All The Lessons James Gunn’s DCU TV Can Learn From Titans

Titans just wrapped up its fourth and final season on HBO Max. This is definitely the end of an era for DC’s TV lineup, as Titans was the first original series to debut on the now-defunct DC Universe streaming app. Titans is also one of many DC shows ending to make way for James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new, unified DCU.

This may well be the last we see of Brenton Thwaites’ Dick Grayson and the rest of the Titans crew. But that’s not to say these characters won’t leave behind a legacy that influences the new DCU. There are many lessons to learn from Titans, both in terms of its storytelling successes and failures. These are the five most important things to take away from Titans’ four-season run.

Warning: this article contains some plot spoilers for Titans: Season 4.

It’s OK to Be Dark

Titans certainly made a strong first impression with its original trailer, which featured the now-infamous scene of Thwaites’ Robin pummelling criminals and shouting “F*** Batman!”. That scene really set the tone for the series, making it clear Titans was a much darker and more adult-centric take on this iconic team. 

Some DC fans seemed to immediately write off the series because of that scene and other storytelling choices (like Starfire’s Season 1 costume). It was easy to dismiss Titans as a needlessly grim and self-serious take on a franchise that’s meant to be full of adventure and optimism. These heroes are the future of the DC Universe, after all, so what’s to be gained by miring them in darkness and despair?

But Titans’ saving grace has always been the fact that the darkness always serves a greater purpose. Never does the series pretend as though it’s a good thing that Dick Grayson is suffering with PTSD from his time with Bruce Wayne. Dick’s entire character arc in the series centers around moving beyond the trauma of Robin and learning to embrace the family. That struggle is strengthened through his relationships with his two successors, Curran Walters’ Jason Todd and Jay Lycurgo’s Tim Drake. The former is a sobering look at what happens when a Robin truly loses control, whereas the latter shows the potential to be the greatest Robin of them all.

Yes, Titans is guilty of being overly self-serious at times. But for a show all about jilted former sidekicks and alien refugees and teen runaways finding a home together, it makes sense to take a darker and more emotionally charged approach. The series is often at its best when it focuses on the idea that these damaged heroes become something more than the sum of their broken parts when they come together.

It should also be said that Titans walked so Doom Patrol could run in the darkness department. In some ways, Doom Patrol is every bit as bleak as Titans. Its characters are profoundly psychologically troubled misfits who curse practically every time they open their mouths. Yet Doom Patrol offsets that darkness with a whimsical sense of humor. That series, more than any other on HBO Max, may give us a taste of what to expect from Gunn’s DCU. 

The DCU Is More Than Just Batman

One of the most common criticisms leveled at Titans is the fact that the series is overly preoccupied with Batman. Looking back at the past four seasons, it’s tough to argue against that criticism. Titans often comes across as a Dick Grayson show first and a Teen Titans adaptation second. The first two seasons are largely about Dick’s journey toward becoming Nightwing. Season 3 then doubles down by shifting the focus to Gotham City and introducing more major Batman characters like Savannah Welch’s Barbara Gordon and Vincent Kartheiser’s Scarecrow. Season 4 is the only one where the extended Bat-family don’t hog the spotlight in nearly every episode.

Not that it’s hard to understand why DC would take this approach. Batman is by far their biggest franchise. Even DC’s comic book line is extremely dominated by Batman-centric books at any given time. Framing the series around the Dark Knight’s troubled sidekicks gives Titans an easy hook with fans who don’t have a prior attachment to the Teen Titans.

The Batman-heavy approach definitely did this series a disservice.

Still, the Batman-heavy approach definitely did this series a disservice. Too often, characters like Teagan Croft’s Rachel Roth and Ryan Potter’s Beast Boy are relegated to the background in favor of Dick and his fellow Robins. The series’ problems only compounded in Season 2 and 3, when the team roster ballooned to add Donna Troy (Conor Leslie), Hank Hall (Alan Ritchson), Dawn Granger (Minka Kelly) and Conner Kent (Joshua Orpin). Titans got to the point where it had too many characters to juggle, and seemingly little interest in juggling them in the first place. Again, only with the more pared-down, streamlined approach in Season 4 did Titans truly begin to find its footing as an ensemble series. Only in these final episodes does Dick Grayson become a team player and not the undisputed star of the show.

Fortunately, there’s little reason to fear that Gunn’s DCU shows will suffer from the same problem. Of the projects revealed so far, only Batman: The Brave and the Bold looks to be focusing on the Bat-family. The new DCU is casting a wider net with shows like Lanterns and Paradise Lost. Gunn himself has shown a real knack for making audiences fall in love with previously obscure characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy. Who needs Batman anyway?

