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How Long Is Forever? is the 14th episode of the Teen Titans series and the first episode of Season Two.

How Long Is Forever b

How Long Is Forever?

Synopsis[]

One morning, Starfire intends to celebrate a traditional Tamaranean holiday, Blorthog, the Day of Friendship, with her fellow Teen Titans, but she finds them bickering over trivial things. She warns them that if friends do not value their friendship, Rekma will occur: the Drifting Apart, the death of close friendships.

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The Titans bickering

But before the Titans have the opportunity to internalize the message, an alarm calls them into a technological museum, where a time-travelling villain calling himself Warp attempts to steal a valuable clock. The Titans engage him, but Warp's knowledge of the Titans and his futuristic weapons fend them off easily. As he opens a time portal to return to his time one hundred years in the future, Starfire impulsively charges him and both vanish into the timestream. As they are adrift, Starfire rips off a lens from Warp's chestplate; this results in both of them suddenly dropping out of the timestream.

To her astonishment, Starfire finds herself in the middle of winter, and before her stands Titans Tower, decrepit and crumbling. As she investigates the structure, she encounters Cyborg as its only occupant, who has also fallen into disrepair and is now hooked to a bulky power generator. He reveals to Starfire that she is now twenty years in the future; the Titans have disbanded following her disappearance and gone their own ways. Starfire assumes that this is due to Warp's tampering with the time continuum and decides to seek out the others. In the course of her search, she finds Beast Boy carving out a miserable existence as a carnival curio, and Raven has gone insane from loneliness, thinking that all around her is just an illusion.

As she tries to find Robin, Starfire encounters Warp again, who has also aged due to her theft of the lens, which is actually a vortex regulator, the heartpiece of his time-travelling technology; he demands it back to enable himself to return into his own time. When Starfire demands that he restore her past, Warp replies that nothing can be changed as the course of past, present and future is inevitable. He takes back the vortex reglator, but before he can finish her off, he is attacked and forced to retreat. Starfire's defender turns out to be Robin, but with a new super identity: He now goes under the name of Nightwing.

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The Titans reunited

In his hideout, Nightwing re-encourages Starfire by the fact that the Titans have always prevailed even against the impossible before and may do so yet again. With an old Titans Communicator he had kept, he alerts the other Titans, then he and Starfire proceed to the tech museum where it all began. Warp is already there reattaching the regulator to his chestplate, but before he can escape, Nightwing and Starfire attack, gradually joined by the other Titans. This time, Warp's weapons are ineffective as the Titans are wise to his tricks; a bullseye hit by one of Nightwing's birdarangs on the already damaged regulator causes the device to go haywire, reducing Warp to an infant. Cyborg uses the regulator to open a portal into the past for Starfire, and with a last happy look at her reunited friends and the stolen clock in her hands, she steps through the portal and reappears in the museum with the clock, proving that Warp's theory was wrong.

After telling the others about her adventure in the future, the Titans realize how important their friendship really is. They spontaneously start to participate in the Tamaranean holiday, much to Starfire's joy, and Robin begins to express an earnest interest in his future identity ...

Notes[]

  • This episode was likely inspired by the Titans Tomorrow storyline from the original comic series.
  • This is the only appearance of Robin as Nightwing in the animated series.
  • Starfire has a Mumbo Jumbo alarm clock

Quotes[]

  • Nightwing: It's good to see you again.
    Starfire: Robin?
    Nightwing: I haven't used that name in a long time. Call me ... Nightwing.
  • Raven: Whoa.
    Beast Boy: Bald?! You're telling me I'm going to be bald?!? [rips out hair and weeps]
    Cyborg: Guess you were right about all that Rekma stuff.
  • Beast Boy: (observing Nightwing's full head of hair) Dude, that is so unfair.
  • Robin: So ... "Nightwing", huh?
  • Starfire: History said it dissapeared.... but history was wrong!
  • Raven: So... is it too late to do this festival of friendship thing? Starfire: [heart eyes] Oh, it's never too late!

Gallery[]

Video[]

File:How Long is Forever
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