Well fuck Batman y’all, it’s time for Titans! We’re here at the finish line of the first DC Universe original series with the the season finale “Dick Grayson,” and boy does it…not deliver at all. Like not even a little bit. Actually zero wrap-up of the arc of the past 10 episodes in some coherent, cohesive way. Better luck next time?
What we do get is probably the first pitch anybody who’s ever thought about writing Batman has ever given: What if Bruce broke bad? What if Bruce broke bad after many of his allies were killed and went on a murderous rampage? It’s lackluster, and only slightly creative told from the view of Dick Grayson. It features future, mostly happier versions of everyone from this season, and doesn’t learn any lessons from the violence of the season. It simply embraces it. Aside from an interesting post-credit scene, we get no resolution for the season and only a slight look ahead to where we’re going. But with that, let’s finish the experiment and dive in.
1. Injustice Remix
DC Comics has been telling stories in alternate continuities, stories with dream sequences, stories that “don’t matter” for almost as long as they’ve been in business. All of comics have. It’s a fun exercise to imagine your favorite characters in different arcs with different people and different powers. This episode tackles the “What if?” narrative of how fast Bruce would fall if he snaps. It’s like the recent Injustice video games just substitute Bruce and Gordon/Alfred for Clark and Lois. Either way both men murder the Joker and massacre a ton of other people. Injustice handles it with far more depth and class.
All of this though takes place from the point of view of Dick, who is five years retired and living his best life in Los Angeles. He’s married to Dawn, they have a kid named Johnny and another on the way, a killer mansion, and are still surrogate parenting Rachel and Gar who are dating in college. This episode sells the closeness of the Titans way more than the prior 10 episodes did, so kuddos there. Dick gets called out of retirement by Jason, who has a spinal energy and is done being Robin for forever. Dick has to go fix Bruce because the Joker killed Commissioner Gordon, Alfred left him, and Babs is missing (probably mourning her father but she hardly gets a mention cause this show is trying to push this whole Dick/Dawn thing but I digress). All this and Dick is back to Gotham. He tries so hard multiple times to just leave and go back to LA, but every time he makes that decision for himself, the scenario forces him to keep going. With a blue flash, whatever it is that Trigon is doing won’t let him not go to Gotham in order to kill Batman himself.
Some reviews have pointed out this episode’s similarities to the first arc of Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s “New Teen Titans” run. In ‘The Terror of Trigon,’ Trigon tortures the team with nightmare versions of themselves, which is truly what he does to Dick here. It begs the question though what the hell is Trigon doing with Kory, Gar, and Donna? Did Dawn and Hank manage to get Jason to go help Dick like they said they would? Does Rachel just sit there and watch her father screw with Dick? Where’s the resolution?? It’s not there frankly. What we do get is a what if that I guess the writers and producers thought it would be super fun to tell. The season ends on as just a bizarre note as it began, without direction, and with a thing string of a plot.
2. Gotham as parody
As Dick gets further into Gotham City, Gotham City gets further darker and non-sensical. There are so many moments that Dick tries to leave the city that clearly no one wants to be in. And I don’t blame then. This nightmare version of Gotham is like watching Rorschach’s journal from “Watchmen” come alive. There’s prostitutes and people having sex in allies. There’s drugs and booze and bodies in the street. The hotel that Dick stays at takes cash and charges extra for clean sheets. It’s extra to the point of absurdity. Dick has to turn the news way up to drown out the people having a real good time in the room above him, and the walls are thin enough for him to stop someone killing a sex worker next door. Look, comic’s Gotham is bad. It’s not this. Nowhere is this. And I get it, it’s a nightmare sequence, Trigon is laying it on extra thick, but it’s almost laughable how ridiculous this Gotham is. The green-haired clown being thrown off a 15-story building is almost the most normal thing here.
