Recap / Titans S 3 E 5 Lazarus

In the aftermath of his fight with Nightwing, anti-heroes Red Hood and Jonathan Crane reteam for the first phase of their fearsome plan. Then, through a series of flashbacks, Red Hood's origins are revealed.

Tropes featured in this episode:

• Abandoned Warehouse: Jason rents one to create his anti-fear gas. It's not like the drug he's cooking up is any less dangerous than what the landlord thinks he's making.
• Adaptational Origin Connection:
  • Crane and Leslie used to be colleagues in psychology, but Leslie learned about his experiments and ratted him out. This led Crane to seek revenge on her before Batman stopped him.
  • Crane, not the Al Ghul's, is responsible for Jason's transformation into Red Hood this time around.
• A Day in the Limelight: The episode focuses primarily on Jason, before the events of the season took place, showing how he was driven to become Red Hood in the first place.
• All Therapists Are Muggles: Averted; Doctor Leslie Thompkins is a psychiatrist who knows Batman's Secret Identity, enabling her to give counselling to masked vigilantes. She's experienced Crane's fear toxin firsthand, so knows something about that as well.
• Asshole Victim: One of Joker's goons is featured early on picking kids off the streets to recruit into the gang. Jason tries to stop him and promptly gets his ass beat. When Jason comes back as Red Hood, he promptly beats the crap out of this thug before shooting him dead. And he deserved every minute of it.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Inverted and Invoked. Crane has Jason become Red Hood as the complete and total opposite of Batman, to strike true fear into the hearts of Gotham so they can become its guiding hope, only through more lethal methods.
• Becoming the Mask: Bruce admits that Gotham has become too much of a toxic influence on him as well as Jason, making it easy to lose themselves to their own identities.
• The Cameo: Donna Troy, who briefly appears in Jason's dreams, telling him that "it is not [his] time".
• Cassandra Truth: Jason thinks Leslie ratted him out to Bruce, which is why he benched him from being Robin. Bruce and Leslie both tell him otherwise, but an angry Jason refuses to believe them (forgetting about the fact that there's a little thing called patient-client privilege).
• Dead Person Conversation: Jason briefly sees Donna Troy in his dreams.
• Evil Former Friend: Leslie was originally acquaintances with Dr. Crane until he nearly killed her and became a supervillain.
• Evil Mentor: Scarecrow is Jason's. Much of the episode focuses on him guiding Jason into villainy.
• Facial Horror: As Jason's corpse is taken from the bodybag, there's a closeup of the side of his face where the Joker smashed it in with his crowbar.
• Facial Recognition Software: Jason takes a photo of Joker's recruiter and the Wayne tech in his mobile phone instantly pulls up his name, fingerprints and criminal record, puzzling Molly as to how Jason is able to instantly identify him.
  Molly: How do you know that?
  Jason: Told you. I'm still me.
  Molly: Right. That's one of those things that sounds real cool, but doesn't actually mean anything.
• False Reassurance: Joker's recruiter tells the woman he's talking to that he likes her smile and promises to introduce her to a man who can help her smile all the time.
• Foreshadowing: In episode 3, Ra's Al Ghul is suspected of having brought Jason back. That's only half true; Ra's Al Ghul's Lazarus Pit brought Jason back, on Scarecrow's own whim.
• Fantastic Drug: The drug that Jason has been using is a cure for fear itself, much like in Batman: The Animated Series episode "Nothing To Fear". It completely removes the person's fears (and thus inhibitions), and Scarecrow has Jason hooked on the substance.
• Hope Spot: Jason's second session with Leslie actually goes well; he is no longer hostile at her and willing to open up about his feelings. He even promises to come back for the next session. Then Bruce benches him from his position as Robin, and all hell breaks loose.
• Ironic Echo
  • After snorting up on the anti-fear toxin, Jason says, "Fuck the Joker!" in a Call-Back to Dick's "Fuck Batman!"
  • Red Hood taunts Pete Hawkins with the same words he said in their previous meeting.
• Jerkass Has a Point: When Jason pleads with Bruce to let him continue as Robin, he points out that, in spite of Dick screwing up constantly, he doesn't hesitate to help out his old ward. Bruce doesn't argue the point, but he still benches Jason.
