Streaming service DC Universe’s new live action Titans television series has left critics
quite divided now that it’s first season has wrapped up.
But regardless of whether you liked the bold choices the show made, or thought it was awkward
or sacrilegious to what’s canon in the comics, there’s no doubt that Titans has ventured
back into the darker era of DC.
Back in the late 80s, Batman and his mythos were somewhat revived by a slew of dark and
gritty stories, primarily stemming from the release of Frank Miller’s the Dark Knight
Returns.
DC fans witnessed an era that questioned the caped crusaders ethics and morality, and saw
superheroes venturing out into vigilante territory.
Many other titles and releases at DC also followed suit.
While comics have taken a brighter turn over the last few decades, Titans is getting back
to that grit, for better or for worse.
So today, we’re counting down our picks of the top 10 darkest moments in Titans.
And of course, spoiler alert, friends.
You’ve been warned.
With that in mind, let’s jump in!
10 F*ck Batman Let’s start off our list with a moment that
even those who haven’t see the show are aware of.
We had to include the infamous ‘F*ck Batman’ line on our list.
For starters, this statement alone blew a lot of fans out of the water; when the initial
Titans trailer came out, fans were like …whoa.
Is this for real?
Many hated it and laughed at it.
Others didn’t know what to expect.
The moment itself occurs after Robin has defeated a group of thugs, having dragged one opponent’s
face along some broken glass.
That Robin, he’s a loose canon!
In the show, he’s turned against his former mentor, and clearly, he’s a hard ass motherf*cker
because of it.
But when it comes down to it, F*ck Batman is a statement that really defines the direction
Titans is going in; a defiance of the current status quo when it comes to the superhero
genre in film and television.
And to make fan boys squeal a little, if we’re being honest.
9 The Garden Shears In episode two of Titans, titled Hawk and
Dove, Robin comes to the rescue of the titular characters by literally stabbing a foe in
the balls with a pair of garden shears.
THIS AIN’T YOUR ADAM WEST BOY WONDER NOW IS IT.
I mean, while out of context this warrants a whole lot of eyes rolls concerning his grittiness
and choice of target (personally I would’ve gone for an eye, Robin, come on), to be fair,
the opponent was threatening to castrate Hawk with those same garden shears, so really,
you could just view this as Dick Grayson having a pretty dark sense of humour.
All in all though, it’s still a moment of gratuitous violence that really pushes home
how much ‘darker’ this Dick Grayson is.
8 Bloody Bats In the season finale of Titans, Trigon puts
Grayson in a dreamscape where he sees his worst nightmares play out.
And oh boy, just that statement alone is NOT good.
What does Dick see?
The Joker has killed Commissioner Gordon, causing Bruce Wayne to go mental, leading
Dick to head back to Gotham in order to save the city from it’s former hero.
He ends up at Arkham Asylum, and sees Bruce’s handiwork.
The Caped Crusader has brutally slain inmates the likes of the Riddler, the Ventriloquist,
and more.
Then, Dick sees Bruce killing the Joker.
This then leads to Grayson revealing to the world that Batman is Bruce Wayne, and a police
task force is sent to Wayne Mansion to take him out.
But of course, the Batman is ready and waiting.
What ensues is perhaps one of the most gruesome and graphic fight sequences to ever appear
in a DC adaptation.
7 Jason Todd This number is a unique one on our list.
There’s nothing particularly gruesome or gratuitous about this episode of Titans, episode
6 titled Jason Todd.
Rather, it’s dark in an emotional way.
For starters, the episode explores Dick Grayson’s not so warm memories of his past with Halley’s
Circus.
Second, as the title of the episode signifies, we finally get to see a live action adaptation
of Jason Todd, the second Robin.
But it’s not the Jason Todd you’d expect; the hardened, vengeful Red Hood of his later
days after DC unceremoniously killed him off by having readers phone in their vote of whether
or not to keep him alive.
(He was beaten to death by the Joker when fans voted to kill him off).
Instead, we see a youthful, optimistic Jason Todd at the start of his career as Robin,
fully believing that Batman, his mentor, needs a Robin; a philosophy that Grayson strongly
refutes.
What makes this episode dark is that, all things considered with how Titans has played
out over its first season, you know DAMN WELL that in an upcoming season, we will see Todd
meet his demise.
It’s inevitable; it’s an integral part to the character’s mythos.
And it’s a brutal enough event that you bet your ass Titans is dying to incorporate
it.
But for now, we’re left with this good hearted young teenager who doesn’t know better.
And that’s just flat out depressing.
6 The Post Credits Scene Here’s another moment where the implications
and the foreshadowing for future Titans storylines in Season 2 may leave you with a shiver, or
a not so great feeling of dread.
At the end of the season finale credits, a post credit scene takes place at Cadmus Labs,
with the text ‘somewhere in metropolis’.
We see a glimpse of a naked ‘subject 13’ escaping his cloning tube.
