Warning! Spoilers ahead for Titans season 3, episode 6
While Titans season 3 has fixed many of the biggest mistakes that plagued its first two seasons, the show is still failing Gar Logan (Ryan Potter) and his alter-ego as Beast Boy. While Gar has played a crucial role in multiple plotlines that center around other characters, Beast Boy has yet to get a full storyline of his own. This becomes an issue when aspects of the character are left unaddressed for too long.
Gar Logan first appears in Titans season 1, episode 1, where a closing scene shows his ability to turn into a green tiger. Episode 4, “Doom Patrol,” eventually explores Beast Boy’s backstory and clarifies that at this point the only creature he can turn into is a tiger. While the episode develops the character more and provides his background, it also works to introduce the characters and actors who would appear in the spin-off series Doom Patrol before it is decided that Beast Boy should leave to join Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites), Rachel Roth (Teagan Croft), and Kory Anders (Anna Diop) on their mission.
The provision of Beast Boy’s origin story in season 1, episode 4 is one of the most complete storylines that the character has received. Gar is repeatedly shown to be a people pleaser who wants to help others and is a supporting figure with many of the other character’s stories. However, Titans fails him by not providing a major storyline for Beast Boy that can address some of the things the show has put him through.
Titans Repeatedly Traumatizes Gar
In many ways, Titans is a show about trauma with the main characters all having dark events in their past to overcome. This is part of what makes Titans’ season 3 introduction of Scarecrow (Vincent Kartheiser) as a villain who works with fear and trauma such a logical choice. While the traumatic experiences of the main characters have all been explored, with even Hank and Dawn getting episodes devoted to exploring the darkness in their pasts, Beast Boy’s own trauma is continually ignored.
This is made significantly worse by the amount of trauma that Titans inflicts on the character again and again. Beast Boy’s origin story includes being effectively a lab experiment for Doom Patrol's Dr. Niles Caulder. After he has joined the team, Trigon has his friends turn on him and beat him to the brink of death to the point that he unconsciously turns into a snake to be able to reconstitute his body enough to survive. After being kidnapped and tortured by scientists, Beast Boy (famously a vegan) loses control and kills and mauls one of the scientists, leaving blood dripping down his face. Finally, in the season 2 finale, he is hypnotized into killing random civilians in a coffee shop and then at a fairground. All of these events would have lasting psychological damage for Beast Boy, and while there are moments when Gar brings up his horror at the things that have been done to him, Titans seasons 1 and 2 never really explore this or gives him a chance to heal.
Titans Fails To Explore Beast Boys Powers
In previous comics and adaptions, Beast Boy’s powers have been extensive, allowing the character to turn into almost any animal. A favorite trick of his in the cartoons is to often turn into a flying creature, get above his enemies, and then turn into a much larger animal to drop on his foes, crushing them in the process. While this might not be feasible for Titans due to a combination of it being too cartoonish for the dark take on the source material and CGI budget restrictions, the result has been to hamstring Beast Boy’s powers.
After he turns into a snake at the very beginning of Titans season 2, the matter is never spoken of again for the entirety of the season, leaving it unclear as to whether he even knows that he made the transformation and can change into animals other than the tiger. While the first episode of season 3 teased him exploring his abilities further so that he could get more attention as a superhero, another five episodes have since passed without further comment, and he is never shown speaking to another Titan about his powers. In contrast, Kory’s powers have been well documented, Raven’s abilities are a major point of interest for the first two seasons of the show, and Donna Troy’s powers are already well established by her connection to Wonder Woman.
Beast Boy’s Titans Support Network Ignores Him
While Beast Boy is always eager to help the rest of the team with their missions and problems, the same is not always true in reverse. He consistently works with Raven to try and help her control her powers, is manipulated by Jason Todd (Curran Walters) into chasing down Doctor Light and Deathstroke alone even when he consistently thinks it is a bad idea and provides council to Dick when he can. However, his own needs for help are regularly ignored.
After Gar mauls the scientist in the lab and attacks the fairground he is clearly shaken, however viewers are never shown any member of the team trying to offer him support. Dick Grayson repeatedly dismisses his concerns, and the part of the team he is closest to, Raven leaves the team in pursuit of her own mission when he has been freshly traumatized at the end of Titans season 2 without ever discussing the issue with him. Additionally, Gar is regularly used as Titans punching bag, but in his bloodied aftermath of these events, it appears that Raven always forgets that she has healing powers that could help him.
Titans Addresses Superboy’s Trauma
To add insult to injury, Titans season 3 has shown that they know how to address traumatic events for characters without drawing attention from the show's larger plots. In season 3, episode 3, “Hank and Dove,” Superboy attempts to build a device that will save Hank’s life but arrives moments too late, instead getting caught in the explosion that causes Hank’s death. Beast Boy is quick to assure Connor that it wasn’t his fault and that he did all he could, but Superboy is clearly disturbed by the event and worries that he is more like Lex Luthor than Superman.
Only three episodes later, Titans addresses Superboy’s supposed failure but placing him in a similar position when a minor character is subjected to the same bomb that killed Hank. Superboy is able to quickly make a device to disarm the bomb and successfully saves the woman making it clear that his previous effort was not in vain and helping him to overcome some of his feelings of failure. While Hank’s death will likely still haunt the character, with some theories suggesting that Titans might see a dark Superboy plot line, Titans has at least acknowledged the character’s trauma and given him space to move on.
Titans has managed to improve on so many of its mistakes from earlier seasons, yet it still seems to fail Beast Boy. Gar is perhaps one of the most tragic characters for his love to help others but inability to find support from his own team. The show has previously felt like it sometimes forgets cast members or plotlines for a long time, and to continue to improve as a show Titans needs to give Beast Boy some closure on his past traumatic events through a storyline that shows him true compassion.
Titans releases new episodes every Thursday on HBO Max.