Starfire and Raven.

Season 4 drops this Thursday. Here's the trailer - typical dark bombastic stuff. I'll follow the show.

How is everyone liking Titans Season 4 so far? I think this is the best US superhero show right now (yes, better than Stargirl, although both have the supervision of Geoff Johns, so they're comparable in some way - both shows are running a horror mystery at the same time).

The plot about Lex Luthor, Mother Mayhem, Brother Blood, and the Cult of Azarath is a slow burn, as more gets revealed each episode.
So far, I got through two:

1) EP1 - Connor explores his relationship with his half-father and creator Lex Luthor. Something happens to Lex, you'll need to watch it yourself.
Starfire looks really hot dispatching all of Lex's henchmen - apparently she has warrior-level super strength and can toss 200-pound men around like ragdolls. Get some good stills of Anna Diop posing powerfully in that tight outfit - it's the best one on US TV right now (yes, I like the costume even better than Stargirl's).

2) EP2 - The Titans engage in an investigation of the Blood Cult and slowly find out a lot. Two important battles:

- Raven fights the nightmare killer. There's a great peril moment where Raven is temporarily incapacitated on the floor, looking desperate,
while the killer crouches over her. Definitely capture that one in a still if you can - it's a powerful scene.

- The team battles the challenge of Mother Mayhem on a highway leading out of Metropolis (apparently, she doesn't want them to leave?).
Apparently, Starfire's power is the key to keeping Mayhem at bay, and it seems that Mayhem also somehow sucks out Raven's dark magic.

But the big revelation is when Raven's hair turns white, portending her transformation into White Raven (see the comics) which will release her entirely from Trigon's influence at some point.
I have to say, Teagan Croft looks OK as Raven normally, but with the removal of the 'forehead gem' and her hair turning long and white,
her face looks absolutely gorgeous. Another still one could capture would be White Raven unconscious, right at the end of this episode.

Along with Mother Mayhem (played by Franka Potente of Run Lola Run fame), who wields a powerful staff, there are at least three powerful female characters in this series worth checking out in every scene they're in. No masks on the ladies (sorry Maskripper) but everything else seems to be clicking for a great, blood-dripping, occult-filled horror story this season.

EP3 and EP4 are a bit slower in pace as the story of The Organization (known in the comics as the Cult of Azarath) slowly unravels
and as the Titans try to figure out who the witch (aka Mother Mayhem) they battled in EP2 is, plus what the organization wants
with an anxious gamer nerd named Sebastian Sanger (it becomes a bit clearer by EP4).

The series introduces Jinx as a new member of Titans (she's a criminal) but unfortunately the character is not particular appealing either in personality or attractiveness. She reminds me somewhat of Astra from the Legends of Tomorrow, just basically there.

The series also randomly introduces Elves into the DC Universe (I don't think they existed before...that's kind of a Marvel/Asgardian type of thing).
Nothing at all is really made of this elf addition, other than the fact that they run a secret nightclub, and Dick gets to fight a bunch of them.

Also, Starfire gets turned to stone for a bit. That's not really peril because you can't really see someone's visceral reaction to petrification.
One thing puzzles me about this bit: Jinx and Dick leave the Starfire statue for a few hours in a high-security vault while they go look for that
petrification cure, and yet nobody from the vault's ownership has bothered to even touch Starfire or move her until they return. Seems a bit strange: if it's so high-security, why isn't anyone monitoring the breach?

By the end of EP4, we know a lot more about the origin of Mother Mayhem (aka May Bennett, the 2nd Mother Mayhem from the Titans comics)
but the Titans are not much closer to finding her yet. Instead, they waste time fighting a bunch of Wal-Mart zombies (and for some bizarre reason, a zombie version of Deathstroke) that Mother Mayhem unleashes on them. Some of this doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

At least Raven is looking great in her new white hair. Hopefully we get back to the costumes in the next episodes!

They should put Stargirl on HBOMax. Anyway I am enjoying Titans season 4. The fight scenes as well as the character arcs are wonderful. I look forward to each episode.

They should put Stargirl on HBOMax.

