Titans season 3, episode 11 recap – “The Call is Coming from Inside the House”

By Jonathon Wilson
Published: October 7, 2021 (Last updated: January 18, 2024)
0
View all
Titans season 3, episode 11 recap - "The Call is Coming from Inside the House"
3.5

Summary

“The Call is Coming from Inside the House” forces several characters to confront who they really are (and how far they’re willing to go) in an episode with dire consequences for many.

This recap of Titans season 3, episode 11, “The Call is Coming from Inside the House”, contains spoilers.


The final words of last week’s episode of Titans were, simply, “Welcome to Crane Manor”. And it’s with that sentiment that “The Call is Coming from Inside the House” begins, really, with Scarecrow listening to TLC, clean-shaving, and swanning around Bruce Wayne’s plush abode wearing his robes and suits. As we predicted, though, the very next place we see him is in the Batcave, going over Batman’s goodies, and setting up a chair in front of his computer. Predictably, he listens to his own file with a grin… except when Bruce attributes all of his actions to proxies, claiming that Crane himself was ill-equipped for Scarecrow’s persona. “It is my opinion that Crane is one of the most pitiable of Gotham’s violent criminals.” Yikes. Crane, now incensed, wakes up Jason and tells him the next stage of their plan — to get rid of Nightwing.

Titans season 3, episode 11 recap

Conner and Dick are still in hiding when Red Hood live-streams a message for Gotham directly from the Batcave, telling Nightwing to meet him at midnight “to finish this”. Now Dick knows where they’re hiding out, he reckons he can get through the Batcave’s security from Wayne Enterprises, but that means leaving Conner behind, alone with Krypto, to await a radio call from the others. And he’s not happy about that since he’s not exactly keen on the idea of leaving an injured Blackfire to fend for herself.

At least the Titans are beginning to link up elsewhere. Donna finds Tim, whose bullet wound has almost healed, and Gar is still with Rachel, though he’s not exactly feeling positive about the idea of getting the band back together. Donna has a lead that the Titans might be hiding in Chinatown. Gar has been researching Jason’s resurrection, which has led him to research the Lazarus Pits, which he thinks might be the key to everything. Using her powers, Rachel brings the symbol alive and suddenly knows how to find it, which is certainly convenient, but when they find one at the very end of the episode, it sends her powers haywire, which is less so.

Also less convenient: When Dick tries to break through the Batcave’s security, Jason intercepts him, having anticipated the move (“All your base are belong to us,” he gloats, in a reference he’s surely too young for.) It’s looking like the face-to-face meeting is Dick’s only option. Though not, perhaps, if Tim has anything to say about it. When he and Donna return to his family’s restaurant, he reveals his “secret base”, which is full of technology and research on the Titans, including a shortwave radio.

Meanwhile, Starfire roams the streets, suddenly powerless, and encounters a woman whose baby she has seen in her visions. When she speaks to her, though, they’re interrupted by a very bald man who claims to be called Max but looks very much like Victor Zsasz, and to whom the woman apparently owes money. Emboldened by having drunk the tainted water, he pulls a gun, and shoots Starfire when she intervenes, which plunges her into visions — memories? — of her past on Tamaran, which is pretty telling. As it turns out, she wasn’t born with the gift of fire, which was an issue for her royal family. So, they pretended she was to be the next queen anyway, and when Blackfire was born and discovered to be possessed of the powers, their father ordered that those powers be transferred to Starfire since she had already been made next in line to the throne. So, her claim was always illegitimate. The powers she believes Blackfire stole from her were always hers in the first place. When she returns to herself, she floats imperiously in the air, gives Max a jolt of blue energy, and then collapses.

It isn’t just Starfire who’s struggling with personal developments in Titans season 3, episode 11, though. Crane, obviously affected by Bruce’s summary of him, kidnaps a pizza delivery man and tries to carve him up with a razor blade to prove to himself that he can personally commit the horrors he stokes in others, but he can’t, and it only makes him more unstable and frantic. But his “eyes and ears on the street”, the cops on his payroll, are still taking care of business, checking up on businesses still holding out and preparing to raid the GCPD armory to take them all by force. This information, by the way, comes from Tim’s bad influence criminal cousin, who has people inside the police. It’s time for Donna to start putting her leadership training to use.

In the same way, it’s time for Starfire, who immediately embraces her newfound powers, to figure out who she really is. Scarecrow, unfortunately, does the same; after a word with himself, he starts carving up his prisoner. Dick also reaches a realization — that he can’t keep playing by the rules. After knocking out Conner and Krypto with what I assume is Kryptonite dust, he confronts Jason, but this time with the upper hand. They fight, in a pretty well-choreographed sequence, but it’s clear Nightwing has the advantage. The fight draws a pro-Red Hood crowd, but they don’t intervene until after the fight is over when a citizen opens fire on Dick. Despite Dick’s claims that he’s not here to hurt anyone, the citizen, just a kid, puts three more rounds in his back. The third one lodges in his neck, and when he collapses to the ground, the crowd stomps him while chanting “Red Hood”. Jason, not seeming particularly happy about this development, flees. When he returns to the Batcave, he discovers that Crane hasn’t just opened up the pizza guy, but his own face. The time for masks, he claims, is over.

You can stream Titans season 3, episode 11, “The Call is Coming from Inside the House”, exclusively on HBO Max.

HBO Max, Weekly TV
View all