Warning: Contains spoilers for Titans season 3 episode 11.
Titans season 3 has addressed many of the HBO Max series' biggest problems, but the story continues to struggle against one significant problem: its own characters' superpowers. While the larger overarching narrative of Titans often holds together, the in-the-moment storytelling can feel forced due to limitations artificially imposed on the characters that help balance their powers. This is a large problem for the show as it continues, and not one that is easily solved.
Titans’ sprawling cast contains characters with a huge range in what their powers allow them to do. Characters like Dick Grayson's Nightwing, Red Hood, Hawk and Dove are extremely skilled, but are nevertheless normal human beings. However, the team has developed an increasingly large roster of aliens and meta-humans that now includes Superboy, Wonder Girl, Raven and even Krypto the Superdog, whose powers far outstrip other members' wildest dreams. Gar Logan’s Beast Boy maintains a strange middle ground in the group as he is often underutilized and is still working on developing his powers.
The team's variation in abilities presents a reoccurring problem. Any potential threat that the Titans go up against has to be believably faced by street-level heroes, but also pose a threat to superpowered extraterrestrials, like Starfire. While a lot of super stories see a slow power creep over time as the team’s powers increase to match the villains, Kory Anders has been capable of flambéing most opponents since the beginning. With Raven gaining a hold on her powers and the introduction of Connor Kent as a literal Superman figure, the writing team is having to make strange choices to keep threats viable. This means that powerful characters are either inconsistent—Kory’s abilities being particularly unreliable, for instance—or are written out for contrived reasons in order to keep them from being an easy solution to every problem, such as Raven and Donna Troy for much of season 3.
This was particularly notable in Titans season 2 when, faced with the meta-human Deathstroke, a storyline effectively required Kory to drive across the country and back again for little reason more than to be out of the way. Titans season 3, episode 11, entitled “The Call is Coming From Inside the House,” saw an egregious application of this when Dick Grayson refused to allow Connor and Krypto to help in his confrontation against Red Hood. Nightwing goes as far as to retrieve kryptonite powder to remove them from the equation, just so that he can face Jason Todd alone. Not only is this extremely dangerous—aerosolized kryptonite could have long-term effects on their lungs—but it's also not well-justified, as Connor could have restrained Jason non-fatally with extreme ease. While Dick might try to provide a mano a mano defense of his actions, it makes little sense as a team leader and feels like the show simply discarding a silver bullet; not to mention that his actions resulted in Nightwing receiving a potentially mortal wound.
It is possible that Titans is already working to fix this problem going forward by leveling out the power of the whole team. This would be a long-term solution that could allow one villain to be an equal threat to all members. They have already written out Hawk and Dove for the time being, Jason Todd has been submitted to the Lazarus Pit with unknown side-effects, and while the unpowered Tim Drake is being added to the team, it has been suggested that his trip through the afterlife has left him somehow changed. The character that remains a problem for this plan is Nightwing, as writing Grayson out entirely does not feel like an option for Titans and it seems less likely that he will become a new Batman at this point. However, with Titans season 3 episode 11 closing on him in mortal danger, as Raven stands over the Lazarus Pit, there is a light suggestion that special powers are coming his way soon.
Titans releases new episodes Thursdays on HBO Max.