#titans 3x04

the episode picks up less than twenty-four hours after hank’s sudden death at the hands of jason vis a vis dawn, and everyone’s reeling from it. I wish we could have seen kory coping, but the rest of the team’s feelings are on full display, particularly those that are directly responsible for hank’s death: conner is in full anger stage, yelling at himself and yelling at gar, and being so confused by dawn’s attempt to comfort him by reminding everyone that it’s her fault hank died. dawn decides to leave the team, albeit temporarily, though because minka didn’t seem to be back on set for much of the second half of the season’s filming, I’m not sure she’s coming back soon. dick and dawn’s goodbye scene was very sweet, and I am glad to see them comforting each other as good friends. it will be curious to see what will happen with dawn next.

while kory and kom’s confrontation was INCREDIBLE and I am so fascinated by the levels of pain and hurt in their relationship, kory and gar’s relationship was the true highlight of the entire episode. I LOVE how much time they got together. from gar freaking out about being attacked by her twice, to immediately trying to help protect her both times -- their relationship is such * chef’s kiss* and I am looking forward to more of it, especially now that kory’s bringing kom back to the manor with them after their weird escapade to the prison site where kom’s being held by the us government. speaking of, it was super weird that no one official looking was actually around this so called prison site, apart from the weird researcher dude who was experimenting on her, which I was really put off by given the history of medical experimentation and race in this country. but something tells me this is all part of an elaborate scheme that blackfire is coordinating, and kory and gar definitely walked right into the trap. yikes. I still think justin’s involved in this scheme too but unsure how....

dick and scarecrow’s escape to the woods gave us some interesting background for dick’s relationship to bruce growing up, and sets up important developments for how scarecrow is going to continue manipulating the titans and the batfamily. it also gave us the nightwing v. red hood showdown we deserve, but y’all have to forgive me because I just cannot stand the weird way they’re trying to convince us that curran’s voice is deep or threatening enough to pull of red hood. the most fascinating part of this storyline to me was how it also sets up dick and barbara as both implicated in letting a major villain escape with another major wanted villain. they’re definitely to blame for this turning out the way it did with jason and crane escaping, but yikes their showdown is gonna be tense over it, too.

I haven’t been following the episode titles in advance, but someone mentioned on here that there’s an upcoming episode that is entirely centered on jason, and if next week’s rumored episode title really is lazarus, then I expect that 3x05 will be the jason episode. everyone’s predicted already that the show is going with scarecrow as the mastermind behind jason’s resurrection and transformation into red hood, so I’m pretty interested to see how that goes. do I think curran can hold an episode all on his own? ...no. but I have liked how titans handled standalone flashback episodes before (hank and dawn and jericho being the good examples) and also hated how they handled standalone flashback episodes before (aqualad being the bad example), so anything goes!