Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for Titans season 4, episode 12
The series finale for HBO’s Titans ended as the show began (and that’s not a good thing). The trouble with Titans has always been its constant ignoring of some of its best characters while also having incredibly convoluted yet predictable plots. While the show has always had glimmers of strong ideas and characterization, it frequently wasted its great potential. As such, the series finale feels like an unfortunate homage to everything that went wrong with the show as a whole.
It’s already been confirmed that there will not be a Titans season 5 from HBO Max. As such, the season finale of Titans season 4 is also the series finale, having been tasked with wrapping up the season’s plot with the Titans’ battle against Brother Blood while also offering some semblance of closure for the Titans themselves. However, there are simply far too many problems to call the series finale of Titans a success.
Titans Undersold Main Characters In Its Final Episode
Just as the series has done from the beginning, Titans season 4, episode 12 undersells Raven (Teagan Croft) and Beast Boy (Ryan Potter). Instead, the focus is largely put on Nightwing (Brenton Thwaites) and Starfire (Anna Diop) and somewhat on Superboy (Joshua Orpin) and Tim Drake (Jay Lycurgo). Although Beast Boy received his own solo episode in Titans season 4 as he visited the supernatural plane known as The Red, it seems the episode was inconsequential. Despite Beast Boy unlocking more of his power to transform into animals, he turned into a tiger for a few brief seconds during the finale, the animal he’s been 90% of the entire series.
To that end, Raven is given very little time to interact with Brother Blood and her demon father Trigon after her brother summons him to Earth in the first few minutes of the Titans season 4 finale. Much of the Trigon plot is also given to Starfire in conjunction with the Tamaranian prophecy introduced in Titans season one. Destined to kill a child of Trigon, Starfire fulfills the prophecy by destroying Brother Blood. However, the cost was Raven losing a lot of her agency in the finale, largely being sidelined in the battle against her own dark family members.
Titans’ Ending Was A Predictable Superhero Story
Brother Blood’s entire reason for wanting to destroy both Earth and Tamaran is quite uninspired, continuing the villain motivation problems that have plagued the series since the beginning when Trigon first attempted to corrupt the world. While it was played as though Brother Blood killing Trigon should have been a surprise to viewers in the season finale, Brother Blood taking Trigon’s power and forging his own path was incredibly predictable. Likewise, his motivations revolving around his past mistreatment and being looked down on by society are hardly original concepts.
Additionally, the wrapping up of the series finale with a montage of each hero going their separate ways was quite predictable as well. No one dies in their sacrifice, everyone gets a happy ending despite the end of the team, and Superboy naturally got his meeting with Superman. Of course, viewers only get to see the Man of Steel’s red boots, continuing the less-than-exciting trend of big-time heroes relegated to the background and at best kept out of costumes such as Iain Glen’s Bruce Wayne.
The Titans Series Finale Struggled To Make Sense
The Titans season 4 finale also glosses over several key points, so much so that plenty of questions have arisen due to the nonsensical nature of the episode. Trigon is a major villain in the DC Universe, though no reason is given as to why the core Titans are the only heroes stepping up to stop him. Superboy was killed by Brother Blood’s magic with his vitals reading zero. While Nightwing used some sort of red kryptonite concoction, it seemingly didn’t work until Superboy suddenly shows up in the middle of the fight with Brother Blood.
Additionally, no reason is given as to why Starfire was able to survive the blast she unleashed that ultimately destroyed Brother Blood. She simply floats back down to Earth and nothing is said about how she’s still standing. Instead, the Titans embrace and go home, eventually having dinner to talk about where they’re all headed next. Even at the very beginning of the episode, no explanation is given as to how Brother Blood was able to kill Trigon so easily, one of the DC Universe’s most powerful supervillains of all time. It truly is one bizarre contrivance after another.
Titans’ Series Finale Killed Trigon In Its Opening Scene
Furthermore, it needs to be noted that Trigon’s death in the first few minutes of Titans season 4 is massively disappointing. Going beyond the show glossing over Brother Blood somehow being strong enough to kill him, Titans season 4 was a chance for the extradimensional demon to get redemption following Titans season 1. After all, the first battle with Trigon was bizarrely held until the season 2 premiere where it only took Raven a few minutes to defeat him. Likewise, Titans season 4 repeats the problem with Trigon being killed in the first 5 minutes of the episode despite an entire season’s worth of foreshadowing (just like Titans season 1).
When it comes to the series finale, Titans put itself in the same exact scenarios it’s been criticized for since the very beginning. As such, it’s a very unfortunate way to end the show especially when the individual characters are quite compelling, having had massive amounts of potential. It seems as though Titans’ biggest struggle was its writing, having an inability to balance characters while also offering an engaging and fresh plot. Instead, the show continually faced the same kind of problems, generating the same consistent frustrations with its viewers all the way to the bitter end.
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