Titans season 2, episode 8 “Jericho” introduced my new favorite and made me question whether Deathstroke is really the villain we’ve been told he is.

After I first finished watching Titans season 2, episode 8 “Jericho,” I thought, “I think I’m rooting for Deathstroke.”

After rewatching the episode two more times, I now know I’m definitely rooting for Deathstroke.

Not necessarily rooting for him to defeat the Titans — who, despite their many flaws and foibles, are still the good guys in this equation — but for him to find redemption.

Earlier Titans episodes this season have done a fantastic job painting Deathstroke as a truly menacing threat , so much so that even if we knew he was the antagonist, it was also hard not to respect — even admire — his competence as a villain (especially given how underwhelming of a villain Trigon was). What “Jericho” did was flesh out who Slade Wilson is as a man, painting him so fully and sympathetically that it’s hard not to understand his motivations.

Yes, he’s a professional assassin who kills people for money — but as this episode of Titans shows us, he’s also a doting father and dedicated husband (though given the existence of Rose, we’ll have to assume he stepped out on his lovely wife at least once in his life) who is as much as casualty of circumstance as he is a victim of poor choices.

‘Titans’ season 2, episode 8 ‘Jericho’ Review

When I realized that “Jericho” would be another flashback episode, I was worried. The last full flashback episode,”Aqualad”, was the worst episode of the season — one which ground the season’s momentum to a complete halt and provided some of the most inefficient storytelling this show has had over the course of its two seasons.

Luckily, I shouldn’t have been worried — “Aqualad” remains an anomaly within Titans’ two seasons and “Jericho” proves that flashback episodes can provide necessary backstory and characterization while still pushing the present-day narrative forward.

The ‘sins of the Titans’ have haunted the varsity squad members this entire season — Dick, especially, as we saw in “Bruce Wayne .” In “Jericho,” we see the full extent of their past duplicity and come to understand why the vendetta Deathstroke has against the Titans — and Dick specifically — is so extreme.

And though this episode is titled “Jericho,” the story itself is actually split pretty evenly between Jericho, Slade and Dick.

First, we get to know Jericho, who is played with deep empathy and enthusiasm by Chella Man. I follow Chella Man on both Twitter and Instagram, and his excitement at getting to play Jericho has been palpable since before the season even started, so I was thrilled to see how well he delivered. It’s obvious that Man loves his character — and as the episode played out, it was easy to see why.

Jericho’s enthusiasm for everything around him — whether that be a new record or finding new friends — made him easy to like, and his sweetness despite the tragedy he’d been through made him easy to love. It was difficult to watch the Titans manipulate him because of their own vendetta, and I have to say that he was much more forgiving towards Dick and Dawn once they revealed the truth than I would be.

But, of course, that forgiveness and openness only made him more lovable — and therefore his death all the more tragic. Jericho was a kid who believed in his father and believed in Dick, only to be let down by them both in the cruelest and most permanent of ways.

And while Dick wasn’t the one who plunged the sword into Jericho’s chest, I think it’s also right that he should carry the burden of Jericho’s death with him all these years. He may not have held the sword, but his actions leading up to that point bear the burden of making that tragic death possible.

Despite being titled “Jericho,” it was Slade Wilson who probably got the most character development in this episode.

Up until now, we’ve only really seen and gotten to know Slade through the viewpoint of the Titans — which means we’ve really only known him as Deathstroke.

In “Jericho,” we get to know him through the eyes of his son, and the picture it paints is far more nuanced and far more sympathetic than we could’ve imagined. We learn that Slade Wilson was a victim of government experiments — it seems implied that he didn’t sign up for the enhancements that he got, but was simply funneled into an unethical experiment that made him over into something he never wanted to be.

And though he becomes a professional assassin once he retires from the military, I can’t imagine the work he did on his own is all that much more different than the work he did for the military — the only difference is that once he retired, what he did was to make money for himself and his family rather than at the behest of a government agency.

Aside from his work, though, we also see that Slade is a doting father and a loving husband. He’s the type of man who still brings home flowers to his wife and for whom it still matters that he missed his son’s birthday. He’s, of course, not perfect at either — his work takes him away from his home for too long and for too often, but I also wonder if he didn’t trust himself enough to be around all the time.

Slade Wilson was a soldier who was then made into a the perfect killer, but that isn’t what he wants for his son — as we see in his reaction to Jericho’s powers — and that isn’t the life he wants to bring around his family.

But our actions and our choices have consequences, and as much as we compartmentalize, our lives and our work often become intertwined. That’s the reality that comes to a head that fateful night in Slade’s home, when armed assailants assault his family and render his loving son mute.

That he leaves him family after that is painful — but I also think it might’ve been the right choice. What he did may not have been who he was, but it put his family in danger anyway, which means separating himself from them was the best possible way to keep them safe.

So who, then, is Deathstroke really?

Is he an deadly assassin without a conscience? Or is he a loving father and husband who cares deeply for his family?

The answer, it seems, is both — because people are fucked up and complicated and are usually not ever one thing or the other. Slade Wilson is a cold-blooded killer for hire who also deeply loved his son and his wife.

It shouldn’t be lost on us that after bearing responsibility for killing his own son, Titans suggests that Slade Wilson retired from the profession altogether, choosing to exile himself into the deepest, darkest woods for a sin he knew he could never atone for.

It’s more than likely that Slade Wilson would’ve spent the rest of his life in those woods, punishing himself for destroying that which he loved the most. The only reason he brings himself out of retirement is when he sees the Titans have reformed. Yes, it’s absolutely him projecting his own guilt and the pain — but to him, Dick reforming the Titans is a sign that he’d forgiven himself of a crime which Slade deems is unforgivable.

What this episode of Titans posits is that Slade Wilson’s story is a tragedy, one worthy of any superhero origin story. In fact, in another life and another world, it’s not hard to imagine a version of the story where the tragedy of Slade Wilson ends with him becoming a superhero rather than a supervillain.

But that’s another life and another story. The one we’re getting here, in this world, is a Slade Wilson who’s out for revenge, and who has committed further heinous acts against innocents as punishment for his own sins. So, while I understand — even perhaps empathize — with his need for vengeance, dragging in innocent lives in his personal vendetta is what makes it necessary to stop him.

Still, like I said earlier, this episode of Titans made me root for Slade to find redemption, and given how sympathetically this episode portrayed him, I’m still holding out hope that we may eventually end up there.

Stray Thoughts and Lingering Questions

What did you think of ‘Titans’ season 2, episode 8 ‘Jericho’?