This interview was conducted on Monday, May 1.Titans showrunner Greg Walker breaks down the series finale with spoilers and shares the potential plans he had for season 5. Unfortunately, HBO Max officially brought Titans to an end after four seasons, and the gritty Teen Titans drama saw Nightwing and his band of heroes take on their biggest threat: Brother Blood. After going through a dark season full of trials, the heroes came together in a big way as they took care of Sebastian Sanger.
After saving the world, it was time for a new chapter for most of these characters, so the Titans series finale saw the younger heroes head in their own directions. Iconic DC heroes Dick Grayson and Kory Anders finally got together, after Titans season 4 spent a lot of time reviving their romance from season 1. While their stories may be over, the heroes will always be ready to protect the world, even if it has to be off-screen.
Screen Rant was fortunate to have Greg Walker back for an exclusive post-mortem interview to break down the massive series finale, and how it was made from page to screen. Throughout the interview, the Titans showrunner opened up on the challenges of making a finale that could wrap up the series but still leave the door open for a potential season 5.
Greg Walker On Titans Series Finale
Screen Rant: When you guys were getting down to writing episode 12 and breaking it down, what were the biggest priorities?
Greg Walker: Well, we want to nail a finale; we always felt like we hadn’t. I felt we got close in season 3, but I don’t think everyone agreed with me. But I knew I was chasing a feeling, whereas the other year is something that we didn’t have as much success. We tried, but we didn’t.
I think that that was really important that we knocked it out of the park in terms of getting a finale that really made people feel more than just wrapping up storylines. That was the primary focus within that – it was really focusing on making sure we land the Dick/Kory story and play out that theme of destiny versus fate that we’d set up and do it justice, and then track all these other character stories so that we don’t end up with an express train to a set piece and then some wrap up after. That was hard, that it was not simple, and it took a lot of sweat and multiple drafts.
It’s a challenging script because it was giant, which Nick Copus did an incredible job of directing. It really had to be broken as a two-parter with 11 – which Jamie [Gorenberg] wrote – and then 12. Episode 12 was really a challenge to find those emotional moments, so they built up to something really powerful.
Was this the point where you already knew that it was a series finale?
Greg Walker: No, we didn’t know the fate of the show but I wanted to make sure that it could stand on its own as a series finale, no matter what happened and then if we were blessed with the season 5, that we could undo or find our way around a lot of those corners that we’d written ourselves into, and come up with season 5 would have been simple. But we started talking about ways that we can get around that and the brain trust on the show was starting to play with some notions. Most of the VFX….we had a lot of VFX left to do [laughs] when we found out that the show wasn’t coming back, just because that thing is so giant with VFX.
A lot of finales will sometimes see fan-favorite protagonists getting killed off, but here, everyone makes it out alive. Initially, were there discussions of any Titans falling against their biggest foe, or did you want to give some happy endings?
Greg Walker: Yeah, I think it was the latter, not just for the sake of a happy ending, but it felt like we had done that in Titans. We lost some major characters – and some smaller characters like Aqualad – but we lost Hawk, Wonder Girl. She came back but Jinx had died. So it didn’t feel like death for death’s sake was important. It was more about, for me at least, giving the fans an experience that gave them hope for Titans moving forward, as opposed to another tragedy to mourn.
Were there any versions of this finale where there was gonna be a little setup for season 5? Did you have an idea of what season 5 would have looked like?
Greg Walker: Well, we did talk about it but the tricky thing about Titans, as you know from being a fan and watching it, is that a lot of our stories are driven by which villain we’re gonna use. That’s a lot of work that we do in terms of building up the world around the villain and the character problems.
We had real clear issues that there was going to be a child in there and heading towards that – we’ve shown that for Kory and Dick. So how would we deal with that [is that] we had scattered them all in the wind. So we’d have to have a crisis to bring them back together. We talked about that and what would the crisis be – is it a global one or galaxy-wide? Is it? Are we dealing with something much smaller and terrestrial-based? A lot of that would start to which villain is creating that problem.
We’d started to talk to Geoff Johns and DC and started preliminary discussions about which villains to go with and how we can do that. That’s when probably the verdict came in. But we were definitely trying to write us ourselves in as much of a jam as possible to see how we could pull a rabbit out of a hat to get out of that jam. I was as most excited as I’ve ever been going into that with season 5 in because I thought, ‘Wow, they’re really going in different directions. How can we bring them back? How can we get them back together? What is this going to be about emotionally since everybody’s in such a good place?’ We don’t want to start the season off with a bummer, but we need to keep it twisting and moving.
