Summary: Robin swears that he is seeing Slade (the bad guy who fell into a pit of lava at the end of last season), but none of the other Titans can see him. Robin freaks out and has to be strapped to a bed, which of course he escapes from because he was trained by Batman. Eventually and if a little help from his friends Robin realizes that “Slade” is really all in his mind. Cyborg later discovers that Slade had covered his mask (which Robin took as a souvenir) in a “reagent” that would cause anyone who was exposed to it to essentially go insane. After Robin leaves the room Cyborg tells Raven and Starfire that the reagent had to remotely actived by someone (dun dun dun!).
Very dark stuff for this show. At one point Robin threatens to kill anyone who stands in his way. Nice to see Raven using her psychic powers. They’ve always shown the psychoknesis and they’ve just started showing her phasing though things. I guess that working in the psychic powers as about as hard as working in the healing powers.
I almost forgot. While Raven is in Robin’s mind we briefly see a the silolettes of two acrobats falling. Hint, hint?
What did you guys think?
The fight between Robin and Slade in Slade’s old base was one of the most savage beatdowns I’ve seen in a cartoon. It was actually painful to watch. It definitely seemed a much more mature theme for them then they generally do, borderline really creepy with Robin going all bat-sh!t crazy like that. I missed the episode where Slade dies though. What is this about him dying in lava?
At the end of the Aftershocks two parter, Terra breaks free of Slade’s control and the two fight it out. Terra starts losing control of her powers and opens up a volcano in Slade’s base and Terra rips the ground from under Slade and dumps him in.
Of course, you don’t see him actually go into the lava. But near the end, you see Slade’s mask slowly slip underneat the liquid magma. Which makes me wonder where the heck they got Slade’s costume since it should have been completely incinerated.
I think the mask Robin was holding was the broken mask from the end of season one. Note the crack. Then again Slade only dropped half of his mask then. Hmm. Oh well. Small plot hole in an excellent episode.
Oh, right. I forgot about that episode. Robin’s pulled Slade’s mask off to reveal a robot so many times, it never even occurred to me that might be the real Slade, and that he might be dead.
