In the 1980s, Marv Wolfman and George Perez came together to breathe new life into the Teen Titans brand. The team had been created in the 1960s, but had long since stopped being a successful title. Wolfman and Perez created The New Teen Titans, which not only brought the Titans name back into the spotlight, but also introduced us to half-man, half robot Cyborg, the exiled alien princess Starfire, and the mysterious and powerful mystic Raven. Together with Robin and Beast Boy, these five went on to head multiple animated television shows.
Today, we’re here to talk about Raven, one of the most important and powerful members of the team. She has proven to be a key part of the team in the comics and cartoons, and has been a member through many of their appearances. Born in the dimension known as Azarath, she holds many secrets from her teammates, including her status as the key to her father’s desire for world domination. Despite her demonic origins, she has overcome her heritage to become a valued member of the superhero community, in the comics, Teen Titans, and Teen Titans Go! If you ever wanted to know more about Raven, there is so much out there to know.
25 She Was Very Overpowered
In the 2003 television show, the five members of the Teen Titans display their different abilities in each episode. However, if you ever felt that Raven was so much more powerful than her teammates on Teen Titans, it’s because she was. In the comics, Raven is an empath who can access the powers of her soul-self, like in the show, but she doesn’t have telekinetic powers.
When making the show, the creators realized that each member’s abilities could be easily put on display, but not Raven’s. In order to play up her magical powers and give viewers something to look at when the team was in battle, Raven was given telekinetic abilities that manifested as dark energy and allowed her to move objects around. It ended up making her a lot more powerful than her friends.
24 She Wasn’t Even Wanted
While Raven is remembered as a popular member of the Teen Titans and a prominent team members on several different animated projects, her original creator didn’t even want to use her in the first place. It took a lot of convincing Marv Wolfman that Raven could be a valuable member of the cast in The New Teen Titans.
According to the creators, Len Wein, the editor of the book at the time, asked Wolfman and George Perez to add a mystical character to the initial roster. While Wolfman had an idea for Raven, he wasn’t a fan of writing magic characters and was initially resistant to the idea. It wasn’t until Perez was able to bring the character to life on the page that Wolfman finally agreed to her inclusion in the series.
23 She’s Not From Around Here
Raven’s origins become a major point of several stories in the comics and on television. Her mother Arella was part of a group that worshipped the demon Trigon and went to live in the interdimensional world known as Azarath. It is here that she was born from a union of Azarath and Trigon himself, who hoped to use his offspring as a weapon against Earth.
Discovering Trigon’s true intentions, the young Raven fled her home dimension to get away from those who would try to manipulate her. As a product of this union, Raven is actually half demon and has many supernatural abilities locked away inside of her. It’s this plot point that becomes a major part of the Teen Titans series when Trigon comes after his daughter.
22 Beast Boy Is Her Beau
We got hints of Raven and Beast Boy’s relationship in Teen Titans because the creators of the show purposefully wrote them as a married couple. BBRae shippers were happy to see this relationship carry over into the Teen Titans Go! series when the two actually kiss and become boyfriend and girlfriend finally.
Fans of the couple should be happy to know that this relationship also carried over into the comics for a time. Over a decade ago, Beast Boy and Raven were seen to be in a romantic relationship but it ended up falling apart. Years later, the two picked up where they had left off and realized they still had feeling for one another. They were able to restart their relationship just as Teen Titans came to an end and continuity was restarted in The New 52.
21 She’s Into Darkness
As the Teen Titans' resident goth, it makes sense that Raven is into all kinds of dark things. We already know she likes to keep to herself and be alone whenever she can, but in Teen Titans Go! we do get to see just how dark she likes things to get inside her room. There are some times where you’d be forgiven if you thought Raven was actually kind of scary.
She has pictures hanging up in her room dedicated to her evil mentors, including Ra’s al Ghul and Etrigan the Demon. There are also chains hanging from the ceiling and cages containing what can only be assumed to be demons. From the looks of things, she’s keeping them against their will. From time to time, Raven also gets a visit from her demon friend who manifests himself through a portal.
20 She Formed The Team Herself
In Teen Titans, Raven is a valuable member of the team, but did you know she is the character who brought their comic book equivalents together in the first place? In The New Teen Titans, she came to several teenage heroes in a dream in order to establish trust between them all so she could bring them all together to save her from her father.
