Titans Showrunner Shares The Big Way Tim Drake Stands Out As Robin In Season 4 Compared To Dick Grayson And Jason Todd
It’s almost time to see Jay Lycurgo’s character suit up as the new Robin.
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:
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.
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Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.