The Entire Teen Titans Timeline Explained

Before they become the newspaper cover-gracing superheroes the world will one day come to know and love, every superhero has to start somewhere. For teenage DC superhero sidekick Robin and his pals Cyborg, Starfire, Raven, and Beast Boy, that somewhere is a super-cool housing arrangement where they can hang out playing video games and sharing pizza, waffles, and the occasional birthday cake.

Blending anime aesthetics and superhero tropes in a beautifully rendered tale that often favors good writing over canon, "Teen Titans" ran for five seasons and explores issues that all teens face while emphasizing the importance of friendship, communication, and learning to accept oneself. More than just a monster-of-the-week series, the show follows the Titans as they struggle to overcome their own personal baggage and find their own authentic selves and then use that authenticity to help others. Whether they're facing off with Slade or hanging out with Silkie, the Teen Titans continue to be a positive force in each other's lives and within their home of Jump City, but with all of those supervillain boss battles, it's a lot to keep track of. From romantic glances between Robin and Starfire to channel surfing with Control Freak, we've put together a complete "Teen Titans" timeline to help you keep it all straight.

As a baby, Raven is nearly cast into Limbo by the monk Juris, who fears what she will become but ends up killed by Trigon. Temple Azarath's spiritual leader guides her education as she grows up ("Fractured"). Dick Grayson, who is destined to become Robin, grows up participating in a family trapeze act called the Flying Graysons. After mobster Tony Zucco sabotages the Graysons' trapeze wires, causing the deaths of Dick's parents, fellow orphan Bruce Wayne takes him in and trains him to be a vigilante crimefighter. Robin eventually moves to Jump City to do his own thing. Elsewhere, Terra grows up as a princess of Markovia, where her family's experiments leave her with unstable geokinetic abilities ("Terra"). 

Originally named Garfield Logan, a young Beast Boy is traveling the world with his geneticist parents when he is bitten by a rare green monkey and subsequently contracts a deadly disease. The serum that cures him transforms him into a green shape-shifter. After his parents are killed in a boating accident, Beast Boy breaks into the Doom Patrol headquarters and ends up getting asked to join their team, although he eventually parts ways with them and heads to Jump City ("Go!").

Born as Victor Stone, Cyborg is on track to a promising future as a teenage decathlon star when he is severely injured in an accident that leaves his mother dead. To repair Victor's mutilated body, Victor's dad outfits him with cybernetics that transform him into Cyborg. Ashamed of his appearance, Cyborg begins wearing a hoodie and avoiding people, which is exactly what he's doing when he first encounters Starfire. All of the Teen Titans meet for the first time after the Tamaranean girl Starfire, traded by her sister Blackfire as a slave to the Gordanians, crash lands on Earth. When Beast Boy, Cyborg, Raven, and Robin all help free her and save the city from a Gordanian particle weapon, the Teen Titans are born.

As part of his efforts to take down Slade, Robin goes rogue, creating the alter-ego villain Red X, who the other Titans try to take down before Robin comes clean. Slade gets his hands on a time-stopping chronoton detonator, but Starfire's allergies lead the Titans to it first. After a battle with Cinderblock and Slade, the device is revealed to be a ruse when Slade injects four of the Titans with nanoscopic probes with the ability to kill them by attacking their red blood cells.

Slade uses the probes to compel Robin to become his apprentice, and Robin willingly sacrifices himself for his friends ("Apprentice Part 1"). Not knowing about the nanoprobes, the other Titans go after Robin, who they believe has turned on them ("Apprentice Part 2"). When Robin disobeys Slade by refusing to fight Starfire, Slade unleashes the probes, which affect the Titans immediately, causing Robin to become compliant once more. Robin eventually outsmarts Slade by injecting himself with the probes, telling the villain that if his friends die, Slade will no longer have Robin as an apprentice. The Titans defeat Slade, who destroys his lair as he flees, and then remove all their nanoprobes.

Shortly after the battle with Slade, Cyborg develops his superhero ride — the T-Car ("Car Trouble"). Starfire falls through a portal into a dark alternate timeline where things don't work out so well for the Titans or for humanity as a whole. There, she works with the other future Titans to get back to her own time ("How Long is Forever?"). Later, Beast Boy gets temporarily mistaken for a talking green dog in the stewardship of alien kid Soto ("Every Dog Has Its Day").

