The one with the body snatching puppet.
Said puppet begins the episode with a performance of the Teen Titans in the form of their own wooden puppets, with the message being that he's going to launch an offensive on Titans Tower and the Titans have no chance in hell for whatever he's got up his strings. This'll be an interesting watch.
Over at Titans Tower, Raven is in the middle of one of her usual pastime meditations when Starfire unknowingly rips her out of it when she asks her if she's up for the hanging-out. As you'd expect, Raven tells her to go away and tries again. Almost instantly later, Cyborg, Robin and Beast Boy send her flying when they announce their return with a special delivery; a box containing detailed wooden puppets of each of the Teen Titans - the exact same ones which that puppet creature was playing around with at the start. Oh boy.
The Titans, of course, don't see anything particularly malicious about these new toys that they've received, and they take enough interest in them to take them to bed that night. Unfortunately for them, this is when the Puppet Plan starts kicking off.
The puppet creature escapes from the box and heads straight for the Titans' bedrooms. Through the use of a remote control device, he rips their spirits out of their real bodies and transfers them to the puppet figures that they took in with them. Well, he manages to do this to three of them; Starfire was woken up by whatever the shenanigans was going on and she wakes up Raven in turn. And a good thing too, because soon after running into each other they get ambushed by the other three who weren't so lucky.
It turns out that this puppet creature, known as the Puppet King, had mailed himself into the tower so he could steal the Titans' real bodies and use them to gain control over the whole of Jump City. Oh, and he'll make sure to dispose of the wooden ones with the spirits still inside them afterwards. His attempt to snatch Starfire and Raven's bodies fails when the latter lets out one of her trademark Bursts of Azarath, causing them to immediately return to their real bodies. Except... they're the wrong bodies. The two quickly find this out upon escaping.
They spend the next few minutes being chased through Jump City while trying to figure out how to use the other's powers, often with hilarious results. They soon realize that if they want the knowledge of the other's powers so they can rescue their other three friends, they'll both need to know more about each other. After trading life stories and power knowhow with one another, they eventually find the Puppet King in an auditorium, where he's getting ready to toss the wooden Titans into a magical cauldron where they and, yes, their spirits, will be destroyed. Fortunately, Starven and Rafire jump in to save the day! The latter uses Raven's telekinesis to take the wooden puppets from the Puppet King's grasp, while the former uses Starfire's starbursts to send the controller flying into the cauldron.
With the controller destroyed, so too is the Puppet King's spirit, and in due time he's reduced to nothing more than a puppet. It also has the effect of returning everyone to their normal bodies and putting the "Freaky Friday" Flip right again. At Titans Tower, when Starfire catches Raven meditating again, she asks if she can join in; perhaps interested from the experience, Raven agrees, and the two together go on the Floating Mind Journey of Azarath.
This episode provides examples of:
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Briefly discussed during a very quick Funny Background Event.Robin: [inspecting his puppet] They got all the details just right.Beast Boy: [quickly opening his puppet's pants before closing them with a scowl] Speak for yourself.
- Book Ends: The episode starts and ends with Raven meditating.
- Comically Missing the Point:Starfire: Oh, Raven, this is awful! Terribly awful!Raven: Tell me about it.Starfire: Very well. [begins babbling at lightspeed, nuking inanimate objects as she goes]
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: All the Titans souls are presented in different colors so you know whose is whose. Robin's is red, Cyborg's white, Beast Boy's green, Raven's blue and Starfire's yellow.
- Death Is Cheap: Despite dying without the magic that fuel his body, the Puppet King inexplicably manages a recovery by Season 5.
- Demonic Possession: The three male Titans get their bodies hacked with lifeless strings loyal to Puppet King. This was supposed to happen to Raven and Starfire as well, but Raven used her powers to prevent it at the last second.
- Distressed Dude: Robin, Cyborg, and Beast Boy have their souls stolen and placed into the wooden puppets that the Puppet King keeps hold of while their real bodies are possessed. Leaving Raven and Starfire, in each other's bodies, to save them.
