Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS for the Titans episode “Dude, Where’s My Gar?” are ahead!
Over its four-season run, Titans brought in many Teen Titans members from the comics, with Dick Grayson (in both his Robin and Nightwing guises), Starfire, Raven and Beast Boy leading the charge the entire time. However, one notable Titan who’s never shown up is Victor Stone, a.k.a. Cyborg, as he’s instead been a principal player on Doom Patrol, with both shows being available to watch with an HBO Max subscription. That changed today, as Joivan Wade cameoed at the end of “Dude, Where’s My Gar?” Ahead of the episode airing, I spoke with both Potter and Wade about this long-awaited crossover between Titans and Doom Patrol (which both end this year) finally happening.
Starting off, I asked Joivan Wade how he reacted when he learned he would appear as Cyborg on Titans. He quickly exclaimed the character’s catchphrase “Booyah!” and said that he was “over the moon” when he learned the big news, as there’d been talk for years about potentially making it happen. He then added:
Just being able to finally come full circle with that and that journey of what we’ve been wanting to do for so long, which is give the fans these two iconic characters together. They’ve had them separately. Even just the opportunity of having the complete set of Titans in the show and having Vic Stone be a part of the Titans and play in that space, it’s something that I felt was really important. It would have been a real, in my perspective, tragedy to have these characters in live-action exist in some point of time, but never have them together. It was just such a waster opportunity that I was really grateful that we ended up being able to do it and pull it off in a way that I feel like people are going to be really excited about.
These versions of Cyborg and Beast Boy finally crossing paths came as a result of Gar learning from Nyambi Nyambi’s Freedom Beast about The Red, the cosmic force from which Gar’s shapeshifting powers originate, and which connects and pervades all animal life in the Titans universe and many other realities. After brief experiences with other universes, which included him meeting Stargirl on Earth-2 (which was teased last September), Gar ended up falling into an overgrown version of the Doom Patrol’s mansion, and seconds after he collapsed unconscious, Cyborg, a.k.a. Victor Stone, founded him and recognized who he was.
With an ending like that, it’s clear that we’ll be seeing these two actually interact in next week’s Titans episode, which will also reunite Beast Boy with Brendan Fraser’s Cliff Steele/Robotman and Matt Bomer’s Larry Trainor/Negative Man. However, given that The CW’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover from a few years back established that Titans takes place on Earth-9 and Doom Patrol takes place on Earth-21, I wanted clarification about if the Cyborg Joivan Wade is playing in Titans is that show’s own version of the character, or the exact same version he’s been playing on Doom Patrol since 2019. Here’s what he had to say:
Yeah, so in terms of the version, Cyborg and the Vic that I’ve been playing is synonymous in terms of between those two worlds. It’s a different version of Cyborg in terms of the timeline of when Gar comes in and meets us in The Red. So you’ve got that, but in terms of the actual character, it’s definitely a synonymous version with what we’ve seen in the Doom Patrol, just a different timeline within that world. So yeah, we play to that, and as Doom Patrol comes out and you see where Vic ends up in that space, you then get a clearer direction of, ‘Oh, ok, this is where he sat within the Titans-verse.’
“Dude, Where’s My Gar?” was also special for Ryan Potter besides being the episode’s main actor because he co-crafted the story with executive producer Geoff Johns. As such, I was curious whether having Beast Boy and Cyborg meet was something he came up with right away, or if he and Johns arrived at it later in the creative process. The actor noted it was the former, as were things like “the resolution of trauma,” “having a meaningful hero’s story” and delivering a “vision quest.” On the subject of Cyborg, Potter explained:
No, that was a must. So I had a list of about 5-10 things, and I had a vehicle in which the story would move and the overall arc, but Geoff [Johns] really went in and penned the scenes and the transitions. But the themes needed to be honored, and the appearances needed to be honored. I absolutely had to have Cyborg in the episode, that was non-negotiable. So that opened up this room for interpretation of how we would do that, and that’s where Geoff came into play and really added this nice Grant Morrison stamp at the end of things are greater than they appear, and all of this is simply a projection of consciousness. Is Vic from Earth-27 or is he from a different mulitversal timeline of that planet? So it’s like, you know, it’s all open to interpretation. Who really knows?
But the Cyborg appearance wasn’t the only Doom Patrol connection in this episode. Titans fans will remember how when we met Garfield Logan back in Season 1’s “Doom Patrol”, he was living with that world’s version of the title team, which was also led by Dr. Niles Caulder (albeit played by Bruno Bichir rather than Timothy Dalton). However, it didn’t take long for us to learn what a sinister Individual “The Chief” was, and in “Dude, Where’s My Gar?”, it’s revealed that he’s the one who released the virus that killed Gar’s parents and led to him getting his special abilities. Here’s what Ryan Potter had to say about incorporating that twist into Beast Boy’s origin story:
I think there were story points that were forgotten, and Gar didn’t really have any sort of connectivity to his own timeline. Everything was the timeline of others and how he fit in to their stories. Going back to his initial source trauma and figuring that out was vital for moving forward as a character and as a hero, because how else is he going to show up for other people if he hasn’t spent the time to show up for himself? The Niles Caulder connection is the big shock of the episode. I think if some people are really paying attention, and have payed attention since Season 1, they’ll be like, ‘Oh, well it’s obvious! We know who it is.’ But if you’ve kind of casually watched, you might have forgotten who was the initial kind of villain in Gar’s life, but it’s tricky because he was also his hero. But being a self-imposed hero is borderline sociopathic. Dealing with that trauma was necessary for Gar to move on… But yeah, you gotta deal with what’s inside to really appreciate and be grateful for what’s on the outside.
We’ll see what kind of dynamic Ryan Potter’s Beast Boy and Joivan Wade’s Cyborg have when the tenth episode of Titans Season 4 airs next Thursday on HBO Max., and other things to look forward to on the show include Superboy going into “uncomfortable” territory with exploring his Lex Luthor side, as well as Tim Drake becoming the new Robin. As of this writing, it hasn’t been announced when the second half of Doom Patrol Season 4 will air, but check out our 2023 TV schedule to see what other shows are airing new episodes right now,