Season 3 of "Teen Titans" finds the Titans contending with the HIVE Academy once more after academy students are linked to an uptick in robberies around Jump City. Using a couple of holographic rings, Cyborg is able to disguise himself as the superpowered Stone, who looks like Cyborg's pre-cybernetic self and has the ability to transform his body into stone ("Deception"). Leaving a robotic copy of himself called the Cybot back at Titans Tower as a decoy, Cyborg uses the rings to go undercover in the HIVE Academy, where he quickly runs afoul of Jinx, Mammoth, and Gizmo, and catches the eye of the academy's new boss, Brother Blood. Just as Cyborg hacks into the school computer and learns of Brother Blood's ion amplifier, Brother Blood reveals he knew what was up all along and convinces Cyborg to defect to his side with a little mind control. But the Titans show up and Cyborg reveals he was never fooled, collapsing the school with help from the amplifier.

When someone steals Robin's Red X suit, Robin confesses his mistake in creating Red X, admitting that the suit is powered by a volatile element called zynothium which makes the suit impossible to destroy ("X"). After forcing intel from Professor Chang, the Titans travel to a tech company with an impenetrable vault and a lifetime supply of the element, where they predictably find the new Red X searching for the same thing. After facing off with Red X, they learn that he's not a criminal so much as a sociopath bent on having a wild time. While they hash things out, Professor Chang swoops in and scoops up all of the zynothium which he plans to use to destroy Jump City. While Chang freezes the other Titans and finishes up production on his disintegrator cannon, Robin and Red X work together to save them, and Red X takes off with some zynothium in the end.

The Titans run into trouble with Cyborg's programming after he picks up a computer virus from the video game Mega Monkeys 4. To save the day, they enlist the help of an unlikely ally — the HIVE-affiliated hacker, Gizmo ("Crash"). While looking through a box of the defeated Slade's artifacts, Robin inhales hallucinogenic dust, causing him to believe he is fighting Slade. The team later learns that the reagent was triggered by someone outside of Titans Tower, foreshadowing a looming reprisal of their confrontation with Slade ("Haunted").

Bookworm Raven gets caught up in a fantasy book and falls in love with the story's handsome sorcerer, Rorek of Nol ("Spellbound"). After they strike up a friendship, Rorek teaches her everything he knows from thousands of pages of spells and incantations, increasing her abilities with powerful dark magic. When he tricks her into freeing him from the book, she realizes he isn't Rorek — it was the dragon Malchior all along, and promptly sends him back into the book with her newfound abilities.

Not long after Malchior is thwarted, the Titans have new foes to contend with including Mad Mod, who reclaims America for England and reappropriates Robin's youth for himself ("Revolution"). Next, they team up with Aqualad once more to battle Brother Blood and his sonic generator while Bumblebee infiltrates HIVE Academy ("Wavelength"). When Beast Boy gets splashed with some chemicals inside an animal testing facility, he abandons his veggie lifestyle and transforms into a were-Beast Boy, a condition that's thankfully reversed with an antidote ("The Beast Within").

After Control Freak's escape from prison, the Titans chase him and his TV villains through a TV dimension where his channel-surfing is damaging the brains of TV viewers ("Don't Touch That Dial"). Next, Robin embarks on a journey to train with the True Master in Asia as part of his fight against Katarou ("The Quest"). As Raven's birthday arrives, she has an emotional reaction to her friends' efforts to celebrate, and it doesn't help matters when a strange symbol appears in Raven's room and a demonic voice tells her she will fulfill her destiny and open a portal to let Trigon into the world ("Birthmark").

The Titans respond to a call where they find Slade, who is brought back by Trigon in exchange for his obedience. Slade appears with Trigon's symbol on his head and tells Raven he's come to deliver a message. More powerful than ever, Slade burns the same symbol into a horrified Raven's arm. As Slade begins to destroy the factory and her friends, Raven stops time — a power she had not previously known she had. Slade moves despite the time freeze, telling her he has to deliver his message as the same symbols appear all over her face and body. Raven has a horrifying vision of an apocalyptic future, with Slade telling her before he leaves that this is the world she will create. Raven keeps the prophecy to herself, but it will torment her in the weeks to come as she awaits the fulfillment of this dark destiny. 

The Titans end up stranded and split up on an alien planet, where Robin and Starfire hash out their feelings for each other after a misunderstanding over the term "girlfriend" leaves Starfire upset ("Stranded"). Cyborg experiments with a new upgrade and faces off with HIVE Academy grad Billy Numerous, who has the ability to duplicate himself ("Overdrive"). The manipulative witch Mother Mae-Eye uses mind control to reduce the Titans into spoiled, compliant children by feeding them magical pie — a spell the HIVE Five unintentionally helps break in time for Starfire to stop her from baking them alive ("Mother Mae-Eye").

