The Titans are back, bitches! Season Three of the HBO Max series has the team (sans Hawk, Dove, and Raven) making a name for themselves in San Francisco, but it appears as if tragedy in Gotham will put everything that has been built to the test. The first three episodes premiered on Thursday, August 12th 2021. The following discussion is for the first episode, “Barbara Gordon.”
Liz Large: Jason, are you ready to recap the best show on television? Because I see that you took notes, but we’re actually here to talk about Titans, which is…. not that.
Jason Large: Am I an expert on the Teen Titans and DC history? No. Do I still giggle every time I hear someone say “Fuck Batman”? Yes. Am I slightly disappointed that the Titans headquarters is not in the shape of a giant ‘T’? …Perhaps.
Liz: Would this be a bad time to tell you that these versions of the Titans don’t sing a fun song about vegetables?
Jason: Okay, maybe we should find somebody else to discuss this… Ya know what this show has that those other ones don’t? A Robin that has the same name as me. I cannot wait to see what fun and wacky hijinks he gets up to this season!
Oh no.
Liz: We start off this season on the right foot, as Jason Todd (aka Robin) works to track down the Joker via the Batcave. I love this horrible kid. The real question: as a billionaire, why does Bruce Wayne not simply buy any abandoned amusement parks and level them?
Jason: Because if he did that, we’d never get Birds of Prey, and some sacrifices are worth that.
Liz: Speaking of sacrifices…
Jason: Jason wants to go on the offensive even as Bruce, currently flying back to Gotham from a very important international business meeting™ tells him to wait. As Jason has been presented throughout the series, he clearly acts as someone with something to prove, he quickly escalates from “It’s just the Joker” to “Fuck the Joker.”
Liz: I like this callback. Dick saying “Fuck Batman” in season one was, to be frank, one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
Jason: Oh, it was clearly the dark, edgy, tone setting line that was supposed to shock and excite viewers… but I actually like the difference here. Dick was showing that disenchantment with Batman and his methodology. Jason is clearly trying to buy in and psych himself up. A quick flashback to the previous season where Jason was dropped to his death (before being saved by Superboy). Now he has a solution to the problem of fear: drugs!
Liz: This very special episode was actually written by the cop that ran my middle school DARE program. If you vape, a clown WILL murder you. And surprisingly quickly at that. I was worried that the trailers for this season had given away so much, since surely this death would be a mid season event, but nope! Jason gets crowbared to death in the first scene. Sure hope Curran Walters got paid for the whole season.
Jason: Robin using an inhaled drug that impacts how he perceives fear… I’m trying to think of a Batman villain who could be connected to that… eh, I’m sure that won’t come up again this season.
The Joker portion felt weird to me. I get not wanting to cast an actor in the role, but the laughter that was used seemed off, like it was a recording of a recording, instead of someone there making the sound.
Liz: That’s a good point. I’m not going to pretend that this show makes logical choices or is predictable in any way, so I’m not willing to totally rule out the idea that there’s something intentional happening here. Maybe we will get a look at the Joker later this season, or maybe there’s more than one Joker. The possibility that they didn’t want to commit to a Joker casting right now is also a prominent option, of course.
The Gang is Somewhat Here.
Jason: So after the credits, we catch up with (most of) the Titans fighting crime in San Francisco. It was very much the kind of scene you get at the beginning of older comic issues where everyone needs to showcase their abilities to remind the reader (or viewer) and it accomplished that task, but it seemed like a lot of quick camera cuts were used to hide less than great fight choreography. Now, while I’m sure some people are watching this show for superhero fights… I’m not one of them. What did you think?
Liz: Titans has done a lot of fights where the song choices are just fun, and I enjoyed it here. This one was set to “Ça Plane Pour Moi”, similar to a scene in the 2001 classic film Winning London, and I thought it was a good choice. One of my favorite moves was Dick using his electrified escrima sticks on a metal railing, which takes out all of the goons touching it. His lack of powers means that they have to give him some neat moves so he seems on the same level as Kory and the Boys, and I think it works here. Was there anything that stood out to you?
Jason: We get to see a group of heroes interacting with the police and the media, where it appears that Starfire has taken on the role of the face of the team. She also gets a call from a therapist relating to her time from earlier where she lost her memory. As they flirt in order to make him a part of whatever Kory’s arc will involve this season, I want to point out that romantic involvements with someone responsible for your physical or mental health is not a good idea. Other than that I would like to give a shout out to a very good boy, Krypto!
Liz: You know who else is very good? A nice young gentleman we meet in Gotham.
Jason: Out with the old, in with the new. Sorry Jason, but Tim is here now… and he delivers.
Liz: BOOOOOOOOO. Tim is a good kid, he doesn’t deserve these puns!
Jason: We don’t get to spend too much time with Tim this episode, but we do get the basics: he is a delivery boy working for his family’s restaurant in a Gotham which is currently implementing a curfew. While Tim doesn’t appear to have much money, he does begrudgingly accept some from a cousin who appears to be getting paid from less than reputable means.
Liz: The cousin may be sketchy, but his dry “Oh no, now there might be crime in Gotham” reaction to news of Robin’s death gave me a chuckle. Tim, on the other hand, is visibly upset about it. I found it interesting that his family knew about his feelings enough to comfort him at the news report. Tim’s clearly a Bat-fan, even sticking up for him and correcting the shitty cops while they’re shaking him down for dumplings. This version of Tim definitely has some changes from his comics origin, but the Batman obsession is critical.
The Goddamn Bat-Fam
Jason: We get a few scenes after this showing Dick returning home to Wayne manor, the other Titans discussing the death, and Beast Boy having a ‘conversation’ with the absent Rachel, reminding us that she is attempting to resurrect Donna Troy. Dick decides to pay a visit to Commissioner Gordon, who appears to have shaved off the mustache.
