Titans’ Most Exciting Crossover Is Too Little Too Late

Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for Titans season 4, episode 10

Titans’ most exciting crossover needed to be bigger and should have been done much sooner. In HBO’s Titans season 4, episode 10, Garfield Logan’s Beast Boy (Ryan Potter) winds down his multiversal travels via the supernatural force called The Red. While it does culminate in a long-awaited reunion with the cast of Doom Patrol, it also saw Gar finally meeting Victor Stone aka Cyborg (Jovian Wade). However, the live-action meeting representing one of DC Comics’ best bromances wasn’t all it could have been.

Attempting to assert control over The Red at the end of Titans season 4, episode 9, Beast Boy wanted to be sent to his family. Rather than returning to the Titans, Garr instead lands in the home of the Doom Patrol and is found unconscious by Cyborg. Having received his powers thanks to Niles Caulder’s experiments and then taken in by the Doom Patrol before joining the Titans, it makes sense that Beast Boy would be sent to the Doom Patrol’s house. However, the crossover potential was mostly wasted due to the convoluted nature of the episode as a whole.

Why Titans’ Doom Patrol Crossover Didn’t Work

Titans season 4, episode 10 establishes that Gar is still within The Red with the Doom Patrol house being a fabricated manifestation. However, it seems as though Cyborg and his fellow Doom Patrol members Robotman (Brendan Fraser), and Negative Man (Matt Bomer) are indeed real, having been brought into The Red for a respective first meeting/reunion. This was potentially a means for Titans to avoid fully addressing the show and Doom Patrol taking place on separate Earths as confirmed by the CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths event. That said, Beast Boy still has a history with the Titans reality’s Doom Patrol, and he was seemingly replaced by Cyborg.

Overall, this quasi-supernatural setting makes for a very unfocused crossover that creates unnecessary confusion. Case in point, Kory Anders’ Starfire (Anna Diop) shows up out of the blue after walking through a door and ending up in the faux-Doom Patrol house. Apparently, The Red inexplicably wanted to help Kory achieve balance regarding the Titans’ new villain Brother Blood. Similarly, it wasn’t explicitly stated how or why the Doom Patrol was brought to this ethereal version of their own home, rather than Beast Boy simply traveling to their actual house after asking to be taken to his family.

Beast Boy And Cyborg’s Meet-Up Could Have Been Better

The chance to see two Titans playing tennis against members of the Doom Patrol is a lot of fun. That said, the show should have taken advantage of Cyborg and Beast Boy meeting far more than they did. After all, Cyborg is a member of the Teen Titans in the comics and he and Beast Boy are best friends, having one of the strongest partnerships in the DC Universe on par with Superman and Batman. Unfortunately, the few interactions the duo has in Titans season 4 create more of a rivalry between the two heroes.

Gar and Vic had barely begun to bond by the episode’s end, combining their powers to free everyone from The Red. However, Beast Boy and Starfire are immediately transported to STAR Labs, meaning there’s no aftermath moment for the duo to truly cement a friendship. Kory also pulled much of the focus away with her own arrival in The Red. While the odds are slim, it would be great if the final episodes of Doom Patrol season 4 follow Titans’ lead with another crossover, hopefully continuing the relationship between the live-action versions of Beast Boy and Cyborg.