‘Titans’ Season 4 Review: ‘Blood In The Water’

A brief history of Titans

After four crazy seasons HBO Max’s Titans is hanging up the capes and tights. It has been a long road for Titans. Starting as the premier show for the now defunct DCUniverse streaming service, Titans immediately tried to set itself apart as a much darker and grittier take on the young superhero team. It stood in stalwart opposition to Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans, GO!, and also from the “Snyder-verse” of DC films. It was an attempt to start up a new superhero universe for TV apart from the “Arrowverse” on the CW that could be darker and more adult than on network TV.

Two seasons in Titans was still trying to find its footing where its counterparts Young Justice and Doom Patrol had seemingly succeeded. Swamp Thing had been killed on the vine, and Stargirl was tied to the CW while not being part of the shared superhero universe and repeating the Supergirl maneuver all over again (only this time she never got to be part of the fun).

Then it happened. DC Universe collapsed and almost everything went to HBO Max exclusively. Production values soared and things got better… mostly. Titans’ third season was a marked improvement over the previous two in a lot of ways, but many of the same issues that plagued its earlier seasons persisted or got worse by the end.

This brings me to season four. The grand finale. The sendoff for our young heroes after a long journey together. Except it doesn’t feel that way. Titans still feels like its struggling with a lot of the same issues. It has some good moments and solid fights in a few episodes, but it doesn’t feel like a cohesive story written for an ensemble. It feels like it’s written for two or three characters and then the rest are just there as tools for when the others need them.

For four seasons, Dick Grayson/Nightwing (Benton Thwaits) constantly goes off with Kory/Starfire (Anna Diop) for side adventures without telling anyone else on the team where they’re going, why, or how they get there and back in no time. It feels like a Scooby-Doo episode whenever the gang has to split up and find clues, only half the gang stays in the Mystery Machine asking where Fred and Daphne went. They always go to meet a “friend” that Dick knows from “the old days,” and half the time they just end up with a McGuffin to solve whatever the specific problem is for that episode. They meet friend or get magical McGuffin from friend that does a thing that allows for the next episode to happen where two other characters will have gotten tired of waiting for Dick and Kory and will get themselves in trouble until they work together to get back to the Mystery Machine just in time for the next episode when everyone is back together and still has no idea what to do. Lather, rinse, repeat, until the final episode when everyone pulls together and kills the bad guy.

Season 4 in a Nutshell

Titans fourth season kicks off seemingly right after the events of the previous. The gang is together and they’re heading out of Gotham for Star Labs in Metropolis. They get there and we meet the boyish scientist Bernard (James Scully) who apparently knows all of their secret identities and has been gathering data on all of them for as long as they’ve been superheroes. Star Labs is on it. Garfield/Beast Boy (Ryan Potter) finally gets his superhero uniform, and we’re introduced to the lofty concept of “the Red.”

Meanwhile Lex Luthor has gotten very into the occult and wants to bring the demon Trigon to Earth for reasons. Trigon is Rachel/Raven’s (Teagan Croft) dad. Long story. Lex teams up with cult lady, Mother Mayhem (Franke Potente), and is killed by magic for his hubris. Conner/Superboy (Joshua Orpin) gets upset that he doesn’t get to meet Superman, and after Lex is killed, decides to embrace his dark side and shave his head. Mother Mayhem royally rocks the Titans’ boat and then leaves, telling the Titans that they need to investigate further.

Beast Boy gets to take some time out from the plot to say goodbye to all of the DC shows on the CW and HBOMax which felt… weird. Titans has never tried to purport that it was connected in any way to these other shows, so to have an entire episode where BB is universe hopping or seeing “flashes” of lightning zoom by felt very out of place. Visually is also seemed off. The emotional part of the episode where he meets his younger self was fantastic, but it didn’t need to be wrapped up in a goodbye that wasn’t necessary. Let Barry do the long goodbye on the CW.

Introduce Sebastian/Brother Blood (Joseph Morgan). He’s a super depressed super-nobody that has never had a good day in his life. Apparently he’s also the son of Trigon, and Mayhem needs him to do things to make daddy come home for reasons. He doesn’t want to, because EVIL. He resists for awhile and hides with the Titans until he decides he doesn’t want to anymore. After he takes a bath in blood and sleeps for awhile he wakes up. He doesn’t feel heard by mommy, so he teams up with Lexified Superboy to make a mobile game. Game actually kills people and gives Sebastian superpowers. Oh no! Titans delete the game from the app store. Hooray! Sebastian gets really mad, kills mommy, takes her powers, and brings daddy home. Then he kills daddy! (Trigon has now died twice on this show for those of you counting at home.)

Sebastian then decides that for no reason at all he is going to use a worm hole generator at Star Labs to transport the entire Earth to the same spot in space as Starfire’s home planet, destroying both completely. Titans say no, punch bad guy a lot, and blast him until the day is saved. Then because it’s the last season everyone happily goes their separate ways. Oh, and Tim gets to wear a Robin costume for an episode with Red Hood (Curran Walters).

I desperately want to love this show. It has so much potential dripping off of it, but it just never quite lives up. It’s hard to get excited seeing Tim in the Robin suit when you know there’s only one episode left and they definitely aren’t coming back anytime soon. For every good there was a not-so-good to partner with it, and that kind of sours the experience.

The plot makes no sense and meanders all over the sprawling interiors of a bus, the woods, an office building, and some dark caves. Character decisions also don’t make a lot of sense. People seemingly change their entire personality at the drop of a hat because the plot needs them to, and it makes it incredibly difficult to understand what and why a character is doing anything. There is a lot of build-up to Trigon, again, only for it to fall flat immediately, again. Although at least he looked better this time.

Visually, the experience is pretty clean. Things look clean and clear, fight CG is mostly solid barring a few areas, and costuming is finally on-board to give every superhero their own suit. If only it wasn’t with moments left on the clock. Sound design is solid. Impacts have a real weighty sound to them that is very satisfying, and the music is doing its job with everything it has.

And with that, I bid farewell to Titans. I might revisit parts of it someday, but I think for now I need to go rinse the blood off my face and take a page out of Brother Blood’s book and sleep for a while. The promise of better days ahead.

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