Warning: mild SPOILERS for the Titans Season 4 midseason premiere are ahead!
In 2021, more than 30 years after he made his first appearance in the pages of Batman #436, Tim Drake make his live-action debut in Titans, with Jay Lycurgo being selected to bring the character to life. Unlike the other title heroes though, this version of Tim still doesn’t officially have a superhero identity of his own, but that will soon change. The latter half of Titans Season 4, a.k.a. its final season, sees Lycurgo’s Drake following in his comic book counterpart’s footsteps to become the third Robin, and showrunner Greg Walker explained the big way that the new Boy Wonder will stand out from his predecessors, Brenton Thwaites’ Dick Grayson and Curran Walters’ Jason Todd.
The first half of Titans Season 4 showing Tim learning how to fight, particularly with the bo staff Dick gave him, and at the end of March, we got our first look at how he’ll look when he eventually suits up as Robin. Ahead of the midseason premiere episodes “Caul’s Folly” and “Dick & Carol & Ted &” (which, among the things, saw Joshua Orpin’s Superboy continues his run of Lex Luthor-ish behavior), I chatted with Walker, and among the things I asked him was how he and the other writers went about figuring out this portion of Tim’s heroic journey, and he responded thusly:
Good question. He’s such a different Robin, I’ll start there. We wanted to really emphasize his traits that made him different. There’s a lot more of exploration, a setup, really, that talks about who he is, which is he’s a fan, he’s also brilliant and he approaches Robin not from the more dysfunctional paths that Dick and that we had to do with Jason. We specifically wanted him to be connected to the team and bonding, and not be driven by some kind rage and anger. We wanted to, I guess, come to it more purely. And so it had to be through his connection to the team. Then when someone he loves is put in peril, that activates him and Dick knows it’s the right time.
While Dick Grayson and Jason Todd are by no means unintelligent, Tim Drake has proven on numerous occasions how brilliant he is since being introduced in Titans Season 3, but brains alone aren’t enough if you’re wanting to inherit the Robin legacy. Along with combat training obviously being necessary, you also need an effective kind of drive, and while Dick and Jason pulled from darker corners to make that happen, Walker and his team decided it was better for Tim to do so for a reason more tied to the team and saving someone he loves. It’s hard to say who that person is right now, although I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that he and James Scully’s Bernard are now officially in a relationship.
Alas, because Titans is ending on HBO Max after this season, we won’t get to see much of Tim Drake in action as Robin on the show. However, Greg Walker informed me that the final season announcement “didn’t disrupt anything” as he and the other writers were already planning on this being the last hurrah for Tim, Nightwing, Starfire, Raven, Beast Boy and Superboy. Walker also expressed interest in these characters perhaps being revisited one day should there be an opportunity to explore this corner of the multiverse within that the new DC Universe franchise DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran are building.
The last Titans episodes will premiere Thursdays to HBO Max subscribers, but not to worry, as there are plenty of upcoming DC TV shows lined up for the next several years. Our 2023 TV schedule is also available to peruse if you’re looking for other programs to watch.