- Dramatic Irony: The Titans don't know that those wooden puppets they received are going to be used in a plot against them by the Puppet King. We do though, from his "play" at the beginning of the episode.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: A few later episodes (like "Apprentice pt. 2" and "Aftershocks pt. 1" ) firmly established that Raven has the ability to sense if someone is under Mind Control or Not Himself, thanks to her telepathic powers. So it's a bit of an oddity that she can't tell her teammates are being possessed in this one.Raven: [fending off a possessed Beast Boy] Beast Boy, it's me!
- Failed a Spot Check: After switching bodies, Starfire and Raven don’t notice that they’ve switched bodies until they look at each other. They should’ve immediately noticed something was different since Starfire’s body has much longer hair and their bodies were wearing very different outfits which cover different parts of their bodies (and Raven’s body was wearing a cape and didn’t have a skirt).
- Flat Character: Played for Horror, without their usual banter to lighten the mood we can really see how
terrifying Robin, Cyborg and Beast Boy are when they use their abilities. - Flat "What": Raven's response to being told she has to "feel" flight while in Starfire's body.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Between Raven and Starfire.
- Girl's Night Out Episode: Raven and Starfire have probably had better ones...
- How Do I Shot Web?: The girls get stuck with each other's powers as well as their bodies, and have to figure out how to use each other's powers in this episode. Although both their powers are emotion-based, Starfire uses hers by letting her emotions free while Raven is generally forced to suppress hers so her powers don't get out of control, so getting used to the switch is tricky at first.
- I Was Having Such a Nice Dream: Raven gets ripped straight out of her world of meditation three times in this episode, though she's okay the third time when Starfire asks if she can join in.
- Innocently Insensitive: While Starfire is freaking out about their current problems, she complains to Raven that she doesn’t want to be stuck looking like her forever. Raven is annoyed by this.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: It Happens the Puppet King once his controller is destroyed and the magic giving him life wears off.Puppet King: "NOOOOO! The magic! Without it, I'm just a-" (falls to the ground lifeless)
- The Man Behind the Man: The Puppet King planned on controlling the city by making the Titans’ bodies conquer it while he secretly controlled them, claiming that the Titans would command the city while he pulled the strings.
- Marilyn Maneuver: It's blink-and-you'll-miss-it, but as the switched Starfire and Raven are walking on the sidewalk and Starfire-as-Raven's emotional rambling makes Raven's powers go haywire, her magic makes some newsstands shoot papers into the sky, and the gust of air blows Raven-as-Starfire's skirt up and she's forced to push it down. Kind of an odd gesture for someone who publicly walks around in a leotard...
- Marionette Master: The episode's Villain-of-the-Week, Puppet King, who imprisons souls of Robin, Beast Boy and Cyborg in his puppets and controlling their bodies as his pawns.
- Mind-Control Eyes: The boys all have glowing blue-green eyes when under the Puppet King's control.
- Near-Villain Victory: Twice in this episode, where Puppet King is that close to eliminating the Titans permanently. He managed to take control of Robin, Cyborg and Beast Boy, and would've possessed Starfire and Raven if Raven didn't manage to let out a weak "Azareth Metrion Zinthos..." in the last minute. He was also literally a second away from incinerating the puppets of the boys before he's interrupted by a starbolt, making him perhaps the most successful villain at this point of the series.
- No Ontological Inertia: Destroying Puppet King's remote automatically erases all traces of his magic, releasing the souls imprisoned in his puppets, allowing Raven and Starfire to switch their bodies back, and revert Puppet King back to a regular puppet.
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: While Starfire freaks out about the Puppet King switching their bodies and controlling the bodies of their friends, she says “What if I am stuck looking like this forever?!”. Shortly after this, Raven says “What’s wrong with the way I look?”, Starfire then gets scared and says “Nothing!”.
- Talking in Your Sleep: Well, Beast Boy does.Beast Boy: Ladies... please... one at a time. You'll all get to take your picture with me.
[while cradling a sock] - Trash Landing: Starfire and Raven after escaping the boys, flying and falling to the ground.
- Voices Are Mental: Interestingly, the voices were originally supposed to stay with the body, but because Tara Strong and Hynden Walch were so good at imitating each other's characters' voices, the directors decided to just have them keep their voices.
