Things Change

Things Change
Episode Number	065
Broadcast Number	065
Season	05
Original Airdate	January 16, 2006
Production Code	513
Guest Characters	Terra, White Monster, and Slade (robot duplicate; flashback)
Written by	Amy Wolfram
Directed by	Michael Chang
Chronology
Previous	"Titans Together"
Next	Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo

"Things Change" is the thirteenth and final episode of season five and the overall 65th episode of the Teen Titans series. It is also the series finale.

Synopsis

Beast Boy strangely sees Terra in her human form again. He wants her to return to the team; but she apparently has no memories of powers, her time on the team, or even her romance with Beast Boy. Will Beast Boy find a way to get Terra to remember and come back to the Titans, or will he have to say goodbye forever to his friend?

Plot

A familiar face reappears.

Following their victory against The Brotherhood of Evil, The Teen Titans have finally returned home after months of battling fearsome villains. As they are walking around their city saying how great it is, Starfire states she is looking forward to renting movies and eating sour gummy worms. Unfortunately, as they arrive at the location they discover things have changed. The movie store, as well as Beast Boy's favorite candy shop, Raven's bookstore, and Cyborg's auto-part shop have all been scheduled for demolition or torn down to make room for the construction of a new office complex. As Starfire gets near a brick wall, the Teen Titans are attacked by a mysterious new enemy; a large, white, humanoid creature that can change into any substance it comes in contact with. During the battle, Beast Boy sees Terra. The Titan's efforts at fighting the creature seem futile since they have not faced an enemy quite like that. After a fire hydrant is busted, the water that geysers out gives the creature the form of water, and thus, it escapes into the sewers. While the other Titans continue to pursue it, Beast Boy goes underground to Slade's old lair where Terra's statue is, only to discover it's gone and that proves that Terra is revived.

Beast Boy continues his own search back at Titans Tower and the other Titans arrive home after failing to locate the creature. They demand an explanation and Beast Boy explains that he saw Terra, but did not get the chance to talk to her since they were still fighting the creature. The other Titans are shocked, but at the same time skeptical since they have no logical explanation for her return. Beast Boy refuses to let go of his belief and runs off to continue his quest as the alarm sounds at another one of the creature's sightings.

Beast Boy travels back to the Canyon where they first met, and the theme park where he hung out with Terra on their last get-together and where they fought Slade. Once realizing she is not there, he goes into Ben's, the restaurant she and him went to on their date. As he sits sadly at the counter, Beast Boy sees Terra at the door, but then realizes it is not her but a girl who looks like her.

A new enemy attacks Jump City.

After returning to the construction site where he and the Titans went toe-to-toe with the creature, Beast Boy meets up with Terra again, seeing she is a student at a local high school. He gets her attention, but she shows no memory of him, her past, and does not show any geokinetic ability. As a way to jog her memory, he offers to take her out for pizza, to which she agrees.

Meanwhile, back in town, the Titan's search for the creature is going nowhere. Seeing as how it is able to vanish into any substance as well as become it, they have no way of tracking it, especially without Beast Boy. While they keep searching, they express their concern for Beast Boy and keep speculating about Terra's return, such as freeing herself, an earthquake going off while the Titans were away, or the effect wearing off on its own. While they go on about why she did not attempt to locate them, the creature reveals itself to have been hiding in a concrete wall watching their every move.

Beast Boy tells Terra the story of how he and the Titans defeated The Brotherhood of Evil and desperately tries to get Terra to remember her past and her powers over pizza, but things seem pointless. He even takes her back to the tower to show her her old room and explains, "Stars. Because you like to sleep outside." only for Terra to then respond with, "Not me. I hate camping out. Too many bugs." As she explores the room, she picks up the silver, heart-shaped box Beast Boy made for her. He explains what it is to her, yet it seems to bring back painful memories to the girl when she comments that it is cute but abruptly says that she really needs to go. Outside the tower, the girl tells Beast Boy that the one he is looking for is still out there somewhere, and wishes him luck finding her. However, he still remains convinced that it is her. As Beast Boy grows more and more frustrated with Terra's lack of remembrance he eventually throws mud at her to try to get her to use her powers. However, this backfires and the mud hits the girl's face and she storms off.

At a museum complex, the Titans continue their search for the creature. Right as Cyborg states they would never find it, it emerges from a wooden exhibit and flees. The Titans give chase only for it to disappear again into a courtyard of statues, much to everyone's frustration.

