The details of the planned Titans season 1 finale have gradually been emerging in recent weeks, including how a fight with Trigon would have been handled and an appearance by the Doom Patrol. As it turned out, much of what was intended for the end of season 1 was repurposed for season 2, including a much earlier reveal of Dick Grayson becoming Nightwing.
In fact, this has now been teased in an image shared to Facebook by production member Larnell Stovall, which shows how the original plan for the finale was to introduce Nightwing in a post-credit sequence. The photo, available below, depicts Brenton Thwaites in what appears to be the costume he ended up wearing at the end of season 2. Given that we had a long wait to see Grayson become Nightwing in the new run, it’s somewhat surprising to see that this character introduction could have happened a lot sooner.
If the original idea for season 1 of Titans had panned out, we’d have seen a presumably much different season 2, albeit one that most likely still would’ve focused on the Deathstroke arc. Still, large sections of the run were given over to Grayson going through a journey of reflection and battling his demons before taking on the Nightwing persona, so it’s difficult to know how his character’s development could have been alternatively structured.
In our opinion, the direction taken by the Titans showrunners was the correct one, resulting in a solid second year for the show that sets up a third season that reportedly will feature a major DC villain. Of course, the brief Titans cameo in “Crisis on Infinite Earths” leaves open some larger questions about the future of the series, but we imagine that the final episodes of that storyline will likely reassure fans that the DC Universe world will be back.