Don’t Be Afraid to Show the Justice League

On the other hand, there’s something to be said for a Teen Titans series that isn’t afraid to feature Batman. That was always one of the weird quirks of the 2003 Teen Titans animated series – a show that prominently features Robin yet basically ignores the rest of the Batman family. In fact, that show never definitively reveals which character is wearing the Robin costume, so little did it focus on the secret identities of these characters.

There were times during Titans’ four-season run where it would have been nice to see more of the Justice League. The almost complete absence of Superman is easily the biggest offender in that regard. Despite so much of Superboy’s arc centering around his parentage and his struggle to embrace both Superman and Lex Luthor as his fathers, the Man of Steel never appears as more than an offscreen cameo. Superman’s absence is especially felt in Season 4, which introduces Titus Welliver’s Lex Luthor in its first episode.

The same goes for Wonder Woman, a character who never appears despite the regular presence of her sidekick, Donna Troy. Even Batman himself was weirdly MIA in Season 1. Despite frequently being referenced, Batman only appeared in a handful of shots played by stunt doubles, and it wasn’t until Season 2 that Titans cast a proper Bruce Wayne in Iain Glen.

Superman’s absence is especially felt in Season 4, which introduces Titus Welliver’s Lex Luthor in its first episode.

All of this seems to stem from Warner Bros. Discovery’s strange reluctance to allow multiple incarnations of a character to exist in live-action simultaneously. Producer Greg Berlanti revealed that even Welliver’s Luthor was only allowed to appear for one episode in Season 4. The existence of Superman & Lois seemingly means that Titans wasn’t allowed a Superman of its own, and only a small role for Luthor. The Wonder Woman movies probably prevented any chance of Diana Prince appearing in this show. 

Titans is hardly the only DC show to suffer from this strange policy. Supergirl was annoyingly Superman-light in its first season. Because Titans has the various Robins on lockdown, Gotham Knights is forced to make do with a new character in Oscar Morgan’s Turner Hayes. Arrow lost access to several key characters because of 2016’s Suicide Squad. 

At least this doesn’t seem to be Gunn’s philosophy to the DC brand. Gunn has already confirmed that J.J. Abrams and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Superman movie is still in development and “would be an Elseworlds tale like Joker.”

All of these decisions feel like entirely unforced errors on the part of DC and Warners. Why don’t they have faith that fans can handle the idea of there being more than one version of a character like Dick Grayson? Why do they let these shows suffer needlessly? Aren’t we all familiar with the concept of the multiverse by now? On that note…

The Multiverse Is an Asset

When the DC Universe app was first announced, many naturally assumed shows like Titans, Doom Patrol and Swamp Thing would form their own cinematic universe similar to The CW’s Arrowverse. Things started off promisingly enough, with an episode of Titans: Season 1 acting as a sort of backdoor pilot for Doom Patrol. 

But from there, DC never really managed to build any connective tissue between the shows. The final nail in the coffin came with The CW’s 2019 crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths, which confirms that Titans, Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing and Stargirl all take place on different Earths. DC Universe and HBO Max have so far failed to establish and build up the massive shared universe that makes watching the Arrowverse shows so rewarding.

Though, to its credit, Titans: Season 4 attempts to make up for lost time in that regard. The episode “Dude, Where’s My Gar?” plunges Beast Boy into the multiverse and features cameos of everyone from Brec Bassinger’s Stargirl to Grant Gustin’s Flash to the animated Beast Boy of Teen Titans GO! The following episode reunites Gar with the Doom Patrol, finally acknowledging the link between the two shows that had been forgotten.

These multiverse cameos are more than just fun opportunities to geek out. They make the world of Titans feel that much larger and more rich. They help the show become part of a much grander tapestry. It’s just a shame that Titans, Doom Patrol and Stargirl are all ending right as these shows were beginning to better take advantage of the multiverse and its storytelling possibilities. The Stargirl cameo in particular shows how much potential there would have been in a longer, more involved crossover between these shows. 

The multiverse may not be a huge priority for Gunn’s DCU, as it appears that the focus will be on a singular cinematic universe that carries across film, TV, animation and even video games. But whether the focus remains on one universe or an entire multiverse, the hope is that the DCU shows will be interconnected in a way Titans and its sisters shows never were. Especially with the Arrowverse fading away, the time has come for a new cinematic universe of DC characters where these shows and movies can build on one another in exciting ways.    

For more on the future of Gunn’s DCU, see the graphic novels you should read to prepare and learn why Gunn has said all the right words so far about Superman: Legacy.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.