Titans Review

The first trailer's profanity was a mission statement, and the show never lived up to it or escaped it. What arrives is tonally unstable in a way four seasons never resolve: an episode of grim body horror about Doctor Light will be followed by a road trip comedy and then by a hospital melodrama, and the team assembles and disperses so often that no relationship gets to develop. Brenton Thwaites is capable but the show keeps stalling Dick Grayson's transformation for cliffhanger value, so a series about becoming Nightwing spends two seasons refusing to let him.

Anna Diop is the standout and is badly served by the writing, given a memory loss plot in the first season and an alien monarchy plot in the second. The Deathstroke season is the best of them, mostly because Esai Morales plays a father with a real grievance. The action improved steadily as the budget grew, and the Doom Patrol crossover episode is genuinely charming. Everything else is a show trying on identities in front of a mirror.