Warning: minor SPOILERS for Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse are ahead!
Usually when two superhero teams come together in a crossover, you can count on both teams receiving roughly the same amount of screen time. That didn’t happen in Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse, because while the main story followed the DC Super Hero Girls going up against their universe’s Legion of Doom, Robin, Raven, Cyborg, Starfire and Beast Boy from the Teen Titans Go! universe spent the majority of this movie… well, basically watching this movie and providing commentary on it! it’s one of the most meta, fourth wall-breaking moments in this property’s history, and it delighted many of the Teen Titans Go! actors.
I spoke with Teen Titans Go! stars Scott Menville, Tara Strong, Khary Payton and Greg Cipes about their work on Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse (Hynden Walch as Starfire rounds out the Titans quintet), and given the unorthodox way their characters were being used, I wanted to get each of their thoughts on this amusing crossover twist for the animated DC movie. Starting off, Scott Menville, the voice of Robin, recalled the following:
Well when I read the script and saw how they were doing them in the fourth wall-kind of way, I was very happy because we’re getting very meta with some of the jokes in there, and there are a lot of jokes at our expense, at the expense of Teen Titans Go!. Which I always think is funny, I love when our show makes fun of itself. So yeah, I was happy. If we pop in here and there and make people laugh, then great!
Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse begins with the Titans setting up their new entertainment system… which they fished out of the trash. In their eyes, it’s the perfect place to put their TV, with one problem: one of the stands ends up breaking, but they’re able to (slightly) fix that by using a mysterious pink gem that found as a wedge. Soon after that, the Titans are visited by their old enemy Control Freak, who informs them they’re now part of a crossover, paving the way for the DC Super Hero Girls portion of the story. Tara Strong, who voices Raven in Teen Titans Go!, as well as Batgirl and Harley Quinn in DC Super Hero Girls, had this to say about the Titans’ role in Mayhem in the Multiverse:
They’re totally using us! They’re totally using the Titans in this! It’s so hilarious. Every time the Titans come on the screen, didn’t you laugh? Every Titans scene, the comedic timing is perfect, the writing is hilarious, and probably the best scene in the movie is them actually being together. There are so many special moments. I love Batgirl having Beast Boy turn into all these different animals and just delighting in that. Raven’s moment with Zatanna. It’s really, really cool and really funny, I really authentically laughed out loud many times.
Tara Strong’s mention of the Teen Titans being used isn’t just her opinion; it’s outright stated in the movie! As the Titans are watching the DC Super Hero Girls’ adventure on TV, they realizes that they’re not “glomming” onto the Girls’ popularity to boost their own, but rather vice-versa. In other words, this movie is meant to have DC Super Hero Girls piggyback of Teen Titans Go!’s success for their own benefit. So the Titans feeling “used” is perfectly understandable, and Khary Payton, the voice of Cyborg, got a kick out of this aspect of the movie, saying:
I thought it was hilarious, man! I think this is the most honest version of a crossover that anybody’s ever done, because it’s like right at the beginning, they’re like, ‘Let me tell you something: we are being used for the commercial success of the network.’ It was cracking me up because that is where Teen Titans Go! flourishes. It acknowledges that the reality and fantasy of this show are all made up, and we’re not gonna pretend. The reality of it is the comedy of it.
For those who’ve made it this far, but haven’t watched Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse yet, you may be wondering if the Titans and Girls actually cross paths in the movie. Without sharing any major spoilers, as indicated by Tara Strong’s earlier comment, yes, these two teams do legitimately spend time together, but I won’t reveal how. But going back to the meta aspect of how the Teen Titans are used, Greg Cipes, who voices both Teen Titans Go!’s Beast Boy and the more complex Beast Boy from Young Justice, explained how the Titans getting to hang out with the Girls a win-win all around:
Well the cool thing is because we’re such a huge success, we’re the go-to superhero team to help bring awareness and help bring to life other DC properties. I feel that playing with the DC Super Hero Girls in these different incarnations like this movie is just super harmonious and fun, and it brings out different elements of our characters that might not have been around before by having these interactions with these other amazing DC superhero characters.
The Teen Titans keep up their fourth wall-breaking hijinks right up to the very end of Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse, but you’ll have to see the movie for yourself to learn how this story wraps up. The movie’s expansive cast also includes Missi Pyle as Cythonna (the main antagonist), Will Friedle as both a Matthew McConaughey-sounding Aquaman and Lex Luthor, Kimberly Brooks as Bumblebee, Nicole Sullivan as Supergirl, Kari Whalgren as Zatanna, Grey Griffin as Wonder Woman and Myrna Velasco as Jessica Cruz, one of Earth’s Green Lanterns. Matt Peters and Katie Price directed Mayhem in the Multiverse, Jase Ricci wrote the script and James Tucker (whose past DC credits include Batman: The Brave and the Bold and the DC Animated Movie Universe line of films) was the supervising producer.
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment’s Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse can easily be picked up on Blu-ray, DVD or Digital HD, and it’s also premiering on Cartoon Network today. HBO Max subscribers will be able to stream the movie starting on June 28.
