As it nears its series finale, HBO Max’s Titans ties up loose ends pretty quickly, and the rushed pace hurts the plot progression a bit and can leave viewers confused. However, after much tiptoeing around the conflicting motivations of the villainous duo of Brother Blood and Mother Mayhem, we finally get a set course to their endgame in this episode as Sebastian prepares to meet his destiny. In the previous episode, Sebastian had a falling out with May and ended up destroying her. Conner, aka Superboy, who had allied with Sebastian, tried to mentally break him by presenting him with a chance of fulfilling his dream of developing a game that could allow him absolute control over the users, only to later help the Titans sabotage it. On the other hand, Kory made peace with her vengeful self as she had a good time with Gar and members of the Doom Patrol, and Dick, aka Nightwing, managed to sever the mystical ties between Sebastian and Rachel after getting occult help. Before the final two episodes of the series conclude the saga of the Titans, the eleventh episode brings the entire team together for preparation for the final battle.
Spoilers Ahead
Is Kory Really Free Of Her Conflicts?
Kory, aka Starfire, might have been relieved of her vengeful instincts against Sebastian by prioritizing the wellbeing of her team, the Titans, over her dark thoughts. But she isn’t relieved of her destiny just yet, as the episode begins with Kory having an ominous vision of sacrificing herself to restore everything at the end. During her tenure on the team, Kory had the wish to start a family with Dick Grayson and live a happy life. But with the constant reminder of her self-sacrifice, she too knows that whatever awaits her in the end, the life she wanted will always be a distant dream. Kory goes to Dick and contemplates the kind of life he prefers, and Dick once again doesn’t really reciprocate like she wished. Kory decides to go on her own to track down Conner and Sebastian.
Did Sebastian Make Amends With Mother Mayhem?
Despite Sebastian apparently burning Mother Mayhem in the previous episode, her power proved to be much greater than Sebastian expected, and she survived. Meanwhile, after his plan of world domination fails and his severance with his half sister Rachel ends up temporarily depowering him, Sebastian gets increasingly frustrated, and Conner calms him down. At the temple of Azarath, May and her cultist followers prepare for the ritual of summoning Trigon, and to empower Sebastian once again, May rips the heart out of Sebastian’s former love interest (who was also a member of the cult of blood) and turns it into a powerful conduit. Later, in the absence of Conner, May meets with Sebastian at Lexcorp and once again manages to lure him with false promises, and to regain his trust, she empowers him once again using the conduit. Before returning, May takes the horn of Trigon from Sebastian’s desk.
Conner, on the other hand, decides to break ties with Mercy Graves and starts digging through on his own to search for a counter against the strong mystical powers of Sebastian and the cult of blood. Upon returning, he learns that Sebastian has agreed to help May summon Trigon in exchange for him being able to do what his heart desires. Conner tries to persuade him to turn against May by stating that May has been using Sebastian. To prove his words, Conner captures a cult member who was eavesdropping nearby and presents him in front of Sebastian. Conner tortures the cult member, who confesses that after Sebastian serves his purpose of summoning Trigon, he will become useless to the cult and will be annihilated eventually. A furious Sebastian tries to kill the member, but Conner suggests a better way of disposing of him would be to utilize him first. Conner states that all of the members of the cult of blood share May’s powers, and if Sebastian can harvest that power for himself, he can be immune to her or Trigon’s attack. Sebastian drinks the blood of the member, which enhances his strength even more.
How Did Tim Get His Chance To Shine?
With the inevitable battle against May, Sebastian, and the cult of blood upon them, the Titans need to be at their peak condition to even stand a chance. As a leader, Dick knows this, and he sends Tim on a solo mission to Gotham to locate an informer named Venta, who might have information regarding May, and also gifts him with a Robin costume.
At Gotham, Tim goes to interrogate a few thugs and engages them in a street fight, but being a greenhorn, he soon finds himself cornered. Former Robin Jason Todd, aka Red Hood, comes to his rescue and takes him to his own lair. Jason seeks Tim’s assistance in one of his cases, and Tim proves why he is considered the intellectually superior Robin by effectively solving the case. However, unlike other Robins, Tim wasn’t trained by Batman in this particular universe, and Jason takes it up for himself to sharpen his combat skills. After a few initial hiccups, as is expected from a novice crimefighter, Tim manages to hold his ground and later defeats a bunch of thugs on his own. Tim is called back to the team without knowing the whereabouts of Venta, and Jason promises to let him know if he finds anything useful. Later, Jason calls Dick to let him know that his objective of training Tim has been successfully accomplished and that Tim can be a better Robin than Jason ever was.
