Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Titans season four, episode two, “Mother Mayhem.”
In DC’s Titans season four, the super-team faces a threat they’ve never faced before, and it might just take Raven and her new powers to save the day.
From the beginning, Rachel Roth/Raven (Teagan Croft) has always been special. She was an orphan who exhibited dark, magical powers from her demonic father Trigon, but she was not in control of them. As part of the Titans, she learns to control her abilities, which include projecting her Soul-self out of her body, illusion casting, producing pure darkness energy, telepathic abilities, and divination. For the team’s new enemies, Brother Blood and Mother Mayhem, she’s going to need all of these and more. In season three, she travels to Wonder Woman’s home, Themyscira, in hopes of bringing their fallen teammate Donna Troy/Wonder Girl (Conor Leslie) back to life and learning how to better wield her gifts.
In the season four premiere episode, “Lex Luthor,” strange things are brewing. Raven starts having visions and seeing blood in places where there shouldn’t be. She keeps this to herself at first since they have bigger fish to fry. Lex Luthor (Titus Welliver) has requested a meeting with his son, Conner Kent/Superboy (Joshua Orpin). Raven, Gar Logan/Beast Boy (Ryan Potter), and Tim Drake/Robin (Jay Lycurgo) research Luthor’s records at the Daily Planet’s archives, but Raven’s horrific visions won’t cease. When Conner finally confronts his father, Lex reveals that he made Conner so that he could find his own path. Lex dies shortly after. Blood spills from his mouth, and a snake slithers out of his mouth, which Superboy has to take care of with his heat vision.
Season four, episode two, “Mother Mayhem,” begins with a girl in her room playing with her handheld device as her parents are putting away groceries in the kitchen. Then, her screen malfunctions, and her lightbulbs go out. She looks out her window, and blood drips down the glass from the exterior. She goes downstairs and sees a figure in a beaked skull mask pulling the body of her dead father across the floor. She runs upstairs to escape, but when she closes the door behind her, the figure is shown to be in her room waiting for her.
Dick and Rachel go to Lexcorp Tower to investigate the crime scene. The room has been cleaned, but Raven can trace the magical signature because magic was used in this killing. She says that in the physical world, things pass, but beyond the veil, things remain like echoes. Her eyes and chakra glow, and she touches the floor, summoning a purple and black cloud that overtakes the room. She’s used her Soul-self abilities before, but never like this. Rachel psychically travels to the location of a red house where it’s snowing, then Dick snaps her out of it and she knows where they need to go next.
Dick, Rachel, Tim, and Gar go to the house she saw in her vision and tells them she’s sure this is the place. Tim is completely shocked by this. He had no idea she had these visions. She continues showing just how effective she is with her powers. When they find the girl in her room, she has her eyes closed, and she’s shaking. Rachel enters her mind, where she finds the girl hiding from the beaked-skull figure. She comforts the girl, tells her she’s Raven, then fights the figure. She uses her power of darkness to lift him off the ground, but when she uses it to rip off his mask, he bursts into flames. All that’s left of him is the smoking skull mask.
The occult mystery is far from over. At the end of the episode, the Titans fight Mother Mayhem. When Raven uses her powers, Mother Mayhem’s magical gem staff absorbs the energy, and the villainess uses it in a dark ritual at the end of the episode. All of those in attendance to this chant, “Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos,” and evidently this has been the plan all along. Raven is left unconscious and her hair has turned white after her battle. The Titans will now have to solve what’s happened to her and figure out how to defeat this new and powerful foe.