Realizing that there's nothing she can do to stop the prophecy surrounding her as her time draws to a close, Raven resigns herself to her fate, committing to spend her last moments with them as well as possible ("The End"). Raven's markings reappear, the Titans put Raven in a quarantine room meant to keep out everything that could harm her, but Trigon gets into her head as she meditates. She leaves with Slade, telling him that like her, he is just a pawn to Trigon. When Slade's own army of fire stops obeying him, he realizes she is telling the truth, causing him to turn on his former master. Amid the Titans' protests, Raven opens the portal, destroying herself and allowing Trigon to take over the Earth in the process. Against the wasted landscape, the Titans realize that Raven left them some of her powers, which they use to attack Trigon. It doesn't work, but Slade decides to join them in stopping Trigon, giving them the Ring of Azar to protect them. While Robin and Slade go after Trigon, the other three Titans work together to battle evil clones of themselves created by Trigon. Robin finds Raven in the form of her childhood self, who faces her father and defeats him, restoring the planet and returning to her original age.

As the Titans get ready for an imminent showdown with the Brotherhood of Evil, they travel the world helping other superheroes and picking up allies. The Titans encounter Red Star in frozen Northern Russia while helping locals with a radioactive monster. The Titans befriend the lonely soldier and help him learn to control his powers, making him an honorary Titan at the same time ("Snowblind"). While battling Doctor Light in the Arctic, the Titans fall through the ice and meet Gnarrk and Kole, making them honorary Titans as well ("Kole"). Later, a frustrated Raven brings three child superheroes into the fold while battling Monsieur Mallah ("Hide & Seek").

While the cat's away, the mice will play, and the HIVE Five are more than happy to take advantage of the Titans' absence, getting into all sorts of mayhem in Jump City while they're gone. When Kid Flash steps in to halt their nonsense, he finds an unlikely romantic connection with Jinx, causing her to turn on the Brotherhood's Madame Rouge ("Lightspeed").

After a brief detour racing with Ding Dong Daddy Dowd and Red X ("Revved Up"), the Titans go on one more recruitment drive and bring dozens of new Titans into their ranks. With their task complete, they make their way back to Jump City ahead of the final showdown with the Brotherhood. But by recruiting young superheroes around the globe and giving them each a Titans communicator, they've actually made it easier than ever for the Brotherhood to find and attack the heroes.

While the Titans are off fighting the Brotherhood of Evil, a few things change back in Jump City. The Teen Titans are happy to be home and look forward to spending time back in their beloved city, but they're shocked to see that in their long absence some of their favorite stores have either moved or are scheduled for demolition ("Things Change"). Suddenly, the Titans are attacked by an unfamiliar enemy. While fighting, Beast Boy sees a schoolgirl he believes to be the long-gone Terra, who sacrificed herself to save the Titans and became transformed into a stone statue.

Convinced he truly saw Terra, Beast Boy returns to Slade's old lair where Terra's body was turned into a statue only to find that the statue is no longer there. After tracking her down to a high school, Beast Boy learns that this girl has no memory of her life as Terra and doesn't seem to have any elemental powers. Not only that, but she doesn't seem to have anything in common with the Terra Beast Boy once knew. While revisiting one of their old haunts, Beast Boy encounters Slade, who tells him Terra chooses to be who she is now. After trying again to connect with her, Beast Boy finally resigns himself to the truth and decides to leave her be, ending the series on a tragic note.

When Starfire travels with Warp through the time portal in "How Long is Forever?" an alternate timeline is created. Although she only travels two decades into the future, Starfire finds herself in a disturbing alternate universe where dramatic changes have occurred. There, she finds Titans Tower in disrepair and haunted by a practically powerless and broken-down Cyborg who is unable to leave the Tower for long. The lonely Cyborg tells Starfire that after her disappearance into the portal 20 years ago, the Teen Titans fell apart, and their lives haven't turned out fantastic in her absence.

Starfire goes on the hunt for her friends and learns that a balding Beast Boy has now become nothing more than a carnival sideshow. They also find Raven, who has completely lost touch with reality out of pure loneliness and lack of purpose. Only Robin seems to be doing somewhat okay, having experienced a serious glow-up and rebranded himself as the hunky superhero Nightwing. After a little encouragement from Nightwing, the Titans rally and help return Starfire home, where the timeline is restored to its original course.