Original review of season 1 (9 stars):
I notice some IMDB user reviews are horrified by the darkness of the series. This is exactly what I like about it, so if you want a series about heroic vigilantism as a source of empowerment, this is probably not the show for you.
The main protagonist is Dick Grayson, who has left Batman behind but whose long career as Robin has left him with a taste for heroic violence. Dick's fight scenes are horrifically violent; he's not just trying to stop the bad guys, but to severely punish them.
Soon he joins with a young girl with terrifying powers, an amnesiac who can generate fire, and a shape shifter, all of them working to protect the girl from mysterious forces out to get her.
But that's not the end of the superheroes. Almost every episode introduces some other superhero in Grayson's life. It's interesting to see superheroes as a sort of fractious community, even if, yes, it's kind of the premise of comic book parody The Tick.
Every episode is been riveting. Most of the time I really like the first one or two episodes of a superhero series then start losing interest (Flash, Arrow, Gifted) so I held off writing a review for a while. But this series seems, like Legion and Impulse, to stay fresh and intriguing, with an engaging story and compelling characters. It has fully-formed characters and many surprises.
And yeah, it's dark. And I love it.
Season 2 (7 stars):
What happened?! The series got off to a bad start because the season 1 ender was pushed forward for sake of a cliffhanger and then rushed through. This introduced a messy season with random characters showing up and a story arc (of sorts) that swerved all over the road. The season seemed to right itself around the middle with the excellent introduction of Conner, but then crashed and burned with a season-ender that was senseless and poorly conceived on multiple levels.
Season 3 (2 stars):
I was really hoping they would right the ship in season 3, but instead they bashed holes in the hull until it sank. It's an unpleasant, tedious season, but shockingly received the best reviews of the series from both fans and critics!
There are several plot threads, but the main one involves Red Hood, and this thread is awful. Red Hood and his mentor are bland psychopaths, and the plot is fueled mainly by stupidity. When the good guys lose it's because they did something phenomenally stupid, and when they win it's because the villains suddenly do something phenomenally stupid.
The most notable part of the Red Hood thread is episode two, which is well done and genuinely powerful, but which I found so grueling that I didn't watch another episode for two months.
But for the most part, it's just boring.
The other threads, focused on Starfire and Raven (one of two major characters gone for most of the season), are much better. The Raven thread is responsible for the one truly brilliant episode, episode 9 (Souls), and the Starfire thread is entertaining and engrossing. But together these make up maybe 20% of the season.
Easily the worst season so far, regardless of what anyone else says. I'm not optimistic that after the positive response we'll get anything better next year.
And the then, just when I was about to give up on the whole series, season 4 came and it was absolutely terrific. Darkness, humor, cleverness, all the good stuff. Sure, the final episode was a mess, but this series never did good at endings, not even that first year.
And then, when they finally got their mojo back and I was invested again, they ended the series! :-(