Liz: Just pulled off the whole face like a Scooby-Doo villain. I knew vaguely that Barbara would be in this season, but I had no idea of her role—I like that we’re just skipping Jim entirely (no offense). I’m here to watch young heroes be extremely stupid, and the amount of Batman we’ve gotten is pushing it.
Jason: At least we get some stupid Batman to balance it out shortly… but in the meantime I did think it was interesting that Commissioner Gordon appears to have either skipped entirely or yet to take on the name: The Oracle. The latter seems more likely as we still have the rest of the season ahead of us. I do appreciate that her wheelchair is black and yellow. Gadgets, maybe?
Liz: This episode did a great job of showing Barbara’s backstory. In addition to the biographical details— chose to become Batgirl, attacked by the Joker (who, in a parallel to Jason’s murder, just waited by her body for the cops to arrive), lost her father, is now the Commissioner— we get a lot of her personality through her conversations with Dick and Bruce. She’s willing to be open with Dick despite her obvious dislike of Bruce, and she was close enough with all of them to know Jason pretty well. And she’s so, so angry at Bruce. I love her.
Jason: Barbara has had to become the adult in this situation. Her scene with Dick and Bruce at Wayne manor really highlights that Titans Batman is not the same character most fans are aware of. He is painted throughout this episode as more of a fanatic that has become detached from reality in his crusade on crime. Barbara, needing to deal with him directly as commissioner, has a much clearer picture than Dick, who appears to have gotten over most of his animosity he started the series with.
“The last thing Bruce is going to do is drag another kid into this mess”
Richard Grayson
Liz: Barbara makes it clear: Jason was being used and manipulated by Bruce, and that’s why he’s dead. Bringing another kid into this would be so clearly irresponsible. Which is why what Dick finds on the Bat-computer is so horrifying: headshots of teenagers Carrie Kelly, Daxton Chill, Stephanie Brown, and Dean Thomas, all of whom became Robins in the comics.
This is Dick’s final straw, and he just loses it at Bruce. Bruce looks like absolute shit— old, practically shaking—as he begs Dick to be his Robin again, because he can’t do this alone. Dick tells him that if he can’t be Batman without Robin, then he shouldn’t be Batman anymore. This is A Lot.
Jason: You see a Bruce Wayne here who no longer has a support system. No Alfred, no Robin, and the two people he trusts are now both angry at him and telling him he’s wrong. This is a Batman trying to stick to what he knows and has worked for him in the past, ignoring just all the ways it didn’t work… how it got him to this point. It’s a far cry from the Dark Knight that has a plan to take out every villain and hero (if need be).
Liz: Even before Jason’s death, it seems like Bruce didn’t have a handle on things. Dick’s detective sense gets set off by an innocuous chemistry textbook among Jason’s things. In a series of conversations that definitely count as insulting the dead, Dick points out that Jason was a known dumbass, and had no reason to have a chemistry textbook. His investigation leads him to some sort of lab where Jason was manufacturing the drug we saw him take right before he died. Something suspicious was going on here, but Dick’s unable to figure out what the chemical even is.
Jason: In other suspicious news, at Titan’s Tower in San Francisco, Kory has a flash of being carted through a building by doctors/scientists while restrained, it’s not clear what exactly is happening, but Kory is suddenly aware of herself in the middle of a city street.
I enjoy the character Starfire and Diop’s performance but the storylines given to her over the first two seasons really feel overly convoluted for this show. I’m worried this is the start of another mystery for the character that I’m not going to really care about.
Liz: That’s a good point. She’s had a lot of mind related problems—missing her memories and now whatever this is— and it just seems repetitive. In addition to the very obvious plotlines available to a character joining and growing within a team of found family, she’s got a literal evil sister to fight! Hopefully this moves in a more interesting direction.
F#@% Batman, the Joker, and Red Hood apparently…
Jason: Okay. That final scene was… something. I get needing to fit the tone of this edgy, more “adult” (heavy use of finger quotations here) atmosphere the show is trying to sell, and it’s a show called Titans, so Batman shouldn’t overstay his welcome, but having Bruce kill the Joker does a major disservice to both Batman and (spoilers) the Red Hood.
Batman is a character built around the fact that he doesn’t kill. At all. He even considers his friends killing an Injustice. The story this season seems to be adapting, ‘Under the Red Hood,’ actually connects the origin of the Red Hood to the fact that Batman still did not kill the Joker after the Joker killed Robin. Without their prime motivation, I am very concerned with the show’s ability to not mishandle this further.
Liz: This whole scenario has so many weird choices. In previous tellings, Jason’s death doesn’t seem quite so much like something he walked into willingly— the Joker used his mother against him. In this, Jason goes after the Joker because, as Barbara says, he had something to prove. Kory uses him as an example of what not to do when talking to the Boys. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of grief here, but the vibe is just off to me. I really want to see how they explain the transition to Red Hood without the anger at Bruce. I hope it’s in a way that doesn’t make Jason seem totally unreasonable.
Jason: Maybe they will try to make the anger at Bruce turn into anger at Dick. I guess we’ll just have to keep watching to find out.
Final Thoughts
- Jason Todd vapes.
- In the initial fight, Kory shoots fire at some goons and says “I know, I’m hot”. I love her.
- No Hawk and Dove here
- No Raven either.
- Jim Gordon’s death was from a heart attack—caused by being frozen in a block of ice.
- I miss Doom Patrol
Liz Large is a copywriter with a lot of opinions on mutants.
He/Him
Jason is born, raised, and currently resides in New Jersey with his wife, two cats, and one dog. He enjoys comics, games, art, and helped put together the logo and website for ComicsXF. He'd rather be in the woods.
