A Hero Returns
Episode 1 of Raising Dion Season 2 begins two years after the big fight with the Crooked Man. Down at the arcade, Brayden Mills walks over to the cashier with a whole wad of tickets. Using his newly acquired powers, he manages to convince her to give him the top prize before walking out. Although Brayden is attacked, he uses his powers again, this time to form a monstrous electrical smoke monster to destroy the thug. Yep, the Crooked Man is back and this time he means business. Brayden also hitches a ride with a random couple too, whom he brainwashes into traveling across to Atlanta. Why? Well, that’s where Dion is. Over in Atlanta, Dion sets to work cleaning up the neighborhood, one group of bullies at a time. That’s a problem because Nicole ends up on a video call with BIONA, who encourage her to keep Dion’s powers under the radar for the time being. After being offered a position on the board, Nicole drives Dion to school – after a little chat about his extracurricular activities of course. She’s been tracking his phone and knows he’s been slipping out to do some superhero training. At school, a sinkhole has appeared in the field. It’s been three months and it appears this could be part of a larger issue. For now, the “triangle of justice” (Jonathan, Dion and Esperanza) attend school. However, things take an unfortunate turn when Brayden shows up as a new student. After class, Dion arrives at BIONA with Nicole. While Dion gets settled in, there’s a nice vibe with Tevin, whom Nicole clearly has chemistry with. Only, it turns out he’s actually Dion’s trainer. She doesn’t want to get romantically involved with a Powered being, but there’s undeniably chemistry here. Another new character is the ever-so-slightly suspicious David Marsh, who’s the VP of Operations. He tries to ask Suzanne out on a date, which doesn’t go to plan, but it does pave way for more information about the sinkholes. It turns out several more have cropped up across the globe. But what is their origin? Well, we soon learn that these are the work of Brayden and the Crooked Energy, which is itself a sentient organism. That night, Dion heads home but he forgets his phone, having left it at BIONA. Believing he can make it there and back again before Nicole realizes, he teleports to the building and finds it on the bench. Unfortunately, he also hears footsteps echoing across the floor. David and Suzanne talk in the hallway, with David mentioning that the sinkhole readings are off the charts. As we cut across to the sinkhole itself, flowers sprout up, leading to strange fluorescent bugs attacking one of the security guards. This seems to be the start of something much larger, and surprisingly a powerless Pat shows up at BIONA and warns Suzanne that they’re in danger.
The Episode Review
Raising Dion returns with a relatively good start, introducing Brayden and the new threat for Dion to face this season. The Crooked Energy is still here, in a slightly different form this time, and the fight between Dion and Brayden looks like it’s going too be far more intriguing proposition, pitting these kids against one another. The situation with Nicole and Tevin is obviously going to escalate over time and turn into a big romance, in one of the more obvious parts of this chapter. However, as a light, breezy superhero show Raising Dion delivers a decent enough opener.
