Titans season three may just well be the best season so far, but there’s an important caveat. It sets up a promising story in its first three episodes, only to fall victim to bad writing, bullheaded character moments and missed storytelling opportunities. In short, Titans is better, but still the same, and somehow, that ends up being disappointing rather than a cause for joy.
The Titans are now an established superhero team operating out of San Francisco. They temporarily move to Gotham, however, when Jason Todd (Curran Walters), the second and current Robin, takes a chance and tries to apprehend the Joker only to get beaten to death. After Batman (Iain Glen) snaps, kills the Joker and leaves the city, the Titans are left to pick up the pieces. However, when a new deadly vigilante calling himself the Red Hood appears, Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites) enlists the help of former Batman villain, Jonathan Crane (Vincent Kartheiser).
There are other plots, such as Hawk (Alan Ritchson) and Dove (Minka Kelly) getting drawn into superhero work again, Starfire (Anna Diop) having strange visions, a teenage superhero fanboy named Tim Drake (Jay Lycurgo) trying to join the Titans and Rachel (Teagan Croft) trying to resurrect Donna Troy (Conor Leslie).
The element holding Titans season three back the most is its fragmented, almost nonsensical storytelling.
The main plot thread of the story, involving Red Hood and Crane, is stretched to fit the entire season, and the show suffers for it. It could have been easily wrapped in seven or eight episodes. There are some nice moments, such as Red Hood’s introduction, the way he costs the Titans someone close to them, and his fights with Nightwing. Crane, who is introduced as a Hannibal Lecter-like figure, quickly devolves into a more generic villain with trademark insecurities and even mommy issues.
This time around, the show tries to give every character something to do, but for most of the season, it’s squarely the Dick Grayson show. Still, there are some standout episodes, such as the ones showing the origin of Red Hood and Dick and Commissioner Barbara Gordon’s (Savanna Welch) complicated past, as well as the episode where Donna Troy and two other important characters journey through the afterlife as they try to make it back to the land of the living.
Some of the new characters, Barbara Gordon and Blackfire (Damaris Lewis) are intriguing and handled better than others. Blackfire, in particular, is portrayed in a more sympathetic light. At the moment, she is more of an antihero, but she could easily become an antagonist if the story calls for it later down the line.
For most of the season, we rarely get to see teamwork from the Titans or even fun interactions, which mostly disappear after the first episode. Everyone gets together again for the finale, and it quickly becomes apparent that Crane is no match for the fully-assembled team. Maybe if there were other antagonists involved, it would have been a more balanced fight.
While this was an interesting take on the Red Hood story, it meandered in the middle.
It was also ridiculous, but not in a good way: three characters are resurrected in this season, and although we see the batcave, there’s no batmobile there (although the characters keep using a seemingly endless array of expensive supercars).
At this point, hoping for a better Titans season might be a moot point. Even when you get something better in Titans, it’s riddled with bad storytelling and frustrating character behavior. It’s not as bad as a CW DC show, but the difference isn’t that pronounced. If you want a better DC show, check out Doom Patrol or Stargirl.