Video: If you’ve ever wanted to hear Robin say “Fuck Batman” before knocking the hell out of and killing a couple of street-level criminals, then allow us to show you the very first trailer for DC Universe’s upcoming live-action Titans series. Suffice to say that Teen Titans Go!, this is not.
Rather than teasing us with brief glimpses of what the titular Titans are going to look like in action, the first Titans trailer gets right down to business and introduces us to its take on Raven (Teagan Croft), a teenaged girl haunted by literal and metaphorical demons just as she’s beginning her search for detective Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites).
Using her psychic abilities, Raven’s able to deduce Robin’s tragic origin story, and she implores the vigilante to help stop an unforeseen threat with the potential to destroy the world.
The trailer features a couple of shots of Beast Boy (Ryan Potter) in action and of Starfire (Anna Diop) using her impressive energy projection abilities, but what really stands out is just how seemingly gritty and bloody the show’s going to be.
While these might not exactly be the Titans you were expecting, it’s interesting to see what a mature direction DC and Warner Bros. are taking the characters, especially given how they’ve tended to skew much younger in recent years.
In any case, Titans is definitely shaping up to be a darker show for a slightly older audience and, to be honest, that’s perfectly fine considering that Teen Titans Go! is still very much a thing that isn’t going anywhere.
What remains to be see, though, is whether DC Universe’s Titans will be able to hold its own against the company’s other riffs on those characters when the series premieres later this year.