Titans S01E11 Review: The Dark Knight Falls

Titans, Season 1, Episode 11: Dick Grayson

This is... it's definitely an interesting way to end a season. Last episode seemed to lead up to a potential confrontation between the Titans and Trigon, and the way it's set up means that it's not really going to cleanly be covered in a final episode. Fair enough, we're going to have a cliffhanger end the season. That's not the worst thing you could do to a season.

Then I watched "Dick Grayson", episode 11 of the first season of Titans and... and it's interesting. The moment the first scene rolls about and it's Dick and Dawn with a son on a fancy-ass house with a pool and all that jazz, it's clear that we're having a weird little 'what if I had a nice life' moment. Be it an imaginary spot or a hallucination. Again, considering the title of the episode meant that this was going to be a Dick-focused episode, fair enough. But then the thing is that this imaginary sequence... lasts the entire episode.

Which is a fucking bizarre choice to do. Taken on its own, "Dick Grayson", like "Hank and Dawn" before it, is a pretty good bottle episode. I would even go so far as to say that it's a great episode. But the fact that they are supposed to be part of a season honestly makes this entire thing feel utterly bizarre. Despite being a season finale, this feels more like it really should've taken place in the middle of a season as the big 'stakes are rising' moment instead of a bizarre blue-balled anticlimax of a final episode of a season. Like, I get that Titans isn't the most conventional show out there, but this is just an odd way to end a season that taken as the final episode of a season, it's fucking weird.

But taken as its own thing, it's... it's all right? All of the parts of the flashback that seem a bit weird can be chalked up to this being Dick's idealized version of the world, where he ends up with the girl (Dawn), where his buddies are all happy and safe, the 'pretender' Jason Todd gets crippled, and even Superman ends up apparently recognizing Dick as the One And Only Robin... hell, it even explains the up-to-eleven grimdark version of Gotham City we see in Dickworld.

And this whole flashback is basically Dick's Messiah Complex drawn out as a what-if episode, and it's legitimately interesting to see. Brenton Thwaites is a great actor, and seeing him interact first in the idyllic suburban retired life with Dawn, and later on drawn back to the hellhole that is Gotham City after Gordon's death and Jason Todd being crippled and wheelchair-bound, with Batman becoming even more antisocial and withdrawn and, according to Jason, gunning to kill the Joker.

And Dick's internal turmoil on whether he should or should not abandon his peaceful life to try and play saviour to Batman is well-done, and scenes like him walking up to the clock in Wayne Manor, and talking to Batman, who's watching off-screen, is genuinely touching. And I absolutely love the rapid-fire cameos of Batman villains and aspects of the Batman franchise, and the general feel of this Gotham City. From the dark, gothic skyscrapers to the bats all around Wayne Manor to the glimpses of the Batcave we see, to the bats flying everywhere, to the brief glimpses of random villains... it makes the world feels lived-in, if you know what I mean.

Of course, despite a little subversion of the Joker being alive but hospitalized, turns out Dream!Batman is so insane that he goes off and murders Joker while helpless in the ICU, and then goes off to murder every single person at Arkham Asylum... not just the criminals, but also the guards and the staff. And then Dick reveals Batman's secret to the police, who storm Wayne Manor... and get all murdered by Batman, including Agent Kory Anders! Who ends up frozen and shattered with a Mr. Freeze gun.

And then Wayne Manor gets utterly blown up, and Dick goes in to find the beyond-redemption Batman asking for his help... and he smashes Batman in the chest with his boot, because, frankly, as cool as it was seeing Dream!Batman freak out and murder everyone, it is kind of a cartoonishly evil and crazy caricature of the real character. Which is sort of the point, because we learn that this is all just an attempt by Trigon to trap Dick in this nightmare world of "choose your own way", leading to darkness and despair.

And... cliffhanger, smash to credits. The stinger shows Superboy escaping from Cadmus and stealing Krypto (yay Krypto!)

I like this episode. It's a fun little Elseworlds story, and a fun analysis of what would happen if Batman flips out. It does really make me yearn for a world where the live-action holder of Batman's IP isn't such stingy dicks and would allow showmakers -- either the Titans team or the Gotham team or CW -- to straight up just adapt Batman in its entirety without having to jump around hoops and adopt his sidekicks or to disguise it all as a five-season prequel origin story. I dunno. I don't dislike this episode on its own, but it does sort of speak poorly to the season as a whole where it's far, far more concerned about making great standalone episodes while giving barely lip service to the overall plot. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The idea of a Batman in a 'dark future' being pretty brutal so much that even his closest allies turn against him is very loosely based on the iconic graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, though this episode does take a couple of unique twists on the formula. 
• Recurring Batman allies Commissioner Gordon, Alfred, Barbara (Batgirl) and Superman are mentioned, while the Arkham Asylum corpses include the Joker, Two-Face, the Riddler and Ventriloquist among the recognizable ones. The Batsignal also makes a brief appearance, as does Mr. Freeze's cold gun. 
• Jason Todd being crippled and wheelchair-bound after being shot in the spine by a villain is seemingly a reference to the fate that befell Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke. 
• Joker being thrown off a roof to his death is similar to his fate in the Tim Burton Batman movie of the 80's. Meanwhile, his corpse suddenly being discovered to be alive has been done a couple of times, most iconic of them all during his original debut in Detective Comics. 
• Wayne Manor being blown up in response to Batman's identity being revealed and the world coming down to arrest him has been done a couple of times, most recently in the video game Arkham Knight.
• "Subject 13" escaping from Project: Cadmus is, of course, Superboy! The dog with heat vision that he rescues is Krypto, the Super-Dog.