The two Robins face off. Jason Todd (Curran Walters) and Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites)
Jason Todd (Curran Walters) will transform into Red Hood in Titans season 3. This news is not much of a surprise to anyone familiar with the history of Jason’s transformation into the villain in the comics. Jason Todd, Batman’s second Robin, was never popular with readers. The only thing for DC to do was to take a poll, and ask fans what they should do with him. The answer was to kill him off. And so Jason met a grisly end when he was bludgeoned to death by the Joker.
But this wasn’t the end for Jason. In 2005, he was resurrected as the villain, Red Hood. And for the first time, Jason Todd drew in a fan base of his own. Jason is better as a villain. And DC TV made it quite clear over the past two seasons of Titans that Curran Walter’s Jason Todd will follow a similar arc to the comics and become a villain on the TV series.
Brenton Thwaites’ Dick Grayson (the first Robin) came to blows with Jason in season 1 and 2. Both Dick and Jason have different approaches to life as a superhero. Dick wants to unite the Titans, and Jason, who always feels unappreciated and blamed for every misstep the Titans take, wants to go his own way. After falling out with Dick in season 2, he abandoned the Titans to run off with Rose Wilson (Chelsea Zhang), who as the daughter of the villain, Deathstroke (Esai Morales), is also an outsider.
This culminated with Jason officially leaving the group in the season 2 finale, and many speculated he’d become Red Hood in season 3, which executive producer Greg Walker confirmed today during the Titans panel at DC FanDome. According to the character’s official logline for season 3, “Jason Todd now dons a new identity in his obsession to take down his old team.” This is a big deal for actor Curran Walters. He’s a standout in the near perfect casting on the DC show. He celebrated the official news with a tweet.
NEWS IS OUT!!!! REDHOOD IS COMING! @dccomics @dctitans pic.twitter.com/EtMedBH56M
— Curran Walters (@CurranWalters1) August 22, 2020
A Different Take on Jason’s Transformation Into Red Hood
Titans season 3 will revamp the story of Jason Todd’s transformation into Red Hood. Rather than being killed by the Joker and resurrected into Red Hood, Jason will fully embrace his dark side after being less than embraced by the Titans. His story in Titans is a tragic one. Jason is a lonely, directionless kid, who is dumped by Batman onto his stepbrother, Dick Grayson. Dick, as leader of the Titans, tries to integrate the dysfunctional Jason into the team. But Jason’s desire to upstage Dick, and his continual poor decisions, frequently puts the team in danger.
This seems like the perfect motivation for Jason to become a villain. No need to be murdered by the Joker and resurrected by Ra’s Al Ghul and his Lazarus Pit, as in the comic. The show strips back a lot of the fantastical elements to concentrate on the themes of family and the consequence of one’s actions. So, seeing the result of Jason’s poor actions lead him to oppose his former family of sidekicks makes perfect sense.
Hope For The Best
Unfortunately, the first two seasons of Titans have been uneven at best. Shades of brilliance, and few perfect episodes, have been undone by the lack of a cohesive story across each season. A heavy reliance on flashback episodes to try to give depth to the characters and their motivations just killed the plot.
Another criticism is the huge number of characters introduced in each season. The show sidelines most of the original team. While the show still centers on Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, the other original team members, StarFire, Rachel Roth, Gar Logan (a.k.a. Beast Boy), and Hawk and Dove were reduced to cameos in their own show in the second season. Hawk and Dove barely left the kitchen in Titans Tower, and Gar became a supporting character to newcomer Conner Kent (a.k.a. SuperBoy). His ability to shape-shift into all kinds of animals has, so far, been nothing more than a gimmick, while in the comics this power helped the Titans get out of some pretty tight jams. The sidelining of StarFire, played ferociously by Anna Diop is another misstep. And there was no mention at FanDome about whether we’ll see the Tamaran princess battle it out with her sister, Blackfire, as teased at the end of last season.
And now with the announcement that major Batman villain, Scarecrow, and former Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, will appear in season 3, the cast is, once again, looking top heavy. But I have to admit that learning Barbara is following in her father’s footsteps as Gotham’s Police Commissioner is intriguing.
Hopefully, the Covid-19 delays result in the showrunners (and the writer’s room) crafting a decent season. Both the cast and the fans deserve it.