‘Titans’: Who Are the Flying Graysons?

The eagerly-anticipated Titans debuted on DC Universe today, and the live-action take on the Teen Titans introduced more than just some of the show’s core characters. They also gave fans a glimpse at some of their histories — especially when it comes to Dick Grayson.

Mild spoilers for the series premiere of Titans below!

The series begins with Rachel Roth/Raven (Teagan Croft) walking into an abandoned circus tent that suddenly comes alive with a sign lighting up and an announcer presenting the feature act — The Flying Graysons. As Rachel watches, a family of acrobats begins their trapeze act, but it quickly takes a dark turn with the parents’ trapeze failing, sending them falling to their deaths below as their son helplessly watches from his own trapeze.

The sequence ends up being part of Rachel’s terrifying dream and, later, we learn that what her dream was showing her was the real-life deaths of Dick Grayson’s (Brenton Thwaites) family. Dick has since grown up and is now a police detective with the Detroit Police Department as well as the vigilante, Robin. The deaths of his parents still impact him, though. He keeps a framed circus poster for “The Flying Graysons” in his apartment by his door.

While the episode doesn’t get too deep into that chapter of Dick’s story, it appears that Titans is following the characters comic book history. As DC fans know, in comics Dick is the youngest in a family of acrobats known as “The Flying Graysons”. In comics, his family dies in a very similar incident. With Dick’s part of the show done, he leaves the ring and passes the circus owner’s room and overhears a mafia boss named Tony Zucco attempt to extort money in exchange for protection from “accidents”. Later, one of those “accidents” occurs when, thanks to Zucco, the ropes of the Grayson’s trapeze break, sending them crashing to the ground and to their deaths while their son watches below.

The murder of his parents is a defining moment in Dick’s life as it results in him becoming Bruce Wayne/Batman’s legal ward and it is under Bruce’s care that he trains to become the crime-fighting Robin. Batman and Robin work together to disrupt Zucco’s criminal organization and ultimately capture the mafia boss.

While the details of the Flying Graysons’ death in Titans hasn’t fully been revealed, one thing that is clear is the relationship with Batman has gone a bit sideways by the time we meet Dick. It’s something that Thwaites spoke with ComicBook.com about at New York Comic Con last week.

“Dick Grayson is trying to leave that way of fighting crime.” Thwaites said. “He doesn’t believe in… He learns and evolves in a way that Batman hasn’t, mentally. And he kind of breaks away from fighting crime the way Batman does, because he doesn’t believe it is right. And that’s basically what we see in the first episode, is Dick Grayson trying to support himself and fight crime in a way that he believes is right, without Batman. And so those words, that line that we see, kinda gives us an idea of the tone that we’re going for with the show.”

New episodes of Titans debut Fridays on DC Universe.