I am enjoying Season 4. The battle scenes as well as the character arcs are amazing. I so look forward to each episode.

Welp, I guess Tim Drake is officially gay.

Also...I originally thought it was exciting that they used Swans "Screen Shot" (from 'To Be Kind', 2014) at the beginning of EP5.
But then, I saw in various Youtube comments that the same track has been used in multiple Netflix shows. I guess Gira has a good licensing agent.

Good things, though: more Starfire in sexy costume. Gar turns into a virus (kudos to the writer who thought of that!). And the headquarters of
the Cult of Trigon is pretty sweet: they've got a nice dark cavern lit by torches, but somehow also a laptop and a computer screen.

Anyone seen Titans S5 E6 (season finale) yet?

Not going to spoil anything, but it's a big cliffhanger, and there *definitely* has to be another season coming.
As you might imagine, it's a confrontation with Mother Mayhem and her son Sebastian Blood.

Two notables:
- We get to see a costume that was made for Jinx...but not for very long. She looks cute in it, but it's not so much a slam dunk
as the tight costumes of previous seasons' Titans (Dove, Wonder Girl, Starfire, Blackfire).
- We also get to see a new costume for Raven. It's only shown very briefly, but it's the White Raven one, and for some reason
instead of being spandex and shiny, they went with a softer "lingerie" look to the bodysuit. A bit reminiscent of Emma Frost, maybe, but
with the signature Raven hood and flowing cape. Teagan Croft will look gorgeous in it, so no complaints yet.

Oh, and I forgot.....Chameleons' "Don't Fall" used right at the beginning of the episode (when Conner is shaving his head with his laser vision
and a mirror). Big shout out to any UK Mancunians out there (so much to answer for), I just recently worked with Mark Burgess and his Chameleons on a
successful concert, and it was a great time!

I did not know it was the season finale but it was very good. I look forward to Season 5. Raven's arc is intriging and looking forward to seeing more. I liked Raven's interaction with Sebastian in the previous episode.

Apologies - by "there definitely has to be another season coming" I meant that they have to finish the Brother Blood story arc.
I didn't realize there was a second half of Season 4 coming later, until after I typed that.

Sorry, Bronson, but there is no Season 5 of Titans. They're going to wrap it up, and it looks like there'll be some wrap-up of Doom Patrol as a result, too.

Anyone catch the 2nd half of Season 4 yet? Episodes 7-9 are out, and I binged through them yesterday. I have various thoughts: some pleased ones, some annoyed ones, and one just plain pissed off. However, we did get a nice gritty version of Titans for 4 seasons, and overall we can't really complain when it included more great superheroines that we hadn't seen yet than in any other live action series!

Episode 6-

Titans are back (apparently they were just shifted to a Death Dimension, or some such plot excuse) and while they are searching for Mayhem and Sebastian, they end up stuck in a "town that time forgot where nobody can escape". Yup. Not only has this old chestnut Twilight Zone premise been done many times, but it's a direct ripoff of Wandavision, because everyone forgets who they are, they are controlled by an evil force, and there's a sickly sense of "Americana" to the scenery (people are going to church! The horror!)
Plus, there seems to be no point to the development of most of the characters in the town, who never recur. So, that's the annoying part - there's nothing about this premise which pays off.

The cool part is that we get to see a bit more of Teagan Croft in that hot white Raven costume. When she's basically wearing a lingerie outfit as her bodysuit, and hints of her shapely cleavage are available, that's a good thing. The costume isn't shown for long, but we see her using her powers in it, and hopefully it will reappear later in battles against the evil ones.
Another interesting thing is that there is *peril*, also involving Raven. In this episode, some citizens of the lost town tie her up, face down, with her hands behind her back. And in the following episode, she is duct-taped to a chair for several hours in an otherwise vacant building. Not sure why she can't use any powers to escape, but I'm not complaining. Raven is in her regular clothing for both of these restraints, though.