We were starting that conversation but also everybody was cooked. It’d been a long, tough season. There wasn’t a lot of like, ‘Hey, let’s sit around and play ping pong in the writers room and jam on ideas.’ Like the Titans, the writers are scattered in the wind at that point. So it was me and post[-production] and whoever I could drag in to help. [laughs]
DC fans would murder me if I didn’t at least try to ask this. Were there any villains that you were floating around with for season 5? Maybe the Fearsome Five, for example?
Greg Walker: The Fearsome Five got mentioned and Tara got mentioned. We were playing around with some ideas there, we knew there would be a limiting factor. The Bat-Family in that world was off limits pretty much at that point, so we had to continue to mind from within the Titans world. There were still options to go for, but they were going to require us to really figure out how to do that intelligently. Of course, we would try that but there’s some constraints like Tara’s, powers for VFX are intense. We started to look at ‘How can we work around that without making a disappointing experience for the fans?’
Were there any Teen Titans members that you guys would ideally have tried to get in there like Wally West or Roy Harper, whom kept teasing us with? [laughs]
Greg Walker: Roy Harper. I really wanted to bring Roy, and we talked about that a lot. There was always the possibility of doing that. But we hadn’t started the negotiations, meaning we hadn’t asked if we could use him. But that was a conversation.
Let’s talk about DickKory. During our first interview, I was asking you about a date night for the two of them, and this is what I was talking about. Why was it important to end the show with the two of them? Why was it important that Nightwing and Starfire were the last shot that we got?
Greg Walker: It’s a good question. It was important, and it felt right. It felt that after the young kids go off and scatter, the old ones head home. They needed to be alone in order to have that moment. It’s not something they could have within the larger group context. I think that we always wanted them to have a quiet moment, they were really that story we pushed so hard this season to make it real, and to make it come to life. It really felt like it needed to end with them.
This just speaks to how much you have developed Dick as a character. If there had been a season 5, would that have led to a pregnancy for Starfire or maybe a wedding? Again, I’m here to represent the DickKory fans, so give them something.
Greg Walker: Well, for sure that child has got to happen. That’s what they were talking about that they were alluding to making that happen. So I thought that definitely would have happened. [As far as] a wedding goes, we hadn’t talked about a wedding.
I think Dick would have been the one that would be most panicked during wedding preparations, like ‘I’m a vigilante, I’m a detective, but I don’t do weddings.’ [laughs]
Greg Walker: For sure. I agree!
How hard did you have to fight for that Superman cameo at the end? Was it like, ‘We need to negotiate with DC for 1/3 of the cape and just a boot shot?’ [laughs]
Greg Walker: They were great because, again, we were a little bit of in the vacuum there. We were in a little bit of the beg-for-forgiveness rather than ask permission-mode. But we went through Geoff, and then we went through the DC people who are in charge of the day-to-day management of the show. They were excited about the idea of definitely excited about us playing with that and playing with those symbols. Because we weren’t showing an actor, we weren’t showing a specific person who’s playing him. We were able to sneak that in, and of course, Joshua [Orpin, who plays Superboy] is really into doing it as well. So we got that, and then we got that final little joyous moment of him at the end.
I’m happy that you guys were able to work that in. I don’t understand DC’s restrictions sometimes; it’s called a multiverse for a reason.
Greg Walker: They were great with us. They let us do whatever we wanted. We wanted to just do that much because then it’s a letdown if you had put somebody else in a suit and you’ve actually put a Superman in there. I think that would have been too complicated. We didn’t have the suit, for example and we weren’t going to be able to make a suit. Nola Chaters, who’s our costume designer, came with that brilliant boot. She was able to pull that out of her hat. But I thought less is more – it gets you thinking and definitely spurs the imagination. I think.
Let’s talk about that final battle with Brother Blood with all of the heroes coming together. How long did that take to make it from page to execution?
Greg Walker: As I said before, Richard [Hatem] had to do multiple drafts of that script. We were all pitching and trying to help him figure it out – both making it financially shootable, because it’s so big, and Nick Copus, who can always find a way to do something. Michael Wray should also be mentioned, who was our producer, along with our incredible production design team and our director of photography and the VFX team. It was this group effort to try to figure out how we can do it, and not sink the ship financially because it was so big and it was written so big.
That set helped us. It was a brilliant set they built and then with the combination of that, and some really good VFX, helped sell the scale of it. I’m really proud of how big it looks – on TV, you just don’t see that very often. I was blown away when I started to see the dailies comng in and cutting it and it really cut beautifully. It was the actors also selling those moments. It was brutal for Brenton [Thwaites,] Joseph [Morgan,] and for all of them. For Anna [Diop,] Ryan Potter, being in the suits and having to deal with wind and fighting, it was great, I think it probably took two weeks to shoot that sequence.
Two weeks for just that one scene?!
