Spoilers for Teen Titans Go! to the Movies below.
Teen Titans Go! to the Movies isn’t a very hard movie to understand. It’s targeted at sugar-stoned children (and stoned-stoned adults), so the plot is astoundingly simple and the character arcs are as predictable as Batman’s ears are pointy. Sure, this continuation of the Cartoon Network show Teen Titans Go! has a ton of visual Easter eggs in the form of fake businesses and movie names inspired by DC Comics lore, and a truly insane number of DC characters make nanosecond-long cameos. But none of that is really necessary to get what’s going on. However, if you stick around past the credits, you may find yourself a little baffled by what you just saw. Allow us to lay it all out for ya.
Here’s what happens. The screen becomes some kind of scrambled video transmission featuring the garbled images of the Teen Titans. However, they look … different. Older. Less cartoony. Starfire says, “Hurry, there is not much time!†Raven says, “We need to know you’re still here.†Cyborg says, “Booyah! We’re transmitting!†The image clears up and we see the full team standing in a row, looking at the camera. Robin says, “This is the Teen Titans. Can anyone hear us? We think we found a way back!†Cut to a black backdrop with white lettering that reads, “TO BE CONTINUED ON CARTOON NETWORK.†Bwuh?
Your first thought might be that this is advertising some kind of Teen Titans Go! to the Movies sequel on television. It is not. Nor is it advertising the upcoming grim and gritty Titans show, also about the Teen Titans, on DC’s soon-to-be-launched streaming network. Instead, it’s about another show, Teen Titans, which used to air on Cartoon Network. Still confused? Of course you are. You see, back in the aughts, prior to the debut of Teen Titans Go!, there were five seasons of a much more serious action cartoon called Teen Titans. Years after its cancellation in 2006, the original voice cast was brought back for the extremely goofy and visually stylized Teen Titans Go! cartoon. The previous Teen Titans has been mourned by fans ever since.
What this post-credits scene would seem to imply is that the serious Titans are coming back to Cartoon Network in some form or another. Could it be a long-awaited sixth season? Or perhaps just a crossover with Teen Titans Go! (something that sort of already happened in a dream sequence a few years back)? Raven actor (and veteran DC voice performer) Tara Strong tweeted in June that, if TTG!TTM does well enough, there might be a sixth season of Teen Titans, though that may have just been a joke. Or, hell, maybe the post-credits scene was a one-off and the “coming soon†bit was just a reference to more episodes of Teen Titans Go! — it’s all a bit cryptic. As long as Robin continues to totally own, it’ll all be fine.