When Titans provided Tim Drake’s origin story surrounding the deaths of John and Mary Grayson the DC TV show inadvertently created a plot hole. Tim Drake is the third of the four main characters that have used the name Robin in the comics: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Damien Wayne. Titans kept a lot of Tim’s origin story true to his comic book origin, but this caused smaller problems down the line.
In Titans season 3, Tim Drake (Jay Lycurgo) is introduced briefly in the first episode, where he works as a delivery boy for his parents’ restaurant. After his father is shot and Jason Todd has been reported dead, Tim seeks out the Titans, explains that he knows who Bruce Wayne (Iain Glen) and Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites) really are, and says that he wants to be the new Robin. Tim explains that he worked out their identities because he had been there the night that Dick’s parents died, had received a signed photo from them, and recognized the moves that Dick and his father did as being replicated by Robin and then Nightwing.
This is almost beat for beat the origin that is provided for Tim Drake in the comics, the timeline established in Titans doesn’t line up. The issue comes down to a central question: how old is Tim Drake in Titans? In the 2021 Titans season 3, Tim is still quite young, living with his parents and regularly referred to by the other heroes as a “kid.” Jay Lycurgo confirmed in an interview that the character of Tim is 16 during the events of Titans season 3 (via The Nerds of Color), meaning that Tim Drake was born in 2005. In Titans season 1, the graves of Dick’s parents, John and Mary Grayson, are shown and reveal that they died in 2002. This is undeniably a Tim Drake age plot hole as his origin story is supported by flashbacks, but Tim Drake would not only have not been old enough to remember and analyze the events, he shouldn’t have been born until 3 years after Dick’s parents were dead.
Even if Jay Lycurgo misspoke about the age of his character, the actor’s own age does not support the Tim Drake’s origin story. Lycurgo was born in 1998, so he would have been 23 for Titans season 3. While he could have been alive for the events of the final performance by The Flying Graysons, he would not have been old enough to memorize their moves or fully remember all the details to recall them years later when watching video footage of Robin.
While this is a glaring plot hole, it is not entirely inconsistent with the world of comics and their adaptations. DC’s comics have often changed that ages of characters to suit the stories that they want to tell, even when not rebooting an entire chunk of their franchise. The Titans TV series itself has several other inconsistencies throughout the show, but they are often the kinds of details that result from multiple different writers working to adapt one larger universe and similar issues can be found in the DCEU and the MCU.