Greg Walker: Over time, just because there’s pieces to it and much green screen work to then come back to it, move away from it and come back to it.
Were there any scenes that had to get cut that didn’t make it in there for the finale that you can maybe tease the readers?
Greg Walker: Scenes? Moments, for sure. Some action stuff that we had to clip because it was taking too much time to get people from point A to point B, so a fair amount of stuff. Mostly people in transit go from one place to the next. I think Richard will remember better on our editorial staff which one and if there’s any giant lift. I’m trying to think right now…I don’t think there is. We’re always moving and cleaning up acts, so we lifted stuff there, but no giant scene went away.
If you could continue Titans season 5 as a comic book, is that something you would want to explore if given the opportunity? There are so much more stories to tell about these characters, especially after they split away.
Greg Walker: Of course, sure! If I could get all of my collaborators to come and run it with me because I wouldn’t want to do it on my own, that writing staff would have a lot to say about season 5 and it’d be fun to work on it.
What are some something tidbits that you think fans should know about this episode? Is something they should be looking for because you guys are always seeding Easter eggs and clues.
Greg Walker: Well, I would wonder where in time they think that Christmas scene takes place!
That was such a brutal thing to do to us! Because Kory wasn’t dead, but I bet people were emotional seeing that. What is next for you? I know I’m asking it on the worst day possible, but do you have anything else coming up that you’re working on?
Greg Walker: I’ve got some projects that are being played around with that, hopefully, will come to fruition in the next year. Nothing in the comic space right now. It would be two weeks from now, I think, when I had my first meeting with Geoff and Sarah [Schechter,] so six years is a long time. It’s a good chunk of my life. I’m really grateful for having been able to live in it, to learn from it, and to really fall in love with, like everybody else, these characters and the stories. I’m gonna miss the stories and I’m gonna miss the characters a lot, and I’m gonna miss you guys.
I will always be around to talk about whatever you’re doing next! Maybe James Gunn will see the finale and think ‘We should do something more with the Titans.’
Greg Walker: I will answer that call.
Anything you want to say to the fans who will be reading this after seeing the finale?
Greg Walker: There is so much. [I’m] so appreciative of their passion, and really helping us understand what mattered to them, being so vocal about it. At times, it hurt, [laughs] but it was a great instruction to be able to move the needle towards where the fans’ pleasure zone was in these stories. Following their passion and their forgiveness are not always easy to hear, we didn’t always agree but in the end, we really tried to deliver an episode that set the Titans up in a place where we can all be happy they’re there.
Life will always be challenging, and there will always be problems, they won’t break your way all the time but where we leave them is in such a positive place. I really felt that message need to be out in the world and especially for our show.
This is definitely one hell of a way to go out, from having Joseph Morgan come in as Brother Blood, bringing all these characters to life, and coming through with the DickKory. This season definitely felt like a Teen Titans show, and you guys should be very proud of yourselves.
Greg Walker: Thank you so much. It’s been a privilege and a great pleasure. I love your passion, your zeal and your good questions and your big head have really helped us tap into what’s important to the fans. We can get lost in our own stories or our own problems in the show. It’s really great to be held to a certain standard, these [characters] we’re dealing with are people’s childhood memories. This is sacred stuff here and hopefully we did it right in the end.
Thank you for your time today and for all your work over four years. Hopefully, we will chat in the very near future, because I am not done with you yet, Greg Walker! [laughs]
Greg Walker: You know where to find me, Andy! [laughs]
About Titans Season 4
In the mid-season premiere, the Titans – with the exception of Gar – are returned to the place they had vanished, the Temple of Trigon, only to find Sebastian and Mother Mayhem are no longer there. The Titans rush to find them before Sebastian summons Trigon, their pursuit leading them to a mysterious town whose populace is hiding a deep secret. Along the way, the Titans come across a prophecy that may require Kory to make a huge sacrifice to save the world, but Dick’s feelings for Kory surface and he refuses to let her die.
In the final episodes, the Titans enter into an epic battle to save both Kory and the world. Gar goes on a quest of self-discovery, attempting to find his true purpose and to save his friends. Rachel embraces darker powers while Conner, struggling with his Lex Luthor side, goes his own way to defeat Sebastian. Tim and Bernard’s growing feelings for each other become increasingly difficult to resist, and when Bernard’s life is threatened, Tim finally becomes the hero he has always strived to be.
Check out our other Titans season 4, part 2 interviews here:
- Showrunner Greg Walker
- Ryan Potter (Beast Boy) and Joivan Wade (Cyborg)
- Joshua Orpin (Superboy)
- Jay Lycurgo (Robin)
Titans seasons 1-4 are streaming on HBO Max.
