Review: TITANS 4×04 – “Super Super Mart”
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Director: Boris Mojsovski
Writer: Tom Pabst
Starring: Brenton Thwaites, Teagan Croft, Ryan Porter, Joshua Orpin, Anna Diop, Jay Lycurgo, Joseph Morgan, Franka Potente, Lisa Hayley Ambalavanar
Reviewed by: Joshua Raynor
Summary
As she grows closer to Sebastian, Rachel makes an unsettling discovery that leads the Titans to The Organization’s Asylum – where they come face-to-face with their deadliest foes yet.
Positives – The Origins of Mother Mayhem
This is such a great episode, for many reasons, but one of the main ones is the origin story for our top villain, Mother Mayhem. The episode starts off in 1996. We see Mother Mayhem, whose name is actually May, working an office job, and being degraded by her jerk of a boss. We learn that she already had powers, even back then, and she uses those powers to kill her boss, making him jump out of his office window.
It’s obvious that she’s just trying to live a normal life, but things aren’t going her way, and that’s when she meets a man at a bar – Dr. Adamson from The Organization. We haven’t seen Dr. Adamson since season one, when he was attempting to summon Trigon. Adamson gives May a card for The Organization, and on the back are three words – Azarath Metrion Zinthos – which he gets her to say.
We then see her at The Organization along with Gina, and they are told that Trigon wants to meet them. It’s portrayed very much like a cult, which it pretty much is. And when they finally take the (literal) dive to finally meet Trigon, Gina winds up betraying May because she wants to be Queen, but May’s forgiveness leads to her getting that opportunity, instead of Gina. I love that May was the only one who was actually brave enough to take the jump, as even Gina was pulled in by May, and no one else jumped. Trigon knew she was the one, which, I believe, is why she was saved a second time after Gina pushed her back into the pit.
May then gets pregnant and gives birth to a boy, who is subsequently taken from her, because their prophecy states that the chosen one will be a girl. But May fully believes that her son is the chosen one, and she names him… Sebastian! That’s right, Sebastian is actually Mother Mayhem’s son!
We learn that May was locked up for over 20 years, until the Titans set the Asylum on fire in 2019. Gina breaks her out during the fire and they take off.
May was betrayed so many times throughout her life, by bosses, by Gina, and even by her betrothed, Trigon. But she never gave up, and instead uses that as fuel to prove that Sebastian is the true chosen one, and not Rachel.
Positives – Shop Til You Drop… Dead
The Titans stick together throughout this episode, with very few solo moments. Rachel tries to connect with Sebastian, first because of their shared connection to The Organization, and then more so after learning he’s actually her brother.
The Titans head back to where the Asylum was, but when they get there, its been replaced with a big box store, called Super Super Mart (hence the title of the episode). This was a great moment of levity in an episode heavy with seriousness. They break in and are confronted with a bunch of undead minions with weapons, as Mayhem was expecting them.
During this scene, Starfire’s new blue energy powers don’t work on the zombies. Why? What exactly is this power? I gots to know!! Also, Rachel cuts off a zombies head with a chainsaw, which was awesome and gorier than I expected them to show.
But the best part of this whole scene is when they finally get away from the zombies (after Jinx was able to temporarily freeze them) and they run into… ZOMBIE DEATHSTROKE!!! This was an incredible surprise, and made for some great moments, especially when Connor punches Zombie Deathstroke’s head right off his body. And even though it didn’t really do much to him, it was still really cool to see.
Connor then gets stabbed by Zombie Deathstroke, with what I’m assuming was some sort of magically-imbued knife, even though it’s never actually specified. But with all of the talk about Superman being vulnerable to magic, and Jinx assuming Connor is as well, it would make sense that this is the case here.
Positives – The Fall of Connor Kent
Ever since his meet up with Lex, Connor has been slowly falling away from the light, and away from the Titans. And by the end of this episode, it seems that Connor may have finally gotten there. Throughout the episode, he is shown being rude or short with members of the team, specifically Tim and Dick.
Then, after getting stabbed, he winds up vomiting up blood, and a snake, just like how Lex and the others died. But it doesn’t kill Connor, and we don’t see what he does with the snake. But at the end, it’s obvious that something is definitely wrong with him, and will hopefully be explored more in the next episode.
Negatives
While there were some really cool moments throughout this episode, and I absolutely loved the flashbacks to Mother Mayhem’s past, it still felt like this episode was a bit of a filler, with less impact on the current story than the previous three had.
Verdict
Overall, this was a great episode that added to the overarching story, building up Mother Mayhem, and giving us her motivations for why she’s doing these things. I just hope, with only two episodes left in this half of the season, that things really ramp up going forward.