This is none other than the introduction to Superboy, the Conner Kent version post Crisis
on Infinite Earths, who was introduced during the Reign of the Supermen after the ever so
terrible Death of Superman story arc that ruined death in comic books.
I’ll save my rant on that one for another day.
Anywho, Connor is a clone of Superman’s, a test tube child, the 13th experiment in
a series of tests to recreate Superman.
In the scene, which opens on black, we hear some of the Cadmus scientists being beaten
to a pulp.
The scene then opens to give us a security camera perspective right outside the isolated
test tube room, and we see the naked Subject 13 walk up to one of the still alive scientists,
walking past a slew of potentially dead bodies on the ground.
He then opens up a cage containing a dog, which appears to be Krypto the Superdog.
All in all, it’s clear that this Superboy isn’t above murder, and will be a whole
lot more homicidal than the version of him in the comics.
5 Raven’s Origin In the comics, Rachel Roth aka Raven is the
daughter of an inter dimensional demon named Trigon and a human woman named Arella, also
known as Angela Roth, who was born in Gotham City.
Trigon has married Arella, and they had Raven, who would grow up in an alternate dimension
called Azarath.
There she was taught to control her emotions in order to suppress her demon abilities,
with the fear of if Raven felt too strongly about something, she might become possessed
by the evil demonic energy of her father’s that was inside of her.
In Titans, specifically in episode 1, we see that her parentage is still the same, but
there’s some bleak adjustments that have been made.
Rachel is now in foster care, unaware of the truth of her past.
Rachel comes home from school one day to find her foster mom Melissa held at gunpoint by
one of Trigon’s cult’s assassins, who intends to fill Rachel in on her true heritage.
Melissa is shot in the head.
It’s pretty graphic.
Rachel’s powers manifest and she flees, meeting up with Dick Grayson.
4 Burning the Robin Suit After a really brutal sequence in episode
7 Asylum, something we’ll be touching on later, Dick decides to let go of his past
officially by burning his Robin suit after the building goes up in flames.
It’s an emotional moment, but ultimately, one that really sets the stage for the kind
of trauma that has led Dick to becoming this aggressive.
It speaks volumes.
3 Sexual Abuse Hawk and Dove were first introduced to us
in the second episode of the season.
Played by Alan Ritchson and Minka Kelly, we learn that Dick used to date Dawn aka Dove,
something that Hawk really disliked him for, and that the duo had fought alongside the
Boy Wonder in the past.
But by the time we reached episode 9, Hank and Dawn, we got to learn more about the past
of Hawk, or rather, Hank; something about his own origins that hasn’t really be done
in the superhero genre before in terms of adaptations.
We find out that Hank was molested when he was a child by his football coach; something
he took on the bulk of in order to protect his younger brother Don from also being assaulted
by the pedophile.
This of course has really informed his character and his own aggressive outbursts.
It’s a touching but emotionally hard scene to digest, and it’s also revealed what happened
to the child predator years later; a violent, brutal end as an act of retribution via Hank
and Dawn.
2 Judge, Jury and Executioner Dick Grayson and Mass Murderer are not two
things that DC fans would have ever seen associated with one another up until Titans.
In episode 7, Asylum, Robin decides to take matters into his own hands while the group
are escaping.
And it results in him brutally murdering all of the security guards.
There’s a LOT of blood.
The team just stand there and watch him KILL ALL OF THOSE DUDES to boot.
No one objects, even as they awkwardly tip toe through the carnage of all the dead bodies.
After Robin tells them to get out of the building, he continues to go on his crusade after telling
Starfire to blow up the building.
It’s really, really bloody.
And, by the end of it all, we then see our number 4 on this list; Dick saying goodbye
to his Robin identity for good, burning the Boy Wonder suit in the aftermath of the explosion.
1 Dick Kills Bruce If mass murdering a bunch of security guards
wasn’t enough for you, how about Dick Grayson murdering the man who mentored him?
And, well, yes, clearly traumatized him.
In the season finale, during Dick’s nightmare sequence, we see Dick do exactly that.
So yeah, it’s not him killing Batman FOR REAL, but it’s still just as gruesome to
watch.
In the nightmare, during the siege on Wayne Manor, Bruce Wayne uses a freeze gun on Starfire,
which is the nail in the coffin for Dick; Dick sets off explosives, causing the Mansion
to crumble.
The ex boy wonder then finds his mentor trapped in the rubble of the building inside the Bat
Cave.
This is when he also spots Starfire, now dead.
With nothing to lose and every possible nightmare come alive, Dick puts his boot on Batman’s
throat, suffocating him to death.
We hear Bruce’s struggles as the camera focuses on Grayson’s unforgiving face.
And because of this, in the real world, Trigon has now been able to take control of Grayson,
leaving us with one hell of a cliffhanger for season 2.
There we have it friends.
What are your thoughts about Titans?
Did you love it, or hate it?
Or have you not seen it?
Won’t give in to that DC Universe subscription fee?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know all of your thoughts.
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