WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Titans Season 3, Episode 8, "Home," available now on HBO Max.
As Season 3 of Titans progresses, it's clear the budding heroes don't have a handle on Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow (Vincent Kartheiser). With or without Bruce Wayne's secrets, he keeps playing them like a fiddle, anticipating their every move and using them like pawns. With Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites) short on ideas, it all comes to an explosive head in the latest episode as he tricks Anna Diop's Starfire into making a rookie mistake, dooming Gotham in what's essentially a remix of the sinister plot from Batman Begins.
Here, Scarecrow reveals to Jason that he wants to poison Gotham's water supply using his anti-fear toxin. But it's not the toxin in vapor form, which would require an inhaler. Instead, this concentrated batch will contaminate the water and send people on destructive trips, as seen with the attacks that wounded Tim Drake's dad.
However, as Scarecrow tries to drill through 10 feet of concrete, he realizes he's going nowhere fast. Jason bails on him, but he does get help from one worker at the pump station he's using as a base. The man, not realizing what's going on, tells Crane he would need a torch to burn through the concrete. Sadly, he ends up being killed, as he's about to inform the decommissioning crew something sketchy is happening at the plant.
This kickstarts a new sinister scheme, as Crane lures the heroes to the pump station later on, with Jason seemingly playing them after trying to broker peace. As the heroes arrive, they tend to a wounded Tim (who was investigating Jason), which leads to Dick and Kory rushing inside.
Scarecrow then fakes a banshee call from the shadows to get an overzealous Starfire to shoot her cosmic flame at him, with Nightwing trying to stop her. He's upset at her rash attitude as he quickly realized there were gas lines near Crane's location, which results in a massive explosion. When Dick and Kory get to the spot, they realize she has burned through the concrete Crane couldn't smash, finding the chemical vat empty and the water line poisoned.
It doesn't seem as if there are any valves to stem the flow, and if the panicked look on Nightwing's face is any indication, Gotham's going to be drinking in the soluble chaos soon enough. This ironically perfects what Ra's al Ghul was trying to do with Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins.
Ra's used a microwave emitter on a train to vaporize the poisoned water so the fear gas could rip people's minds apart. In Titans, though, the toxin is more direct and ingestible, which means Crane now has anti-fear water coursing through Gotham ready to make citizens mad, like it did with Jason.
The first eight episodes of Titans Season 3 are available now on HBO Max. Episode 9 will release Sept. 23.
0 Comments