Titans Showrunner Teases Their Plans For Superboy

Despite the backlash against it prior to its release, Titans turned out to have a pretty well-received first season, all things considered. Comic book fans loved how it brought so many under-appreciated DC heroes to live-action for the first time and the recent season finale then went one further and featured a cameo from another fan favorite, teasing his proper arrival in season 2.

Yes, the finale depicted Superboy and Krypto escaping from Cadmus Labs in Metropolis. As Superman fans know, Conner Kent is the half-human, half-Kryptonian clone of the Man of Steel who’s probably most familiar to viewers of the Young Justice animated series. We’ve heard rumors and reports that Superboy would be involved in Titans, but we hadn’t had it confirmed until the final moments of season 1. So was Conner always going to be a part of the puzzle?

Showrunner Greg Walker spoke to Entertainment Weekly and revealed that the addition of Superboy came about as the writers were thinking about how to relaunch the show in season 2 and he wasn’t a long-term plan. That is, unless Titans’ exec producers had the idea in their back pockets all along.

“It wasn’t totally planned from day one — or maybe it was in [Geoff Johns and Akiva Goldsman’s] heads, but they didn’t tell me. It definitely wasn’t something that we thought of until the very end. I think we knew that would be a direction that would be exciting for the fans and a tease that would be interesting for us as well, and that was the best spot to put it in.”

Titans has become known for its darker interpretations of familiar characters – case in point, the “F—, Batman!” line from the pilot, so will Kon-El be reimagined to fit in with the more mature world of the show? Well, Walker says his storyline for next year is still being developed, but they’re approaching it in the same way as season 1’s heroes.

“It’s still brewing. What I can say is that we still want to take the same dimensionalized and psychologically grounded approach that we do with the other characters and apply that same pressure to Conner Kent and see what shakes out when you put a character like that through that test. You know, questions of identity, questions of powers, questions of your place in the universe. These are all questions that are interesting for any kind of Superman character, and are really interesting for Conner.”

Titans season 2 is expected to go in front of cameras in early February, before returning to DC Universe in late 2019. In the meantime, we’ve also got its spinoff, Doom Patrol, to look forward to.