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"Shaman of Fear" is the sixth episode of Sym-Bionic Titan. It debuted on October 22, 2010.

Overview[]

Ilana and Lance suffer from nightmares induced by a shaman-like Mutraddi who preys upon their fears. Ilana sees visions of her people dying, while Lance relives the experiment which claimed his father's life. They face and overcome their fears to beat the shaman and, upon returning home, both Ilana and Lance begin to have a new outlook on their mission on Earth.

Synopsis[]

The episode begins with Ilana and Lance dreaming. In her dream, Ilana is in a rowboat out in the ocean. Suddenly a drowning man appears and begs the princess to help him, but he’s a little bit far for her to reach. Then, a drowning woman appears closer to Ilana's boat and says the same thing. Then the hands of even more drowning people appear all around her boat and they all plead with the princess to save them. In Lance's dream, he’s a little boy in a science lab on Galaluna. One of the scientists there’s his father. Suddenly alarms go off, lights flash, and the scientists turn into monsters which all chase after the young Lance. Then Octus wakes up both Ilana and Lance to tell them a rift gate has opened. The group goes to investigate in Titan. They find an ancient looking stone with strange hieroglyphics all over it. When they touch the stone, it shocks Titan.

The next morning the group is in the kitchen and everything appears to be normal. Octus is washing dishes when Ilana and Lance sit at the table. When they talk about having a strange dream, Ilana and Lance both describe it as forming Titan and finding a strange stone. Confused, they ask Octus if what they thought was a dream really happened. Octus tells them he has no recollection of anything that happened after they went to sleep, which isn’t normal.

At school, Lance and Ilana start seeing strange visions. First Lance's father appears to him in the hall, and then he sees his younger self in a crowd of students. Lance chases after his young self, but stops when he spots a suspicious cloaked figure in another hall that no one else seems to notice. Then the alarms and flashing lights from his nightmare return, as well as the monsters. Even when they vanish and everything returns to normal, Lance is still really scared and runs from the school. Meanwhile, Ilana is in a classroom reading a textbook when the floorboards start begging her for help. Then the illustration in her book comes alive, turns into her father and also pleads for her help. Scared and confused, she runs out into the hallway but arms reach out of the walls and grab her. After breaking free of the arms she runs from the school in tears. In his own class, Octus is ignoring the teacher and going over his memory data from the night before. When he comes to the moment when they all went to their rooms to sleep, he notices a black-robed figure that he didn't see before. He then tries to contact Lance and Ilana, and tells the teacher he needs to use the bathroom in order to get out of class.

Lance runs through the streets to get back to the house and doesn't stop until he crashes into a mail carrier. Then he sees Ilana run by, and she’s so distraught that she doesn't notice a car coming at her. Lance rescues her just in time, and when the car is gone Ilana tells him that they need to go back to Galaluna. She thinks her father and the people are trying to communicate with her through her visions. Then Lance lets slip that he's also having visions and she demands to know what they are. At first he doesn't want to talk about it, but he relents and tells her they’re about the moment his father died. When Lance and Ilana get to the house, the black-robed figure is waiting for them in the living room. At first they think he's another vision, but he attacks Lance by shooting an energy blast from the end of his staff and knocks him through a wall.

Meanwhile, Octus has left the school and is running back to the house at superhuman speed. He becomes worried that his attempts to call Lance and Ilana aren't being answered. At the house the Dark Shaman has Lance and Ilana under his spell and causes them both to experience more nightmares. For Lance it's seeing his father being attacked by monsters, for Ilana it's seeing a desolate Galaluna and her father dead. Then Octus bursts into the house, knocks the shaman through a wall and carries Lance and Ilana outside. They quickly wake up and form Titan, but Lance and Ilana are still too weak to fight the shaman. They fly away to buy some time but the shaman transports himself to the stone from before and enters it, bringing it to life and turning it into a multi-armed giant. While they’re flying in Titan the group realizes that the shaman is attacking their minds and argues over whether the visions are real or not. Suddenly the shaman ambushes them in his stone giant and they fight in an industrial complex. The giant defeats Titan easily and the shaman uses his powers to attack Lance and Ilana's minds again.

In Lance's nightmare, he’s once again in the laboratory fighting a hoard of monsters keeping him away from his father, who’s standing before a prototype rift gate. Once he breaks free and approaches his father, the monsters back off and the memory proceeds as it actually happened. Young Lance begs his father not to go but his father tells him he has to and that everything will be alright. After his father disappears through the gate, Lance becomes a teenager again and hears Ilana's voice through an open door. He enters her nightmare of a desolate Galaluna and sees her crying over the king's dead body. Suddenly the king sits up like a zombie and attacks her. Lance saves her and after a short fight the king is knocked out. Ilana, still thinking the dream is reality, wants to stay and save their home but Lance tells her that everything here is just an illusion created by the shaman. When she realizes the truth the dream world around them vanishes and they return to Octus and the Titan.

While they were distracted by the nightmares the shaman's giant was pounding against the fallen Titan's armor, but as soon as Lance and Ilana come to their senses they fight back and turn the battle in their favor. The shaman attempts to use his powers on them again but they don't work, and they finally win the battle by impaling the shaman's giant with a spear. Later at the house, Ilana and Octus are in the control room. Despite Octus saying that it could take years for signal from Earth to reach Galaluna, Ilana has him send a message to give the people hope and to find out if her father is alive. In his room, Lance puts a photo of his younger self with his father by his bed and looks out the window, wondering aloud why his father left.

Trivia[]

  • After Octus discovers the Dark Shaman he calls Lance & Ilana and in his contact list only one contact has a list name, Tim Divar [1].
    • Tim Divar is an art director & story board with work on Teen Titans (2005) & (2012), The Batman (TV Series) (2004), Ben 10, several Batman animated series and Young Justice (2010-2013). This is most likely a friendly nod to a friend from Genndy Tartakovsky.
    • In Octus' contact list we also learn that a Jacob & Eva have their own phones despite their young age
    • In Octus' contact list a name MAndrews, Mandrews is the combination of MGMT bassit Matt Asti & lead vocalist Andrew VanWyngarden [2].
    • MGMT is a well know Psychedelic Rock band with their most famous song being Kids [3]
  • The monsters that Lance see seem to resemble the monsters in MGMT's Kids[4]
    • The music video of MGMT's Kids also seems to resemble the struggle Young Lance goes thought trying to find his father
  • During Ilana's vision of her father's death flower petals that resemble cherry blossoms are falling, this is the first time they appear. The second time is when Lance's father Edward is buried, however, it’s unclear if he’s dead or not since he used the rift gate. This may be foreshadowing that Edward is alive as the Mysterious Figure.
    • Cherry blossoms are also use significantly in anime to represent various things, Genndy Tartakovsky is no stranger to animeish cartoons and adding them is most likely his take at fusing the two art styles together.
  • In this episode Ilana wears a dress similar to the one she wore in the first episode, except it's main color is white instead of purple and the trim is light blue instead of gold.
  • Lance's father is modelled after Chief Anderson from "Kagaku ninja tai Gatchaman" aka "Battle of the Planets".
  • The way the Dark Shaman is defeated could be a reference to a scene in The End of Evangelion where Unit-02 is impaled by the Spear of Longinus.

Gallery[]

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