Episode 7-

The Wandavision ripoff continues, but it gets more annoying. We need to make sure that every viewer never forgets that Tim Drake and Bernard are a gay couple (they're also written that way in the Current Year comics), so there's a big romantic moment where they kiss, and share a hotel room, and wake up the next morning in bed together. Meanwhile, Dick and Kory utterly *deny* any romantic involvement even though someone in the town drugged them, dressed them up in cozy pajamas, and placed them in bed together in the same episode. Boo.

Then, we also need to make sure that every viewer remembers that Mercy Graves is now suddenly a black lesbian! She tells Connor Kent how great Lex Luthor for giving her a special chance to shine at his company as a "woman of color". Not based solely on her merit as an employee. You can see the priorities here: Berlanti and Schechter have brought their "privileged guilt" over from the CW, and they inject this stuff in everything they do.

Oh..and I forgot... in case one black lesbian wasn't enough for the episode, they have two: a professor who happens to be a genius at ancient languages. Somehow, she knows how to read ancient Tamaranean (Kory doesn't, despite being well educated on her planet?), but out of all the Tamaranean text that Luthor provides to help them figure out the Blood Cult, we only get one word spoken out loud: "And'r", which means "fire" (because of course it does - this now implies that Koriand'r itself means "Starfire"). Lazy writers too lazy to make up even the shreds of a conlang.

My question about this erstwhile professor (whose appearance, of course, is there for show, and goes nowhere) is: how does she know how to read ancient Tamaranean, when the existence of that planet is not known at all to the public or even to elite academia? (I think it was established early on in the series that the visits of the Tamaraneans to Earth have been secret). Hmmm? Explain that?

By the end of the episode, the Titans finally do get out of the dead-end town, but other than establishing that Superboy wants to go his own way in fighting the Blood cult, we've wasted a couple hours on a diversionary story that could have been an M Night Shyamalan movie instead.

Episode 8-

This episode is almost entirely about Garfield Logan. Apparently, the producers really thought it necessary to end his function as a goofy side character, and give him center stage and prime importance in this story, let alone a ton of power. If you're a Gar fan (which I'm really not),
you'll appreciate the focus, which has been hinted at throughout the season with his visions of The Red.

The most pleasing part is that not only does Jinx come back (even if it's just in Gar's imagination) but she is shown in her full uniform. And it's a pretty sexy costume, and extremely well-designed with lots of busy elements (hard to cosplay, I guess), so I'm sorry we're not going to see more of it. I have to say, after having lots of skepticism earlier about the portrayal of Jinx, British-Indian actress Lisa Ambalavanar winds up looking totally gorgeous. And I'm so, so glad that they didn't make her shave her head (Jinx is more scantily clad in the comics, but also bald).
As I said, this ep is all about Gar, and he discovers his connection to and mastery of The Red (the astral plane which connects all animal life in the universe, it's like traveling through a big blood vessel) as well as getting some mentoring from Freedom Beast (the African successor to B'wana Beast, from the comics). However, I looked up Freedom Beast and he is a native South African, even using his powers to battle apartheid in the 80s, but in this story, he's been hiding out in a cave of Mt Kilimanjaro for decades. Why wouldn't he be living in South Africa instead of Tanzania, which (I believe) is actually much nearer to the homeland of *Vixen*.

In addition, they put the evil laboratory which does experiments on apes (owned and operated by one Dr Niles Caulder of Doom Patrol, who also created Beast Boy) in a town literally within the shadow of Mt Kilimanjaro. I had an inkling something was wrong, so I looked up the cities of Moshi and Arusha, which are at the base of that mountain in Tanzania. The aerial shot of those cities show a very developed urban area: lots of big buildings close together, and even a bunch of skyscrapers. Yet the aerial shots of the town don't look a lot like Moshi or Arusha - they look like somebody took photos of a quiet sleepy suburb in Colorado with only a handful of homes located along a meandering river. Perplexing!

I looked up the director of this episode - Eric Dean Seaton - and he is a black native of Cleveland. I guess hiring a director with the correct hue does not guarantee that he knows anything about African geography or understand that Kenya and South Africa are not at all the same place or realize that there are urban areas right next to Mt Kilimanjaro. Oh well. But on the other hand, much of that is in the script, which Geoff Johns and Ryan Potter (Beast Boy) himself wrote, so....

