Dick, Rachel, Connor and Gar are all faced with tough choices. Some of them even make good choices.

As we speed up into the home stretch, the show sensibly splits its vast cast to give them all equal screen time. Brilliantly, that includes the villains of the piece and Natalie Gumede is great fun here as Mercy Graves. A Luthor loyalist through and through she’s also very much her own woman and the show’s casual reveal of her wife and their kids is a really nice, welcome piece of inclusion. Plus, you can tell she thinks she’s on the right side, which either makes her a prime candidate for redemption or a terrifying enemy. I honestly don’t know which one it’ll be.

Elsewhere Joshua Orpin and Ryan Potter continue to impress. Potter gives Gar an irrepressible spirit and offhand joy that makes him comic relief without ever selling him out. He’s a good guy but not a worldly one and as a result he and Orpin’s Conner are a great double act. Also Krypto continues to be the best, not only giving Orpin one of his best scenes to date but ringing door bells, saving days and generally being the Goodest boy. He and Gar do the right thing and go find Conner. It gets them in so much trouble but the right thing often does.

Over in Rachel’s plot the right thing looks a lot like the wrong thing. She inadvertently (?) animates a gargoyle to kill new found friend Dani (Sydney Kuhne)’s abusive father, The two women have great natural chemistry and this newfound desire to be a hero, albeit a very violent one, sets Rachel off in some fascinating new directions. Burned by the Titans’ hypocrisy she’s arguably the one hit hardest, given Dick’s betrayal and her own, all too raw, all too demonic family issues. With three episodes to go it’s interesting, and exciting, to see how this could go. Especially given the strength of Kuhne’s supporting turn.

But the real star here is everyone’s favorite grumpy BatSon. Brenton Thwaites has visibly grown into the role this season and here he explores Dick’s darkest moments, content to lock himself in prison as penance rather than keep running. His zen like calm is quietly eroded by his cell mates and the show does an excellent job of flipping established racial stereotypes. It’s still not great for that but Orel De La Mota, Julian Works and Ray Gallegos are great as his cell mates, giving you the impression that their story has been going on for a while and it’s just intersected with the show here. It’s fun, fast stuff and it ends with a beautifully realized moment of just super violent catharsis. Plus doesn’t that bird look familiar…

Verdict: Tight, focused and fun this is very nearly everything the show does well al in one place. Recommended. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart