Tara Markov, likewise known as Terra, is the secondary antagonist in Teen Titans: The Judas Contract.
She is a spy working for Deathstroke as a double agent in the Teen Titans. Her role in the movie is more faithful with comics, but instead of being a sociopathic villain, she is instead portrayed as a more tragic and symphatetic anti-heroine as with her 2003 incarnation.
She was voiced by Christina Ricci, who also portrayed Laurel Gates in Wednesday, Misty Quigley in Yellowjackets, and Catwoman in Batman: Caped Crusader.
Biography[]
Origins[]
When her powers manifested, this frightening her parents and villagers of her home, who began hunting her down and trying to kill her. Until she was saved by Deathstroke, whom she developed a romantic affection.
Justice League vs. Teen Titans[]
Terra made a brief appearance in the mid-credits of the animated film.
Teen Titans: The Judas Contract[]
A year after the Trigon incident, Terra had been a new addition to the Titans during that year. She is standoffish and tends to insult her teammates, especially Beast Boy due to his affections, yet Starfire still works to make her feel welcome. During a training match, Beast Boy hugs her as a snake, which triggers a traumatic memory that leads to her almost killing him with her powers. None of the team are upset, offering compassion for her episode, which aggravates her due to her past of facing fear because of her abilities, thus she can't understand their kindness.
One night, the Titans Tower experiences tectonic disturbances, which is caused by Terra's nightmares making her powers go wild; the rest of the team wake her, and Raven attempts to calm her mind, but Terra refuses to be touched.
During a walk through the city, Terra senses the vibrations from Robin's footsteps along the roofs, so she confronts him on the roof. Robin tries to use his own example to explain that the Titans will accept her and help her overcome her trauma. Before the debate can continue, Deathstroke interrupts and attacks Robin; due to his empowerment from the Lazarus Pits, Deathstroke has the upperhand. While Robin almost gains the advantage, Terra uses her powers to knock him down and restrain him, during which she reveals her alliance with Deathstroke, to the rage of Robin. Due to Robin's typically antisocial manner, the other Titans aren't suspicious of his absence.
In Deathstrokes headquarters, Terra approaches him in a nightie, attempting to seduce him, but he rebuffs her advances, although reassures her that they will be together once the contract is complete, with the job capturing the Titans for cult and HIVE leader, Brother Blood.
When Terra is brooding by the beach around the Tower, she is joined by Beast Boy; he continues trying to reach her, but she counters by confessing her tragic origins. Beast Boy offers sympathies, then noting all of the traumas in every team member, yet noting that they are able to help and accept each other, which allowed them have good lives in spite of their pasts. Beast Boy also explains that he believes the pain can actually make a hero even greater. Terra and Beast Boy kiss; Beast Boy jumps for joy, changing into different flying and jumping animals to express his happiness. Via her earpiece, Deathstroke congratulates Terra for a convincing "performance," which makes her sad due to her now conflicted loyalties.
Terra meets the trapped Robin in Deathstroke's headquarters, seemingly to convince herself that Deathstroke is the only future for her. Robin astutely deduces how Deathstroke exploited Terra's grief and manipulated her into obedience; her unstable mindset made Terra almost kill Robin, but she was interrupted by Deathstroke who reminds her they need the Titans alive.
Deathstroke creates booby traps that disable Beast Boy, Starfire, and Blue Beetle, while Terra ambushes Raven, knocking her out while she is off-guard; the mercenary fights Dick Grayson, but annoyed at how long it is going, he shoots Dick in the chest, who falls into the sea. Unbeknownst to Deathstroke, Dick had shielded his chest with thick knife board, and so he plans to retaliate and save his friends, as he changed into his Nightwing uniform.
When Terra is retrieving her possessions in her room in the Tower, Deathstroke startles her, however, he offers possibly manipulative understanding about how Terra feels attachment to the Titans because a year of deep cover would be long enough for anyone to become affectionate, although Terra denies this observation, seemingly more to reassure herself that her fraud and betrayal weren't awful decisions.
With all Titans barring Nightwing, Deathstroke believes the contract is complete, so he reveals Terra's allegiance to him to the group to taunt them; Beast Boy tries to appeal to her conscience, yet she rejects his attempts. Deathstroke expects payment, but Brother Blood refuses to pay since his power absorption machine won't work without six people, as such, Deathstroke allows Blood's second-in-command, Mother Mayhem, to shoot a tranquilizer dart at Terra, with Blood's men fitting her into the machine's final vacancy. Deathstroke irritably mentions that he should get a bonus due to providing not another peak human combatant, but a unique metahuman, which Blood honors with a higher payment.
While Deathstroke wants to leave, Brother Blood coerces him to stay to witness his ascension to what he believes to be godhood. The machine is activated, seeming to cause pain to the Titans and Terra, yet Blood feels elation as their powers and abilities transfer into him. Before the procedure is even halfway complete, Nightwing blows up the machine, freeing the prisoners, however, it was active long enough to give dangerous portions of power to Blood. Nightwing and Robin engage in battle against Deathstroke, while Starfire, Raven, Beast Boy, and Blue Beetle fight Brother Blood.
Terra awakens and is enraged at Deathstroke's betrayal, so chaotically uses her powers to try to kill him; as collateral damage, she knocks down Brother Blood, whose limited gathering of power had already caused him to be at a disadvantage, but now is completely overwhelmed. Nightwing and Robin need to dodge as Terra hurls boulders at Deathstroke, who evades and attempts to placate her by claiming he was going to save her.
Brother Blood rants about his power, so Raven conjures a spell to show him true power, as the spell extracts all of the stolen abilities, as well as his own physical strength, leaving Blood an emaciated husk of his former self. Blood rants but now pleadingly about how he is destined for greatness, yet he is interrupted when Mother Mayhem shoots him in the head to spare her beloved his eternal life in prison.
Beast Boy tries to reach Terra, but out of remorse and shame, and likely to protect the one person she made a genuine intimate connection with, she builds a literal wall that prevents the Titans from reaching her at all; Deathstroke seems to accept his fate, as he falls into a rupture when Terra collapses the entire temple down on their heads.
After digging desperately through the rubble, Beast Boy finds Terra, but she is so injured by the debris that she is moments from death; Terra seems to show an expression of appreciation to him, but then dies in his arms. On a podcast as a guest, Beast Boy comments that Terra was a complicated person who experienced a lot of suffering, yet at the end, she was a diamond - a hero at heart.
Personality[]
Terra was a product of her tragic background. When her powers manifested, her entire village turned against her; her parents, the people who she believed would always protect her, did nothing, allowing the villagers to torture her. Before she could be killed, she was rescued by Deathstroke, which caused her to become attached to him, with the trauma of the moment warping her emotions to make it particularly strong, despite his lack of psychological support.
Deathstroke trained her and provided for her; he exploited her trauma to make her entirely dependent upon him, and the hormones of adolescence made her dependence warp into an erratic and romantic interest, which he encouraged, although didn't engage, either due to lacking actual attraction to her or opting to keep her loyal by forcing her to pine for the promise of reciprocation.
While she was sent to infiltrate the Teen Titans, she was somewhat lax about the deception, since she was unfriendly and reluctant to actually engage in team-building. Her recalcitrant attitude was able to be excused by the team presuming her background being painful, as well them being compassionate overall. Terra's cynicism born from her parents' abandoning her made her unreceptive, doubtful, and even upset at the Titans' attempts to make her feel welcome; her village's violent reaction to her simply existing made her fail to accept the compassion from the team checking on her well-being after her PTSD made her almost kill Beast Boy. Although, despite her cynicism, the team's consistent sincerity, especially from Beast Boy, made her start to believe their kindnesses; despite her lust and need for Deathstroke, Beast Boy's pure heart, affection, and optimism made her fall in love with him.
Terra became conflicted about the plan to ambush and imprison the team, yet fearing that the team would ultimately reject her when they found out that she was a mole, she remained obedient to Deathstroke's scheme. While she would try to reassure her decision by taunting Robin, his perceptive deduction of how Deathstroke had manipulated her made her almost hysterical in rage due to guilt and fear. Once most of the Titans were captured, she degraded and mocked her former teammates, which seemed to suggest overcompensation that she used in an attempt to convince herself that she had chosen the correct side, as well as trying to expunge her positive feelings that she had developed for them.
After Deathstroke betrayed her, Terra was shocked and distressed, with her entire worldview being shattered; although, it also seemed to make her understand that Robin's foreboding observations were correct. When the power draining machine exploded and she recovered, Terra fell into a violent rage, as she aggressively pursued and attacked Deathstroke. Despite being driven by vengeance, when Terra saw Beast Boy, she suffered the crushing guilt of her betrayal, thus creating a wall to keep the Titans away to protect them from her final assault; she wailed and used her powers to collapse the entire temple down on herself and Deathstroke. When Beast Boy had dug through the rubble to find her, she showed an appreciative and apologetic smile, then died from her self-inflicted injuries.
Despite her collaboration in Deathstroke's plan to destroy the Titans, Terra wasn't inherently malicious, rather she was a victim of a traumatic childhood, and exploited into following a cruel scheme out of misguided loyalty and affection to her "saviour" Deathstroke; her pain and trauma made her struggle to even trust people beyond Deathstroke, but given time and care, she could have become a hero like Beast Boy believed that already was - her suicide reflected that she had been consumed by guilt and revenge, but she ensured that the Titans wouldn't suffer death after all.
Powers & Abilities[]
- Geokinesis
- Flight
- Geo-Connection
Trivia[]
- Her only major appearance in this continuity was in Teen Titans: The Judas Contract.
- This version of Terra has a different origin from her comic book counterpart.
- She was similar to the her counterpart from Teen Titans (2003), as she was the love interest of Beast Boy, and worked with Deathstroke (or Slade in 2003) to sabotage, ambush, and capture the team. Although, this Terra was taken in by Deathstroke before being sent to the Titans, whereas Terra 2003 had met the Titans, and then was met and manipulated by Slade.
- Terra's appearance in the mid-credit scene in "Justice League vs. Teen Titans" resembles her appearance from "Young Justice", but with blue eyes and pink lipstick.
- Her outfit in "Justice League vs. Teen Titans" and "Teen Titans: The Judas Contract" is similar to her comic counterpart's, but in black and orange in color and her boots, gloves and eye mask are black, and her belt is dark green.
