Titans 1×07 “The Asylum” is a brutal and bloody confrontation between the sinister Organization and the (not quite yet) Titans.
Last week’s largely self-contained episode of Titans was a Dick Grayson tale, which meant that it played out very much like a detective story.
If we’re being more specific, it played out a lot like a Batman detective story — a gruesome whodunnit mystery, a psychologically damaged villain, and a bunch of men without powers running around and punching people to find answers and solve problems.
This week’s Titans episode is very much Rachel’s story — it is her mother that the team (though in a fractured manner) goes to rescue, it is her on which The Organization is focused, and it is her who frees the rest of the teammates who are imprisoned.
And since it is her episode, the story’s beats come straight out of the horror genre. Most of the episode takes place in the dank, dimly lit hallways of an abandoned asylum, amoral beasts that call themselves scientists inflict torture with casual indifference, and there is blood and gore galore.
It’s a grim and gritty episode that acts like the final issue in a comic book story arc, bringing Rachel and the team face to face with The Organization — and their darkest selves.
Blood and pain
After their first major family fight, Rachel and Gar go off to rescue her mother with absolutely no real plan, while Dick and Kory follow closely behind, with a much better plan.
Unfortunately, this is a team that’s stronger together than they are apart, and so they end up being captured by Dr. Adamson and his group of amoral scientists.
And then the horror movie really begins.
Kory gets strapped down and cut up so that the Organization can ascertain the nature of her powers, while Gar gets stripped down and assaulted with a cattle prod so that The Organization can figure out what exactly his powers are.
And Dick? He gets injected with Scarecrow’s fear toxin some kind of mind-altering drug that makes him confront the deepest, darkest parts of himself — which manifests in a younger version of himself that beats him to a bloody pulp with Robin’s own iconic bo staff.
Luckily, because the Organization has been trying to capture Rachel this entire season and now finally has her, she is in a nicely furnished office, staring directly at Dr. Adamson as he tries to convince her to reach out to her dad and make the rest of the Titans join The Organization (while also giving her some handy information about her mom and the reasoning behind their pursuit of her).
Fortunately, Rachel is no fool and basically tells Dr. Adamson to GTFO with his nonsense, then taps into her inner demon and undoes her previous healing of Dr. Adamson’s slit throat, watching as he bleeds out in front of her and then locating her mother.
While Kory and Angella, Rachel’s mother, are able to escape the asylum relatively unscathed, both Gar and Dick come away as irrevocably changed versions of themselves.
Up until now, Gar hasn’t really used his powers in much of an offensive way — even admitting to Dick and Kory that he’s basically a vegan tiger.
Here, the pain, anger and frustration of being treated like an animal by Dr. Adamson and the scientists of the Organization turn him into an animal — one who rips the throat out of a scientist threatening their escape. It’s an act that horrifies Gar when he turns back into himself, blood dripping from his mouth and tears in his eyes as he stares in horror at the corpse in front of him.
Dick’s imagined confrontation with his younger self leaves him mentally shaken, but still steady enough on his feet to fight his way through a half dozen guards with only a heavy piece of metal wrenched free from the pipes around him. In a way, this hallway fight is a goodbye to a Robin that has become a burden and a source of suffering for Dick — a goodbye which culminates in Dick tossing his Robin suit into the flames of the asylum.
Uncertain beginnings
The episode ends with three members of the Titans, as well as Rachel’s mother, watching the asylum burn down.
For Angella Azarath, the incineration of the asylum represents the end of years of imprisonment, and a new life with her newly discovered daughter at her side.
For Raven, it represents the end a life characterized by loss, lies, and confusion, and the beginning of a life where the truth can be found right next to her. Yet she still doesn’t know the truth about her father or the true nature of her powers — two questions that will hopefully soon be answered by her birth mother.
For Kory and Gar, the end of the asylum also means the end of their alliance as a team — or at least, the end of a reason for one. What now lies ahead of them without this shared mission tying them together?
But Dick ends the episode not watching the asylum burn down, but instead looking at the flames ravaging the suit which has defined him for much of his life. This episode gave us Dick’s final goodbye to his life and identity as Robin — a role that served its purpose for a long while, but eventually became a stifling burden.
It’s a painful goodbye, but a necessary one. A goodbye that hopefully opens Dick up to a new beginning — to a life that isn’t defined by his loss and his anger, but by the good he can do and the hope he can provide.