  • Dramatically Missing the Point: Because he's not benching Jason for screwing up, but to save Jason from going down the same dark path that he did. Jason has so much wrapped up in the Robin identity however, he fails to see this.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Regardless of how angry Jason is at Bruce Wayne, revealing Batman's Secret Identity to one of his arch-enemies is one giant leap across the Moral Event Horizon.
• Just Friends:
  • Molly says she "might start dating boys again" after breaking up with her girlfriend, but Jason shows no sign of picking up on it.
  • When Jason asks Bruce if he and Dr. Leslie were involved on a non-professional level, Bruce avoids the question.
• Just a Kid
  • Jason tries to stare down the Joker's minion, but the ex-con isn't intimidated in the slightest. "You haven't done enough time to look at me like that."
  • Crane mocks the 'fanboy' who's turned up to see him until he produces one of his own fear gas dispersers that had been confiscated by Batman. He quickly realises who he's really talking to.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Inside Bruce's trophy case are Joker's playing cards, the Scarface dummy used by the Ventriloquist, Two-Face's coin, Catwoman's whip and goggles, and Scarecrow's fear gas.
  • For another Catwoman reference, Bruce jokingly warns Jason to run if the girl he likes happens to like cats.
  • When he first becomes Red Hood, he tells a goon "I want you to tell all your friends about me".
• Naked on Revival: Justified with Jason upon being resurrected by the Lazarus Pit, as he was taken from the morgue.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Bruce, in a well-meaning, but ultimately failed attempt to do better with Jason than he did with Dick, benches him as Robin. This drives Jason down the path to Scarecrow—and thus the Red Hood. And keep in mind, this happens right as Jason is starting to make progress in his life.
• Pet the Dog: Red Hood rescues Diego, the child who had fallen in with the Joker's gang, and takes him to his friend Molly to get him some help. He then politely tells her that she needs to change the locks on her doors before he leaves.
• Rage Against the Mentor: Jason's motivation is further revealed as him not just becoming Red Hood to get revenge against the Titans, but also Bruce for taking Robin away from him.
• The Reveal: Several of them in fact.
  • The reason Jason became the Red Hood and allied with the Scarecrow? Bruce tried getting him some therapeutic help, and benched him as Robin the moment he was actually making progress. This causes Jason to turn to Crane and offer him information on Batman's identity in exchange for making a cure to fear itself.
    • As for said cure? Scarecrow just gave Jason a somewhat flawed formula to see if Jason could figure it out for himself. And he did just that.
  • Jason did in fact die at the Joker's hands, but Crane has one of his lackeys stuff Jason in a Lazarus Pit to bring him back.
• Rule of Symbolism: Donna wears black mourning clothes in Jason's dreams, showing that she is dead.
• Secret Test of Character: The entire time Jason turns to Crane, the good doctor has been testing him to see how far he would go. The formula for curing fear? Deliberately off to see if Jason was willing to solve it himself. Going up against the Joker? A test to conquer Man's greatest fear—not the Joker but death itself.
• Spare a Messenger: Averted. In his Red Hood guise, Jason gets revenge on the thug who humiliated him earlier, handing him a loaded weapon and then easily taking it off him. The terrified thug begs to let him know what he wants.
  Hawkins: You don't have to kill me! Just tell me what you want!
  Red Hood: I want you to tell all your friends about me.
  Hawkins: Okay, okay! Who Are You?
  Red Hood: (Boom, Headshot!) I'll just tell them myself.
• Unreliable Expositor: Jason claims that Bruce never treated Dick the same way he is treating Jason, instead giving Dick everything and continuing to do so no matter what Dick does. Viewers know that this is untrue, given that Bruce recruited Jason only a week after Dick left, replaced Dick as Robin without so much as a call, and revoked Dick's access to his safe houses.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Jason barfs up a bad batch of anti-fear toxin while he's trying to test out Crane's formula.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: It's made explicit that this is the relationship Jason has to Bruce, and Bruce even calls him "son". Bruce wants better for his adopted son than his vigilante crusade, but his efforts to show this only make things worse.
• Whole Episode Flashback: After the opening scene set right after Jason's rescue of Crane in the previous episode, the episode is about the lead up to Jason's death and return as Red Hood.

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