After the iconic Terra arc and the (supposed) death of the show's greatest villain in Slade, Teen Titans had a lot to live up to. And while I don't quite think it lived up, this season had a lot to love in its own right.
The main arc of Season 3 revolves around Cyborg this time around and his fight with the villain Brother Blood, and it was kinda uneven. On one hand, I really like Cyborg and think he has a lot of potential for a great character arc. The struggle between his robot side and humanity has always been super compelling in wherever he appears, and it applies here too. However, Brother Blood is quite simply just not a good villain, especially not compared to Slade. Slade had an intimidating design and chilling voice performance, he demanded your attention whenever he was on screen. Brother Blood just isn't as compelling. He had a solid start in the premiere where he promises to restore Cyborg's body, but eventually, he kinda just lacked any interesting goal outside of fixing his school, and his fascination with Cyborg was nowhere near as compelling as Slade's interest in Robin. This season also introduces the first different team of superheroes in Titans East, which was actually pretty cool. It fleshes out the world a bit and lets us spend more time with some of the other superheroes. Bumblebee was particularly entertaining, especially her dynamic with Cyborg.
The Brother Blood arc is pretty weak and doesn't get too much focus this season, only being in three episodes (Deception, Wavelength, and Titans East). However, this season makes up for it with some surprisingly great standalone episodes, mostly because this season doesn't feel like it has to make all of them purely comedic. While we did get some fun and wacky stuff like Revolution and Bunny Raven, we also got much darker fare like X, The Beast Within, and especially Haunted. X and Haunted are especially great as they deal with the fallout of the events in Season 1 in ways that makes Robin a much more compelling character. However, something that I noticed about this season is just how much stronger the first half was than the second. The first few episodes gave us Deception, X, Haunted, and Spellbound pretty close together, all great if not amazing episodes. The second half generally had the weaker standalones of the season (The Beast Within was a mess and Revolution was a pretty weak successor to Mad Mod), with just one episode I really loved, Bunny Raven. Even the finale Titans East, while not bad, wasn't nearly as dramatic or satisfying as finales like Apprentice and Aftershock.
While the arc may not have been as good, this season still had some great episodes:
Deception: Despite my gripes with the story arc, this episode was pretty great. HIVE finally got some screen time after being absent since the premiere, and I love how the episode establishes the season's main villain and Cyborg's conflict at the same time. It also just has a lot of funny moments thanks to the Cyborg dummy.
X: This episode was just jam-packed with good ideas. I love how RedX ended up becoming an actual villain and how it forced Robin to reflect on his actions during Season 1, and it was great how they got to team up by the end. I also quite like how we never learn who RedX actually is, it's just such a fun thing to speculate about.
Haunted: This was easily the best episode yet, like there's no contest. It's dark, intense, and kinda screwed up. I love how it shows how the events of Apprentice did have an effect on Robin, and watching him beat himself up was just rough. This episode was jam-packed with amazing moments though, from Beast Boy's funny cold subplot, to Raven using astral projection, to Starfire having to shoot Robin, to the thought-provoking cliffhanger. Seriously, I want more dark episodes like this, Haunted was amazing!
Bunny Raven (Or How To Make A Titanimal Disappear): Most of Raven's episodes have been pretty serious so far, so this was a cute change of pace. I don't think I need to explain why Bunny Raven is such a funny premise anyway, but frankly the whole episode is packed with inventive imagery and some of the sharpest comedy in the series. It definitely rivals Date With Destiny in terms of sheer funny factor.
Overall, Teen Titans' third season had a fairly weak arc and peaked pretty early on, but it made up for its weaknesses with a strong focal character and some of the best standalone episodes in the series.
3/5 Stars
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