This episode is infused with lots of African references. Because even though the episode is supposed to be about Garfield Logan, actually most of it has to do with The Red and its powerful origin in Africa. So, we get a huge amount of screen time for Freedom Beast (played by Nigerian actor Nyambi Nyambi), who talks in slow preachy tones about Gar's responsibilities thru the entire episode. We get a mention of how The Red is connected to an old East African folk tale about people who could change into animals. We get a brief display of all the other "champions" of The Red as shown to Gar by Freedom Beast, and behold: all of the champions are black except for one white guy who is supposed to represent B'wana Beast/Mike Maxwell (Freedom Beast has the exact same powers as B'wana Beast). There are a lot of other DC characters who connect to The Red (Black Orchid, Man-Bat, Animal Man) but they aren't shown. And then at the end, Gar gets dumped into Doom Patrol headquarters where he is found by none other than Cyborg, and "If You Don't like the Effects, Don't Produce the Cause" is playing in the background. If you've ever seen the lyrics for that Funkadelic song, then you know what this episode is trying to convey: "Hey, Beast Boy, we know you aren't of African lineage, but we grant you the right to be king of The Red anyway". Basically, it's one big Permission Slip.

Even when the episode focuses on Gar, it's not always even about Gar, but about how many DC memberberries they can sneak in. There's a whole montage where Gar is in The Red seeing glimpses of other universes. He sees The Flash, Swamp Thing, Shazam, Teen Titans Go, and hears the voices of Joker (from Batman 66!), Harley Quinn, and Jonathan Kent, in some crazy attempt to tie all of this together. Not only that, but he actually interacts with Grant Morrison, who makes a cameo representing Earth-33/Earth-Prime. This is a reference to Grant Morrison's creation of both Freedom Beast and the DC Multiverse (in the cameo, Morrison is literally sketching a diagram of the DC Multiverse). People have been talking about Grant's cameo in the comics sphere, so I tried to find a clip of that, but I couldn't locate one yet. Here's a still instead:
The aspect most relevant to this board of Gar's multiverse glimpses through The Red, though, is the long-awaited Stargirl cameo in the Titans. We didn't when it was to going to happen, but here it is. Gar briefly lands in Stargirl's universe, and they interact in a real scene behind Courtney's high school. As always, Brec looks so gorgeous in that perfect tight costume - enjoy it, because it's the last time you're going to see it.
And finally: beyond annoying and pleasing, there's a moment that just plain pisses me the fuck off. In the scene where Gar and Freedom Beast are invading Dr Niles Caulder's animal lab to shut it down, they encounter his employee Dr Myers (played by Robert B Kennedy). Myers warns them about the dangers of releasing the experimental anthrax bacillus. Which would be all well and good, if Kennedy didn't actually pronounce "bacillus" incorrectly as "basilisk". He does this not just once, but twice!! The fact that they didn't catch this mistake and fix it, let alone that master actor Kennedy (who teaches acting classes in Toronto, according to his social media) couldn't properly read a simple word from a script, is inexcusable.
I'm especially wondering why Geoff Johns didn't catch this one.
So that's the wrap-up for now. Three more episodes to go. I would recommend just watching Episode 9 if you have limited time.
You'll see Jinx, Stargirl and the various cameos, and suffer through Freedom Beast's insufferable dialogue, and that's enough, really.

Whoa, preview for the last three episodes:

Brother Blood costume, by the incredible LJ Supersuits.
Probably a bit more intricate than it even has to be, but that's their general approach.
And the so-called "language" one of the Supersuit staff designed for Brother Blood, supposedly based on the blood vessels of the body
mixed with some influence from Arabic and Sanskrit. It's called "Sanguis".

Looks beautiful, but it's not a language, it's just a one-for-one substitution alphabet. Same thing that was done for Wakandan and the Star Wars language. It's presumptuous when people tell you they've done what is supposed to be a complicated thing but actually is a bunch of designs they cooked up in a single afternoon. Nobody did an actual conlang for Tamaranean or anything interesting like that.