She brought Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Beast Boy, and Cyborg together so they could save Starfire from her captors and finally complete the team. Raven was the most enigmatic member of the team, remaining in the shadows and appearing sparsely while the others bonded and became friends. She seemed to keep her distance in the early issues of the series before embracing her role on the team.
19 That’s Her Real Name
It is a common practice among the superhero community to fight crime under a different name, but Raven is her real name. Seeing as how she’s a half demon who escaped from another dimension to come to Earth, she has no secret identity to protect, so going into battle under the name Raven has never been a problem for her.
When it comes to living a normal life, though, that’s when she has decided she needs a new name. For years she has used the civilian identity Rachel Roth in order to finally be a normal human who goes to school and makes normal friends. While she has come to identify as Rachel, Raven is still her true name and the one she feels most comfortable being.
18 She Has Great Legs
Raven’s animated self usually spends her time covered by her own cloak, but in Teen Titans Go! we have seen her out of it more often. Given her patience for walking around without her cloak on, her boyfriend Beast Boy has noticed how nice her legs are when you really take a moment to look at them. He turns into a dog and howls at them and even cries when she puts the cloak back on because he won’t be able to look at them anymore.
In the episode “Legs,” she debuts her superhero alter ego Lady Legasus, who wears a leotard that exposes her legs. She uses her powerful legs to deliver her signature kicks against several supervillain opponents. Superheroing out in the open earns her a lot of attention before eventually going back to being Raven again.
17 That’s Not What She Really Looks Like
On the animated TV shows, Raven presents herself as a girl with grayish skin and short violet hair. However, if you know anything about her origin, you know that’s not exactly what she actually looks like. As a half-demon, Raven has to be careful not to unleash her true nature and become the demonic monster her father wants her to be.
When Raven loses control over herself, she takes on a new and more terrifying form. Her skin turns red, she grows a second pair of eyes over where her eyebrows once were, and she becomes incredibly more demonic looking. While in this form, Raven’s magical abilities are magnified considerably and she becomes a true menace to those around her, even those who once called her friend.
16 She Crashed A Wedding
During the “Titans Hunt” storyline, Raven became corrupted by the evil of Trigon and took on a new demonic form. She was ultimately defeated, but it wasn’t longer before she returned as an enemy of the Titans and absolutely ruined the wedding of Dick Grayson and Starfire in New Titans #100. She killed the priest who was performing the ceremony and severely injured Starfire.
Though it seemed like she was attacking her former friend, Raven had actually implanted the good portion of her soul into Starfire in order to protect it from her evil side. Raven was eventually saved, but the wedding never ended up actually happening in the end. It’s hard to say whether that makes this a good thing or a bad thing.
15 She Has Soul Power
Superman gets his power from the sun and Green Lantern is powered by willpower, but Raven gets her power from her own soul. Much of her power comes from what she calls her soul-self, an astral projection that manifests in the shape of a raven. This power allows her to attack others and also teleport herself and others over short distances. On some occasions her soul-self has been used to moves others through time.
To explain her telekinetic powers in Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go!, she says that she puts a small piece of her soul in a nearby object so that she can manipulate it with her abilities. When her soul-self is cleansed of all evil, she can use its powers to banish demonic forces from her mind and this plain of existence.
14 She Has Gone Bad
Raven is constantly struggling to control her emotions and keep herself from giving into the evil side of her soul. On several occasions her attempts to balance herself have failed and she has taken on the role of destroyer. During the storyline “Titans Hunt,” Raven was corrupted by her father’s influence and turned evil. She would eventually ruin Nightwing and Starfire’s wedding, and would later seemingly die.
In Injustice: Gods Among Us, Raven joins Superman’s Regime because she knows his victory will help prepare the world for Trigon. Her character ending shows Superman defeated and her father unleashing an army on the Earth. In Injustice 2, Starfire’s ending mentions that Raven is lost to her friends now that she has become a minion of Trigon.
13 What Are Those Words She's Saying?
Just as the magical superhero Zatanna speaks backwards to use her magic, Raven uses a mantra of her own to channel her powers, at least in the animated series. Fans of her animated self have heard her repeat the phrase “Azarath Metrion Zinthos” many times over. She uses the words to focus her abilities and channel them in battle. They also help her concentrate while she is meditating.
What does the phrase mean? Absolutely nothing. While the word Azarath is a reference to the dimension she comes from, the other two words were simply made up by the creators of the show in order to give her something interesting to say when she’s using her powers. It’s funny to hear that something so important in the continuity of Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go! actually means absolutely nothing in real life.