How Did The Titans Reunite With Conner?
Dick gets to know that Starfire has gone off on her own to square off with Conner and Sebastian, and he brings Gar and Rachel along with him. They find Kory interrogating Mercy Graves to find Conner’s location, and Mercy remarks that Conner has strayed off of her ways while sabotaging any effort to locate him. Gar finds out about some of the weapon prototypes designed by Lex, one of which is Project Starfire, a mechanism that can produce Starfire’s blue light, which at its full capacity can destroy Sebastian. This presents a chance for Kory not to sacrifice herself by overexerting, unlike Mercy, who states that before their falling out, she had given Conner access to the location of the mechanism, and the team fears that now that Conner is siding with Sebastian, he might destroy it before they get their hands on it. The team rushes to the Lexcorp site to get the mechanism before Conner or Sebastian do.
The team meets Conner at the site, who expresses his sincere apologies to Dick for all his past misconduct. He shares the fact that, even though he doesn’t expect the team to understand, he did whatever he did to prove his worth to his creator, Lex, his biological father, Superman (given he was a clone of Supes), and to himself as well, but ended up ruining everything. Dick reassures him of his faith in him and takes him back into the team, and together they look for a way to weaponize the mechanism against Sebastian.
In order for the mechanism to work, it needs a power source to supercharge itself, and Kory volunteers for it. However, as the core nears its completion charge, the system gets destabilized, and fearing Kory’s safety, Dick turns it off. Conner decides to bring the almost-fully charged device to the summoning ritual and hit Sebastian with it at the right time. Wearing his Superboy tee once again, Conner takes the device, promising he won’t let the team down, and rushes off.
As planned, Sebastian meets May at the cavern temple of Azarath and brings Conner with him. An enraged May attacks Conner using her powers, but Sebastian counters it now that he has her power essence within him as well. May tries her last to gaslight Sebastian, but at this point Sebastian has realized that, like most of the people in his life, May, his mother, too, has only used him to serve her own purposes. Sebastian kills her using the horn of Trigon and consumes her energy, becoming even more powerful. Right at the moment, Conner uses the device to seemingly kill Sebastian, but due to it not being completely charged, the device’s energy is consumed by Sebastian as well, and now that he has acquired his Brother Blood attire, he attacks Conner, presumably killing him. The Titans realize from the energy tracker fitted on the device that it has been subsumed before reaching its completion potential, which must have been done by Sebastian, and they keep wondering about Conner’s fate.
Did Sebastian Finally Summon Trigon?
The fourth episode of Titans ends with Sebastian using the horn of Trigon to finally invoke the interdimensional, multiversal demon as he fulfills his destiny as Brother Blood. The Titans look to the horizon as the atmosphere forebodes an ominous occurrence, with a dark beam splitting the sky in half. Kory states that there’s only one way the entire fiasco can end, and Dick too knows well what she means. The team enters the gateway to the temple of Azarath, uncertain of whether they’ll survive to see the next day.
The season has done the worst disservice to Conner, aka Superboy, and managed to make his underutilized status into a pathetically utilized one. The need to go through an edgy route by making Conner emulate Lex more than Superman served no purpose, as he returned to square one at the end once again. Being a Kryptonian, he was obviously vulnerable to magic, yet he had to be the one to infiltrate the base of Sebastian and May, two powerful occultists, and as a result, his arc ended in an unsatisfactory conclusion, unless he gets revived in the rest of the two episodes. The series suffers from being overpopulated by big characters who either don’t get utilized as much as they deserve or get badly treated, and Conner, Gar, and even Rachel at times had to go through that ordeal. In the final two episodes of the series, we are expecting some reunions as characters like Dove, Donna Troy, Ravager, Batman, and even Superman who had been mentioned are still out there, and a multiversal threat like Trigon needs all the assistance the team can get. We really wish, just like the CW’s The Flash, this series got a redeeming factor in its concluding episodes to leave fans with something good to remember.