Anyway, you'll see it in the last three episodes somewhere.

Sorry to see Titans come to an end. I enjoyed it. I especially loved Raven. Thank you Shevek for the information.

Episode 10-

Anyone still watching Titans?
This episode has three separate threads:

- Conner Kent has taken over his father's (really, his creator's) company, Lexcorp.
He's given Sebastian access to worldwide technology so he can keep an eye on his plans, and Sebastian takes full advantage to become a world-conquering supervillain. See how that shakes out!

- More nonsense with Gar Logan and The Red, but now also involving members of the Doom Patrol (but not the hot female ones)
and Kory getting stuck in The Red with him. How do they get out? Who cares, this is just a decompression filler.

- A plot about black magic involving White Raven and Dick Grayson (neither of them in costume, sorry). There's some black goo, a monster,
and a Mother Mayhem who is extremely hard to kill, apparently. She'll be a thorn in their side for the rest of the episodes, probably.

What's sexy about this episode?
1) Kory wears a tight leather outfit and looks great in it. Also she punches Cyborg, and he just takes it like a simp. Yass Kween.
2) Rachel is in peril when she is choked by a monster and lies on the floor weak and almost helpless. Also she vomits out black goo (which isn't sexy, but still kind of perilous). The actress is gorgeous and we can see a bit of cleavage. For such a powerful magical being, she seems to get in a lot of scrapes.

Three episodes left - hope there's some kind of world-shaking conclusion to this.

Episode 11 might go by many names, but on this forum it shall forever be known as "Starfire's Boob Window".
(Actually it's called "Project Starfire" which is close enough).

Kory's got a simpler costume than the complicated-looking one we've seen in the past couple seasons designed by LJ Supersuits. That one was beautiful and tight, but it was so ornate to look at that the effect of sexiness got a bit lost in the cosmic nature of the design.

I'm not sure who designed the new one, but it goes for basic sexy effect: just a tight purple catsuit, a cinching belt, and one of those Black Canary "mini-jackets" all the superheroines seem to be wearing nowadays. All purple.

In the middle, though, is something that Starfire never really had before, but Power Girl did: the boob window.
If Anna Diop's body didn't grow on you before in that complex outfit, it should now - her cleavage is pretty luscious.'

Here are three views of it (not easy to find as there are a lot of close-up shots of her and everybody's walking around a lot).
Otherwise than that, a bunch of time wasted, as I don't think anybody cares that much
about the swapped Tim Drake getting his Robin suit and going all the way to Gotham to train with Jason Todd.
Nor does anyone care about the swapped Mercy Graves, who turns out to be a useless, powerless character and also not good-looking
(so, she's nothing like the version in the comics).

All you need to know is that we finally see Brother Blood in his final goofball costume, and he summons Trigon.
Get ready for the horned showdown in the final episode, where Starfire is the key player (of course!).

Finale was pretty good.

Most notable was the long peril scene for Starfire, where her wrists are tied to pipes above her head,
and her power (1000 zettajoules, apparently) is drained to run a wormhole machine.

There are at least a dozen separate shots of her in bondage (include some unconscious and knocked out) making this one of the longest continuous
peril scenes in recent superheroine memory (at least equal to the Darna finale from earlier this year).
Also, somehow Teagan Croft manages to make this thrown-together White Raven costume look super sexy.
It's clear that they slapped some clothing pieces together to make this, but it doesn't suffer too much
Gotta admit, these two actresses have amazingly tight bodies, and they are used to full effect.

And, Kory flies!
Not much else to say - obviously

Spoiler

They defeat Brother Blood. Why wouldn't they?

I only wish that George Perez had lived to see this finale!

What did everyone think?

I JUST jumped on to post about this scene! GREAT scene!

Great ending non stop action. Sebastian got what he deserved. He chose his path. I hate that this series is ending but that it did not end in a cliffhanger which I think is dumb.

Teagan Croft is straight GORGEOUS! She wore a non-super outfit with some black tights too! Super hot!

Yes Teagan Croft is amazing. I loved her as Raven.