12 She Gains Strength From Emotion
Despite her need to constantly keep her emotions in check, Raven actually gains specific abilities and takes on certain characteristics from each emotion buried deep inside her. These emotions have manifested themselves as physical versions of Raven who wear different color cloaks and embody a different emotion. There are eight of these “emoticlones” in all, and they have come out in the animated series.
The Raven with a pink cloak represents happiness, while purple means passion. The version of Raven that wears gray is timid and the version that is orange seems to be very rude. Yellow represents knowledge, green is her bravery, and brown is laziness. The Raven that manifests wearing red is the version of herself that holds anger and represents her father’s influence over her.
11 Her Death Is Frequent
Raven has seemingly died often over the span of her existence across comics and television animation. When her body was corrupted by the influence of Trigon, she expelled the good part of her soul into the body of Starfire to remain safe. Her body was destroyed but her soul lived on. Eventually she was given a new body by Brother Blood in an attempt to force her to marry him.
Raven has died frequently in the Teen Titans Go! cartoon, having gone on to the great beyond in the episodes “Ghost Boy,” Parasite,” “Starfire the Terrible,” “Hot Garbage,” “Scary Figure Dance,” and “Oregon Trail.” Thankfully she has gotten better and has returned to the land of the living by the end of each of these episodes.
10 She Has A Family Life
Even with her status as a loner, Raven has a pretty large family, even if she doesn’t want to be associated with many of them. Her parents are Trigon, an evil demon from another dimension, and Arella, one of his many followers. She also has several evil brothers who embody the seven deadly sins and have attacked her on more than one occasion.
In the Teen Titans Go! continuity, she has an uncle named Myron, the Mildly Annoying, who is the less fearsome brother of Trigon. She has also mentioned that her grandmother is a succubus and that her grandfather was a mechanic. Her godfather also appears to be Death himself. It’s certainly no loving family, but Raven has plenty of family members to bring together for a holiday dinner. If only she didn’t hate them all.
9 She Has A Super Powered Form
Though Raven spends much of her time keeping her emotions in check, when she does purify herself, she takes on a more powerful form that is dressed in all white. In Teen Titans, her white form represents Raven at her full strength and power, and she reaches this level when she unites with the different aspects of herself to fight off the evil influence of her father.
Raven has also taken on the all-white form in the comics to signify that she has been completely cleansed of her father’s evil. Unfortunately, this status has not always lasted, and before long she was infected by Trigon again and turned evil once more. Her animated version takes on her purified form as a more permanent representation of her freedom and achievements.
8 People Know Her
Raven spends much of her time keeping to herself and containing her emotions, but the superhero community knows all about her. After Tim Drake helps form a new iteration of the Teen Titans, Batman warns his Robin that Raven cannot be trusted because of the fact that she hides her emotions. Raven has also worked with Superman in the Kryptonian’s One Earth Regime from Injustice.
Her reputation within the magical community has led to other magic users seeking her out and working with her. Raven was a member of the Sentinels of Magic, a group of prominent magic users that included Madame Xanadu, Deadman, and the Phantom Stranger. During the Flashpoint event, when the normal DC Universe was manipulated drastically, she was also a member of the Secret Seven.
7 She’s Into Fish
Aqualad is one of the founding members of the original Teen Titans, but in the Teen Titans animated series, he becomes an honorary member of the team. When he first meets the group, Raven and Starfire develop crushes on him and are frequently seen making googly eyes at him in the background. This relationship carries over to Teen Titans Go! where the two end up briefly dating.
Before Raven and Beast Boy end up getting together, she briefly flirted with Aqualad for a time. While she warned him about her dark persona, he attempted to look past those qualities. However, when it came time for her to make a decision between the two men in her life, she was unable to do so without pitting Beast Boy and Aqualad against one another. This fight did not go well for Aqualad.
6 Men Treat Her Poorly
All throughout her life, Raven has been forced to deal with men who treat her poorly. She has a terrible relationship with her father, the demonic Trigon, who attempts to use her as the key to taking over the world. She dealt with his cruelness and the return of Slade in the Teen Titans television show. She also has several brothers in the comics who have attempted to kill her over the years.
Raven has had a poor relationship with multiple iterations of Brother Blood. She was plagued by him during her time with The New Teen Titans, and she came across his son years later. Using his magic rituals, Brother Blood brought Raven back to the physical world, and then he attempted to wed her and take control of her powers.