Beast Boy returns to the Hall of Mirrors at the amusement park trying to figure out how Terra has forgotten everything. While he tries to come up with a solution, Slade emerges in the mirrors and Beast Boy demands an explanation for her lack of memory and powers. However, Slade claims he had nothing to do with Terra's new state and instead tells Beast Boy that this is what she chooses to be. Beast Boy could not believe it since she loved being a hero and Slade says that it is because she does not want to remember him. In a rage, Beast Boy shreds all of the mirrors with his animal forms and they have a showdown. Beast Boy vows not to let Slade hurt her again, only for him to remark that Beast Boy is the one hurting her and that he should let her go. A lengthy battle eventually leads to Slade's demise again, only for Beast Boy to dig through the rubble and realize that it was just another one of Slade's lifelike androids. With its dying breath, "She doesn't want to see you anymore."

Beast Boy tries to get Terra´s memory back.

The next morning, he heads back to the high school Terra attends and tries to apologize for their last encounter, but she rebuffs him and decides not to be late for her biology class.

Meanwhile, the Teen Titans' search for the creature is still proving fruitless, but Robin refuses to give up while it is still out there. The creature appears again and a chase ensues. The Titans think they have it cornered after chasing it into the forest.

Back at the school, Beast Boy falls asleep waiting for Terra. When the bell rings, she tries to bat him away, but he refuses to let up until she talks to him. However, he is forced to when they come to the girls' locker room.

The Titans chase eventually leads them to a battle at a recycling plant. The fight keeps going on and the creature is completely capable of holding off the Titans all by itself. It proves impossible to defeat as it keeps changing into all the substances in the plant, such as aluminum, crude oil, and eventually, molten steel, where the fight finally reaches its climax.

In the school library, the girl tries to get Beast Boy to leave out of fear of getting her in trouble. He talks to the girl one final time and Beast Boy could not understand why things cannot go back to the way they were, back to when she was his friend and a champion of the innocent. The girl insists things were never the way he remembered and that her name is not Terra. In one last desperate attempt, Beast Boy offers her the Titans communicator but she still declines. She tells him that things change, she is not Terra. Just then, Robin sends an SOS to Beast Boy to aid in their battle with the creature. He softly begs her to come with him, but she refuses, telling him that he is the Teen Titan and that she is not up to fight crime and save the world, only to study for a geometry test she has next period. Eventually the bell rings, and the girl slowly fades away into the background, leaving Beast Boy to watch and see her fade further away, until she finally disappears.

Beast Boy is seen standing there coping with the reality of the situation, but then notifies Robin: "Beast Boy to Robin..... I'm on my way. Over" and in the very last seconds of the scene, Beast Boy is seen running out of the hallway to help the other Teen Titans, having finally accepted that regardless of whether the girl was Terra or not, that she wanted to be normal. And with this, Beast Boy finally lets go of the past and looks towards the future with his best friends and teammates, The series ends with him charging off into the daylight.

Last Appearance of Characters

Major

• Beast Boy
• Terra

Minor

• Robin
• Starfire
• Cyborg
• Raven

Villains

• White Monster (only appearance)
• Slade (robot replica; flashback)
• Brotherhood of Evil (mentioned)

Credits

• Written by
  • Amy Wolfram
• Directed by
  • Michael Chang
• Starring
  • Greg Cipes as Beast Boy
  • Tara Strong as Raven
  • Scott Menville as Robin
  • Hynden Walch as Starfire
  • Khary Payton as Cyborg
• Also featuring
  • Ashley Johnson as Terra
  • Ron Perlman as Slade
  • Dee Bradley Baker as White Monster

