Titans season 3 review: too Batman for a show without Batman

Tellingly, the HBO Max series Titans begins its third season with a truncated version of one of the most notorious Batman stories ever told. The premiere episode, “Barbara Gordon,” begins with a hilariously short version of A death in the family, The Jim Starlin and Jim Aparo comic featuring the murder of Jason Todd, the second Robin, by the Joker. In the Titans In the episode, Bruce Wayne is on a flight and cannot help Jason, who is chasing the Joker alone, despite Bruce’s warnings. And he’s beaten to death by the Joker, shown from so far away that he could as well be any random thief with a crowbar. Jason (Curran Walters) comes off as a fool.

This may well be a point intended by Titans‘writers: Heroes walking away from the urge to turn inward and do it alone has been a major theme of the series since the jump, but it all falls too quickly for viewers to be convinced of it, mainly because Titans almost immediately he launches other famous Batman story. It’s worth noting that while Bruce Wayne does appear occasionally, as in Titans Season 2: There is no Batman in this story. This is the “fuck Batman” show, remember?

Titans He’s always been too in love with the Batman side of his free Batman narrative. While it’s technically a joint drama about the past and present roster of a team of teenage superheroes coming together, the show definitely has a main character, and it’s Dick Grayson, the first Robin (Brenton Thwaites). Now operating as Nightwing, he’s leading the Titans, who now comprise Starfire (Anna Diop), Gar Logan (Ryan Potter), and Connor / Superboy (Joshua Orpin). However, before the series can dive into what the team is like now, Jason’s death calls Dick from the Titans’ hometown of San Francisco to his old Gotham City locations, and the Titans finally follow him.

The spine of Titans season 3 is an adaptation of Underhood, the 2004-2006 Batman story of Judd Winick, Doug Mahnke and others who resurrected Jason Todd after his death in 1988 as the villain Red Hood, seeking revenge. The Titans Assuming it holds few surprises for anyone with a passing familiarity with the source material or one of its other adaptations, such as the 2015 video game. Batman: Arkham Knight. Titans It doesn’t stray too far from the main rhythms of the story, at least not in the first six episodes made available to critics. That is not even a big problem; The second season of the show similarly produced a version of the Marv Wolfman and George Perez classic. The Judas contract history of The New Teen TitansWhich wasn’t terribly subversive, but it was still exciting to watch. The Judas contractHowever, it was not a story about Batman. It was about the Teen Titans.

This can make it sound like Titans it ignores its non-bat-related cast more than it does. And, well, they are not absent. Kory finally gets a subplot that picks up a thread from the final season, where her perhaps evil sister comes to Earth looking for her. While it takes a while for them to appear, Hawk and Dove (Alan Ritchson and Minka Kelly) return, and the series’ oldest non-Dick character arc returns with them. Unfortunately, that’s true for the first half of the season. Continuing a trend from the last season, the writers often forget about Connor and Gar (their powers are expensive to represent, after all), which hurts even more as they are often the show’s only reliable source of lightness. .

It’s frankly strange to see Titans Stay away from what made it work so well in its previous seasons, which was the complicated tonal balance between dark and violent superhero drama and hilarious teenage angst. Titans It still comes with a tougher edge and better action than your average CW superhero soap, but you’re risking your heart and wits with a story that clearly favors a small portion of your cast. There’s little room for fun or fun twists, like the season 1 arc where Rachel Roth (Teagan Croft) took Titans down a path full of horror with its strange supernatural powers. (So ​​far this season, it has been completely lost.) Or season 2 Big-Style of the silliness of an adult Superboy who learns about the world for the first time, because he only knows the inside of a laboratory.

Instead, the current iteration of Titans He is immersed in the dark and dying world of the person he initially wanted to get away from: the cursed Batman.

The first three episodes of Titans Season 3 is now airing on HBO Max. New episodes premiere on Fridays.