Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for the finale of Titans Season 4.After four seasons of strife, sacrifices, near-deaths, and team changes, Titans concludes with a triumphant team embracing a future where they’re still a family, even if they aren’t together. Like several superhero shows before it, including Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Supergirl, and Arrow, the Titans series finale allows the main cast of characters to spread their wings beyond their team dynamic. But first, they have to take down a half-demon villain with a god complex.
Titans Season 4 has, in many ways, been a look at what’s come before. The show began with a cult called The Organization desperately attempting to kidnap Rachel Roth/Raven (Teagan Croft) to bring back her inter-dimensional demon father Trigon. This season follows the Church of Blood, a remnant of The Organization. Run by May Bennett/Mother Mayhem (Franka Potente), she successfully manipulates her and Trigon’s son Sebastian Sanger/Brother Blood (Joseph Morgan) into bringing the demon back to Earth. By the finale, “Titans Forever,” the Titans are in disarray, and the only way to win is if Kory Anders/Starfire (Anna Diop) sacrifices herself. How does the team defeat Brother Blood in the Titans series finale?
'Titans' Series Finale: How Did We Get Here?
At the end of the penultimate episode of Titans, Sebastian finally killed his mother (for good this time) and absorbed all her power. Conner Kent/Superboy (Joshua Orpin) tried to kill Sebastian with the “Project Starfire” nuclear grenade orb, but since the orb had not reached 100% power, it didn’t hurt Sebastian at all—instead, he attacked Conner, seemingly killing him and blew the Horn of Trigon to summon his father.
The finale opens with Sebastian, now bedecked in full Brother Blood regalia, confronting his father—he knows that Trigon, like his mother, is lying when he says Sebastian will rule the world as Trigon’s equal. Sebastian is little more than a tool, and he’ll be disposed of when he’s no longer useful. So, Sebastian does the very normal thing of ripping his father’s giant demon heart out of his chest and drinking its demon blood (this season is not for the faint of heart). Having leveled up his power once again, Sebastian turns on his sister, Rachel. Thankfully, she’s just astral projecting her form to speak to him, but it’s obvious now that Sebastian is too far gone. He needs to be stopped—not saved.
One person who does need to be saved is Conner. Dick Grayson/Nightwing (Brenton Thwaites) tries to revive him with a specially-created super-injector, but Conner is unresponsive. Even loving licks from Krypto don’t seem to be working. The Titans may have lost one of their own, but Dick is not ready to let go. In the weirdest writing choice ever, Dick, standing over Conner’s seemingly dead body, chooses to book a dinner reservation for six people for Friday (Titans airs on Thursday, so we can assume he’s booking it for the following day). If a delicious-sounding dinner doesn’t tempt Conner back to life, then what will?
'Titans' Finale Introduces the Wormhole
S.T.A.R. Labs has been hiding a secret project called the Icarus Gate that’s housing a wormhole. While the gate is operational, powering it up requires the energy of over 10,000 Earth suns. Guess who has that power—it’s Kory! Kory has determined that Sebastian plans to use the wormhole to destroy her home planet of Tamaran because it’s ‘everything he’s not’. This plot point also goes back to Season 1 when Starfire was sent to Earth to destroy Trigon’s daughter so that she wouldn’t open the doorway to bring him to Earth which would then result in the destruction of Tamaran.
The gate is located beneath S.T.A.R. Labs and Sebastian just enters the building without anyone stopping him or IDing him. The only person to confront Sebastian is Dr. Espenson (Kyana Teresa) and she, along with everyone else at S.T.A.R. Labs, is soon killed by Sebastian. And why does he kill them? Because they destroyed his game Abraxus. Sebastian personifies the caricature of the entitled white guy who thinks he deserves greatness without earning it. Abraxus is a terrible game that he’s been trying to pitch since the season began, and which only got off the ground because Conner wanted to prove he could defeat Sebastian on his own. The game was a brief success because Sebastian “Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos”-ed the players into enjoying it and then sucked their life forces out while they played. Tim Drake/Robin 3.0 (Jay Lycurgo) shut it down with Conner’s help. And now S.T.A.R. Labs’ employees pay the price. Except one—Bernard Fitzmartin (James Scully), who wakes up from his Abraxus-induced coma just in time to reunite with his boyfriend Tim and help the Titans during the final showdown.
Brother Blood and Starfire Face-off in the 'Titans' Finale
The Titans head to S.T.A.R. Labs and find the massacred bodies of the employees. Bernard only escaped because Sebastian didn’t see him. Bernard and Tim have a quick, but cute, reunion, though it is hilarious how the Titans are dressed in colorful and intricate supersuits, but Bernard is stuck wearing gray medical-underwear. The costumers could have given Scully something cool to change into for the finale.
While the team gets into a battle with a meta-human task force (where did they come from?), Starfire is possessed by Sebastian and taken to the Icarus Gate. First of all, let’s just reiterate here that S.T.A.R. Labs, a facility with a literal wormhole in it, has absolutely no systems in place to prevent some rando from waltzing in and using magic to enter the gate room. Sebastian can “Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos” the password to the room, but this wouldn’t be an issue if the front door wasn’t unlocked.