Trivia

• Despite this episode being commonly interpreted as a cliffhanger, Khary Payton has stated that the lack of closure is intentional, stating that when Cartoon Network told the crew that the show would be ending with Season 5 the crew decided to end on a story that would teach the last lesson a teenager needs to learn: "Maybe there was some closure that you wanted, but y'know what? Life doesn't work that way. Once you become an adult, life doesn't work that way, and sometimes you've just gotta learn to move on. [...] Yes, there's unanswered questions, but they're unanswered for a reason, [...] and so literally, if we did a season 6, that lesson means nothing." Aditionally, Rob Hoegee has stated that "Had a season 6 been a serious possibility, we wouldn't have ended season 5 the way we did.", and "We also knew that season five would be the last one. This was from the very beginning. Also the reason we ended with "Things Change"
• Glen Murakami has stated that he thinks this episode "explains what the whole series is about.", further clarifying "The show was always about change and shifting gears. It was about being unpredictable. And I liked that. So that’s the reason why we wanted that storytelling in THINGS CHANGE. It’s supposed to be thoughtful. It’s supposed to be slow. It’s funny, because it seems self-explanatory to me."
• Glen Murakami has said the episode is, "in a way, a reaction to the fans taking it all way to seriously. Or projecting too much onto the characters. [...] But in real life, you just don’t always get everything you want."
• According to Glen Murakami, "when you start getting into a story and it becomes about, 'How did she get unfrozen? Who did that? What form of science might bring her back?' [...] it gets away from what the story is about. At that point, it gets sort of fanboy and geeky. And you end up explaining things that don’t necessarily need to be explained."
• This episode was inspired by the 1998 anime "His and Her Circumstances"
• Originally, it was discussed to bring Terra back for the Trigon storyline in Season Four, but according to Glen Murakami "that didn’t make sense; It didn’t organically work with that. I was just too many things to try and do. And y’know, I really like the character. But sometimes that alone isn’t a good enough reason to bring a character back."
• Glen Murakami has stated on separate occasions that he's satisfied with this episode as the series finale.
• Murakami has stated that Terra "wasn’t cut out to be a super-hero. She had super-powers, but she wasn’t cut out for that. And that’s what makes her a tragic character. And I think that’s what makes that character interesting."
• Amy Wolfram is credited for writing the episodes press blurb, which read “The Teen Titans are finally back home. But a walk through the city reveals that things are no longer as they remembered. And while Beast Boy wants everything to be just like it was in the past, he has to face the fact that in life things change.” according to her, "The way that I wrote that press blurb was very specific. It was written fairly vague, on purpose, because that will probably be our last episode. And it’s a wonderful, different way to end a season rather than doing a two-part fight."
• According to David Slack, Glen Murakami began kicking around the idea for this episode as early as Season Three.
• Terra continually told Beast Boy to stop calling her Terra, but it is still unknown what she now calls herself.
• The school "Terra" attends is called "Murakami", the last name of the producer of Teen Titans.
• While Glen Murakami has stated that the school girl's identity wasn't the point of the episode, in the last conversation between them, 'Terra' makes the comment to Beast Boy that things "were never the way you remember" after he states that the old Terra used to be so happy. This combined with her comment "things change. The girl you want me to be is just a memory" implies that this may, in fact, not only be the real Terra, but she remembers everything from her past. However, she is no longer the old Terra that Beast Boy once knew. This also seems to be confirmed by the episodes model sheet for her.
• 'Terra' makes a cameo in the Teen Titans Go! issue, "The Great Race", watching them get ready. She is later the subject of the issue, "Metamorphosis", where her brother Geo-Force is introduced and more evidence that the girl truly is Terra is shown.
• Beast Boy's Utahraptor form shows he is the same size as the White Monster. It also shows his Utahraptor form is much taller than Slade than it was in "Betrayal" (in other words, Beast Boy's Utahraptor form was as tall as Slade in "Betrayal", but much taller than the robot Slade in the final episode).
• Beast Boy uses the same joke about brainfreeze he used in "Titans Together"; however, "Terra" liked it.
• This episode marks Slade's only appearance in Season Five.
• This is one of the few times Slade actually tries to help someone, telling Beast Boy that he is truly hurting Terra, not physically, but emotionally. This shows that even though he is evil, even he knows that there are things that should be left forgotten and that life must move on, as he accepted Terra's decision to start over normal.
• This is the first season finale to not be split into multiple parts.

Cultural references

• Coincidentally, this episode shares its name with the two-parter pilot of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series and an another coincidence is that the final episode of the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series is entitled "Divide and Conquer", which happens to be the title of the first Teen Titans episode.
• In the hallway, there are signs saying "Vote For Pedro", "Vote For Pedre", and "Vote For Pineo". These refer to the classic 2004 comedy Napoleon Dynamite. The title character makes a cameo in the library.
• During the third act, the sound effect heard inside the school is the same sound effect used for many stations in the Australian video game series, Trainz Simulator.

Goofs

• In the beginning of the episode where the Titans are back in Jump city walking, Cyborg's left ear is human instead of metal.
• When the White Creature's eye reflects the Titans' backs, Cyborg's left ear is human instead of metal again.
• In the hallway where Beast Boy is talking to Terra when she says "I'm gonna be late for biology," the sign on the right above the lockers says "Vote For Pedre". However, as they talk when she gets out of biology (and for the rest of the episode), the sign says "Vote For Pedro".
• Right before the library scene, a close-up of the clock shows that it is 10:00. However, a few seconds later, the clock in the background inside the library shows that it is 10:10. It is possible that this scene is 10 minutes after the establishing shot.
• None of Terra's classmates seem to recognize her from a time as a Teen Titan or the Slade-affiliated terrorist who briefly took over the city at least a year ago.
  • Likewise, none of her school's students or classmates seem to notice or even wonder why Beast Boy's there.

Gallery

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Transcript

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