Chosing a title is also difficult

- No batarang to the throat/implied second ressurection + to escape from batarang to the throat they made Jason into a compelte idiot;

- Jason frees the Joker for his revenge scheme, which goes against the Joker *already being free* as in the comic (which actually reinforces Jason's points)

- No unexplained resurrection/Talia ressurecting him using the Lazarus Pit

That’s something I fully believe.

The breakdown of his relationship with Bruce started at the very beginning of that relationship. It was always built to fail.

Even if the Joker never happened, I feel like so many people skip the fact that Jason ran away. He ran away for a reason. Bruce drove him away. If he hadn’t run away then he would’ve later. He and Bruce are such different people and have such different fundamental morals that they were always going to clash in the end.

His whole tenure as Robin shows he was never content with how they were handling things. He’s always believed some people are past redemption. That has always been his character, well before Red Hood was even a thought.

Jason and Bruce were doomed as parent and child. Bruce didn't connect that deeply with Jason, in part because of who he is (emotionally constipated but also he is a ridiculously rich guy with all the privileges), in part because he didn't know how to (again emotionally constipated). Jason, on the other hand, had many problems and trauma that they were never acknowledged (living alone at that age, caring for a sick parent and then watching them die, knowing that one parent was in jail and unable to provide for all of them, etc...) that Bruce himself didn't know he had to acknowledge and it could be summarised in "the kid needed safety and a therapist, not a training regime to punch criminals every night".

Jason ran away in search for his mother because Bruce was unable to show him and tell him that he would always have a place in his home, since he adopted Jason. He first said "I'm not your father", then there is Garzonas's death and Bruce losing trust on Jason, then there is him benching Jason because Jason himself is at danger (Bruce and Alfred have a conversation about Jason being suicidal, at least passively as in "he doesn't care if he dies"). There were multiple times where Bruce, as the adult in the relationship, should have stepped up and comforted Jason of his place and of his love. He didn't and Jason left with the knowledge that if he didn't find a plan B he was going to lose everything. And that's speculation on the fan part, since there wasn't written in the comics. We made an assumption based on how Jason became Robin, how Bruce fired Dick and the mistakes he repeated with Jason.

If there wasn't the Joker in Ethiopia, Jason would have tried to stay with Sheila (who probably didn't know how to answer that, but an opportunity to get Bruce Wayne's money? who knows. Very likely he would have his heart broken twice because Sheila probably didn't want to be a mother and because of her crimes).

Jason himself wanted to go to college, maybe be a doctor (he probably didn't see himself as being a vigilante for all of his life), he would have left but not entirely, the definitive break on their relationship would have been on Bruce's part.

Why? Bruce's first priority would always be the mission, if Jason wasn't there as Robin, but if he was in another state, studying, and maybe coming back for the holidays, their relationship would naturally break because Bruce would focus on the Mission. He would miss Jason, as he did with Dick, but he wouldn't call him, as he did with Dick, he would have met another boy who would impress him as Dick and Jason did and start mentoring him because he needs a partner, because he cannot connect with others outside of Batman.

And Jason, if we take that:

- he stopped being Robin,

- moved far away to study in college,

- came home only to visit Alfred and probably Dick and Barbara,

wouldn't be able to connect with Bruce as he did in his first years, he would see another kid replacing him as Robin as he did with Dick and the story will repeat. There would be resentment because the situation in Gotham would have stayed the same.

And last, Jason would have been happier away from Gotham. This is something I believe, he would have been happier away from Gotham. He is a bleeding heart, seeing all those people suffer repeatedly and seeing how Justice, the Law and the System didn't do anything to help and to protect them, he would have suffered as well, with plenty of arguments with Bruce who is a monolith about how things should be done.

Bruce, seeing how even Jason is happier away from him, would emphasize the distance, leading to the two of them estranged as father and child, as partners.

Bruce, Jason's father, told Jason to stay. Sheila, Jason's mother (in Jason's eyes which is what matters don't come at me with that "he didn't know her so it doesn't count" bullshit) told Jason to come with her. This is systemics is called "contradictory injunctions". There was never gonna be a good answer for Jason, so he went with the one that fit what he wanted to do most (which is what happens in those situations) and that was saving his mother, because he was a hero.

Not to be that bitch (though I'm gonna), but the canon and fandom's attitude of treating Jason's choice as an act of disobedience is patriarchal. It's evidently victim-blaming, yes, but it's also the fact that the kid's individual choices, actual motivation and autonomy are treated as irrelevant -a disobedient child is bad and reckless even when that disobedience is righteous and brave because child disobedience of authority is inherently evil and wrong- the woman's injunction is treated as inexistent, her role and agency in the story erased, it's not even that it's not held as less important than Batman's it's that it's never even brought up: nobody ever brings up the fact that Jason was as disobedient as he was obedient, that in not listening to Bruce he listened to Sheila. Meanwhile, Bruce's command is absolute, even the narrative bends to it, if you get hurt it's your fault for not listening to him because he is the Patriarch and what anybody else says cannot possibly matter as much as what the Patriarch has to say on account of the bat-authority granted to him by his bat-testicles. Now obviously Bruce was right to tell Jason not to go in the warehouse, but that's because the narrative wants it that way, if the bomb had been outside the warehouse Jim would have written Jason going in because the point of that command is justifying Jason's death, because he wanted that kid to die and be blamed for it and writing a boy following the authority of a woman rather than a man's seemed to him like a logical mistake that could be used to blame him for his death.

for us readers it's obvious why Jason ran away in search of Sheila, what is shocking is that Bruce has absolutely no idea. And obviously neither the writers, because their intention wasn't to make Robin more sympathetic to the public. Too bad for them that people has this thing called "empathy" and "critical thinking".

For Bruce is simple: he never thought that Jason would prioritise Sheila over him (and his orders). Hence why the order he gave was related to the Joker, because for him the Joker had absolute priority. The Mission is always first.

I don't know how to rationalize the writers' decision of having Sheila being the bad girl of the situation, misogyny?

and it’s not because I have the same name as her or anything (even tho it’s definitely a factor - because how cool is that?!? - and I kinda used - and sometimes still use, let’s be real here - that as an excuse to call myself a queen because reASONS and shut up you would do the same)

but because that shit is like the stuff of legends and there is a whole myth surrounding their love story and the supposed place where she was killed - on the king’s orders near a fountain in the farm where she secretly lived with prince Pedro - because there’s a red stain there and it’s said that when she was stabbed she cried for the king’s men to spare her children (if memory serves me right) and her tears landed on the fountain and turned red because she was terribly devastated and in pain thinking only of her children and how she was going to leave them without a mother when in the last moments of her life…

and also, you know that prince? before he did that thing when he exhumed her just to make her ~officially~ his queen - and have everyone who ever opposed to them and their love kiss her clothes to pay her homage and the respect she did not have in life?? like that shit savage bro - he did another thing, even more savage than that

he searched the whole country for the two dudes who stabbed her (there was a third but I think he died or smth), even went to spain because one of them fled the country after the king died, and he fucking RIPPED their hearts out (one from the front and one from the back, because Inês was stabbed from both sides too) and tortured them in public, y'know, as you do

and that, my dear friends, is why the story of Pedro and Inês is considered one of the best love stories on our country (and I would say the world too because that shit better than anything Shakespeare or Nicholas Sparks ever wrote and it was fucking real)

my boy Pedro didn’t fuck around when you fucked with his lady, and you lyin’ if you say you don’t want you a freak like this - this Extra™, this ride or die, this savage - when it comes to love.

listen up, girls and boys, take note: follow their example and get yourselves a freak who would crown you queen after you were killed