Once Starfire comes to, she reminds Sebastian that destroying Tamaran and Earth were Trigon’s wishes, not his, but Sebastian has drunk his father’s soul, so he’s just doing whatever his father would have. Sebastian then hooks up Starfire to the gate’s mechanism, and it’s a freaky scene that seems to homage to the nightmarish cyborg scene in Superman III. It’s not quite as scary, though.
Deus ex Conner Kent Saves the Titans
What is annoying about Starfire being captured is that she turns into a damsel in distress during the climatic fight scene. Throughout this season, we’ve seen how Raven and Starfire are the powerhouses of Team Titans—in fact, in Episode 11, Jason Todd/Red Hood (Curran Walters) specifically tells Robin to hang back behind Raven and Starfire if fights get heated, and earlier in the finale, the three male members take cover behind the two ladies because they’re that powerful. But in the final battle, Starfire is tied up, and Nightwing takes on the boss battle on his own (Tim helps a little). Wouldn’t Raven have been a better bet? She is Sebastian’s sister, and despite his love for her in the earlier part of the season, as soon as Sebastian becomes all-powerful, he tries to kill her. She deserved the catharsis of defeating him. It also doesn’t make sense that Dick would have survived his fight with Sebastian since Dick has no powers and Sebastian is a demon-god. Only Raven’s white magic could have stopped him.
Instead, Raven’s relegated to jogging Starfire’s memories, which again, doesn’t make sense because the last time Starfire was incapacitated, in Episode 8, “Dick & Carol & Ted & Kory”, it was Dick’s voice and him professing his love for her that snapped her back to reality. Titans gets a lot right and then the show’s writers falter at the finish line.
The day is saved by Conner who blasts Sebastian into an electrical field and Dick’s escrima sticks disable Sebastian for good measure. But Sebastian isn’t dead which means he could still be a threat in the future. Kory, now free, grabs Sebastian and flies into the stratosphere. Is she gone? Is she dead? Nope, Starfire comes back, and her old powers have returned. And she and Dick finally kiss, and the team group hug out their victory. They don’t explain exactly what happened to Sebastian, but we can assume he’s gone boom. Earth lives for another day.
'Titans' Ends with a Bright Future for the Characters
We’ve reached a point in pop culture where no one dies in finales—yes, there were a couple of close calls and Ryan Potter most likely gave himself a headache with all the times Garfield Logan/Beast Boy cried over the apparent deaths of Conner and Starfire—but we are here for the happy endings.
Dick follows through with his dinner plans with the Titans. Gar announces that he’s leaving to be in the Red, but if he’s needed, he will be back in a snap. Rachel is also leaving the team—for a short while in Season 4, Rachel had lost her powers and felt like a normal person. She wants to feel that again and will be attending college in Blüdhaven. Tim says he’ll be seeing Rachel a lot—he's going to continue being Robin, but he has a life with Bernard in Metropolis, so he’ll be patrolling both cities. This is a bit confusing; in the comics, Tim Drake’s Robin is based in Gotham. Tim on Titans is also from Gotham, but he has been reluctant to return there. It seems that Tim is now Robin in Blüdhaven and Metropolis? That’s interesting since, in the comics, Dick’s domain is Blüdhaven, but he’s had no connection to the place on the show. I guess it’s Robin 3.0 to Blüdhaven’s rescue.
Conner is taking off to be with his genetic father, Clark Kent/Superman (no, he doesn’t cameo here, we only see his boots) who will be giving Conner flying lessons and hopefully some sage fatherly advice. Conner does worry if he’ll meet Clark’s expectations. He did some terrible things in his Conner Luthor phase, including killing one of Mother Mayhem’s acolytes. Dick, who is no stranger to murder and death, tells Conner to forgive himself. The show has certainly see-sawed on heroes killing people, and it’s just something that the heroes, and fans, will have to live with.
Dick and Kory are sticking together, but it doesn’t look like superheroing is at the top of their priorities. Back in Season 3, Dick had a vision of a little girl (Lillian Monize) calling him ‘daddy’. In Season 4, Kory has a similar vision of the same little girl in Dick’s arms. This is an obvious reference to the Kingdom Come comic series (Mark Waid, Alex Ross) where Dick and Kory have a daughter named Mar’i Grayson/Nightstar. In both their visions, Dick and Kory saw the girl with a red balloon. As a throwback to their visions, Dick and Kory see a child with a similar balloon walking by and look wistfully at it. They’ve only just rekindled their romance, but it looks like they’re already dreaming of their future child.
'Titans' Ends on a Happy Note, But Still Leaves Us Wanting
Titans ends on a positive happy note, but is anyone else disappointed that the team never said “Titans Together”? That’s the team’s comics catchphrase, and I expected a moment like in Avengers: Endgame, but it never came. In a way, that makes sense. The Titans aren’t together anymore, and throughout the four seasons, some members have been at odds with others, so the team haven’t been able to gel well. The Season 4 characters have been the closest to being a cohesive unit, a family, except for Conner’s rebellious phase.
The finale didn’t feel as epic as it could have—though it didn’t look rushed, there was an essence of getting this one out the door as soon as possible. Finales are hard; there’s always an expectation, and everyone’s is different. All we can say is, we had four years with these beloved characters, so many of whom made their live-action debuts on the show. It wasn’t long enough, but we’ll always have these four seasons of Titans forever.