WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Titans Season 3, Episode 5, “Lazarus,” available now on HBO Max.
In Titans‘ third season, Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites) is struggling to cope with the rise of Red Hood (Curran Walters). It appears as if Jason Todd’s soul is no longer there, as the ex-Robin continues his bloody warpath, looking to break Nightwing’s new family and purge Gotham. However, in the process, the series manages to make several Batman villains Christopher Nolan used even better.
Red Hood Is A More Brutal Joker
Because Red Hood’s using fear to manipulate the Titans and Gotham, it’s fair to assume he’s the successor to his partner, Scarecrow. But in reality, he wants to give the city a better class of criminal and free it from the old, corrupt ways. It’s similar to Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight, who loved playing mental games just as much as physical ones.
In Titans, Jason ups the ante when it comes to Joker’s gang meeting with Mason Gambol and Co. As quippy as Ledger’s clown was, strapping bombs to himself to get them under his thumb, Jason is much more merciless. He drops the decapitated head of one gangster on the table while slaughtering others to let them know who’s in charge. Red Hood even succeeds where Joker failed when it comes to kidnapping. The clown failed to nab Harvey Dent, whereas Jason sets a better trap to play Dick and take Scarecrow away to continue their fear crusade.
Admittedly, Joker was being a puppet master, but Jason comes out as the bigger winner because the Titans have no solution for him engineering Hawk’s demise. And to make matters worse, Jason also shatters Dawn with the bait-and-switch. Joker used a similar tactic to kill Rachel and turn Harvey into Two-Face, but Red Hood uses a fakeout to get Dove to blow Hank up, which destroys not just one hero but also newbies like Gar and Superboy.
Scarecrow Is More Fearsome
Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow was intimidating in Batman Begins, but as the trilogy went on, he turned out to be a lackey. He went from using fear toxin to damage Bruce’s psyche to someone whose plan to poison the water system failed miserably. And in the next two movies, he was relegated to a drug dealer and a judge.
All Scarecrow was in Nolan’s movies a tool of Ra’s al Ghul, but in Titans, he’s no pawn. He’s pulling strings, and doing so in style as he dances, smokes weed and shows Jason he can be the father Bruce never was. But in addition to having a fear toxin and an anti-fear one, what makes him deadly is he’s accessed the Lazarus Pit to bring Jason back and had the former Boy Wonder reveal all of Bruce’s secrets.
With that being the case, Scarecrow can be 10 steps ahead of Bruce, Dick, and even the Titans, give him more agency than he’s ever had, even compared to the comics. And to top things off, Crane’s a tour de force, wrecking Gotham and its heroes using fear in a whole new way. He’s poisoning the city using a mental game by destroying the symbol of vigilantes and creating a power vacuum to let his Red Hood step up as the new Dark Knight, which is more than Nolan’s version ever did.
Ra’s Al Ghul Is A Supernatural Powerhouse
The Nolan movies had a grounded take on Ra’s, but ultimately, while he was an institution that turned the League of Shadows into terrorists, he was still a mortal soldier. In Titans, however, Ra’s has left supernatural crumbs around, as seen with Scarecrow using one of his resurrection pools. It suggests he might be somewhere working new plans against Gotham, especially with Bruce missing, and that he could be more powerful than typically depicted.
This cranks Nolan’s vision up with a more lethal spin and leaves fans wondering if he’s empowered Talia or even has a Damian in storage. The fact Bruce can’t read him like Christian Bale’s Dark Knight could also speaks volumes and proves this version of the character is truly an agent of the shadows.
To see how Nolan’s villains are taken up a notch, the first five episodes of Titans Season 3 are available now on HBO Max. Episode 6 releases Sept. 2.
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