Continued below3. Lack of the Bat
The other thing odd about this episode, is how Batman is the main player and also completely absent. This show has spent zero time explaining, exploring, and easing anyone into the intricacies of the DC Universe. And they probably shouldn’t have to. I don’t know that you’re paying $75 a year for this service unless you love DC. But there’s a lot taken for granted here, especially as the whole episode centers on Batman being a murderer and we never see a full shot of Batman. We see shadows and darkness, backs and behinds, but never Bruce’s face. It makes it easier for him to be seen as a monster. It was also probably dictated by Warner Bros., they’re pretty anal about other versions of their characters appearing willy-nilly.
Anyway, it doesn’t work in this episode. Batman is supposed to be this imposing, larger than life figure, and instead he’s a psychopathic, murderous monster who comes back to the Joker’s hospital bed to finish the job. He murders his entire rogue’s gallery in Arkham along with the staff, and just kills Nightmare-Kory outright. And all of it just feels odd. It’s also weird because Dick has the one-liner about Bruce’s code, implying this Bruce isn’t a killer and that he’s the only one that’s killed. That makes this season so much worse, and also completely contradictory if that applies to the “real Bruce.” None of the emotional investment we had in these characters and relationships wins out here. We have Dick’s vantage point, but when Dick is preaching to the clock in Wayne Manor and standing over Bruce’s dead body pontificating about his feelings, it’s like he’s talking to a straw man. We just get Brandon Thwaites acting across from shadows that we’re supposed to have 80 years of historical investment in. But we don’t, cause that’s not Batman.
4. Not your father’s Krypto
Before I close out my thoughts, I’d be remiss to not give a shoutout to the post-credit scene in this episode. We get a Superboy at CADMUS in Metropolis who is very naked and very much a killer. We also get our good boy Krypto though! Who’s a good boy! Actually, they’re probably going to turn both Conner and Krypto into killers. Well shit. I take it back, I don’t wanna see blood on my best boy’s white fur.
The post-credit scene is interesting though. I don’t hate it, I think it’s cool we are expanding this side of the DCU and getting more of these characters. It strikes me as odd to introduce Superboy when we haven’t yet gotten rid of Trigon. Unless it boils down that he’ll be necessary for offing the interdimensional demon. Maybe we get Wally and Cassie too and Donna sticks around? I may hate the tone of this show, but that’s where they’re squeezing all of us. We love these characters, we want to see them in live-action. I can’t stand seeing them like this though.
5. Dark Dick
And here we are at the end. With another “Fuck you” from the mouth of Dick Grayson directed at Bruce Wayne, and some force to the chest, the Bat is dead, and Dick has evil, possessed, Trigon eyes. This ending is a total non sequitur. If I was supposed to hate the violence of the last 10 episodes, and to empathize with the characters who were struggling with it and trying not to embrace it, then this season would not have ended with this. Instead of overcoming his darkness, Dick embraced it. Granted, with Trigon’s help and coercion, but still. This whole show has been an exercise in everything that’s wrong with entertainment, violence, and comics, and at the end instead of trying to tell us, “You’re right, violence is bad, you should hate it,” the message is the opposite. This show has showed its true colors since episode one, it’s all about the violence. It’s been slow, decompressed, and dark. Dick is still in the darkness. The journey for all these characters has been jerky, with odd starts and stops. We’ve just barely begun.
Final thoughts
And with that, the first season of Titans has wrapped. There was originally another episode, and surely some behind-the-scenes hijinks that led to the convoluted season of this show we got. I…really didn’t enjoy this viewing experience, and if this what Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, and Stargirl are aiming for, then DC’s streaming experiment will have been a fail in my opinion. This first act of the saga has got me on the cynical side, but with this and Doom Patrol already getting a second season, DC clearly has confidence in this project. Maybe this was just a false start out of the gate.
Until then, thanks folks for coming on this journey. Season 2 of Titans will most likely be out late 2019, early 2020. To cleanse my pallet between now and then though, you can find me in two weeks where I begin our journey into Young Justice: Outsiders! But with that, Happy Holidays folks! Sound off in the comments below, and give me your season finale or whole season thoughts, and we’ll see you in a few weeks.
