Summary
Titans satisfyingly closes off a little two-episode arc with a clear goal for the next episode.
This recap of Titans Season 4 Episode 8, “Dick & Carol & Ted & Kory”, contains spoilers.
“Dick & Carol & Ted & Kory” is a little story about forgetting.
It picks up, for instance, having almost forgotten what happened at the end of Episode 7. Dick and Kory wake up in bed together, in matching pajamas, in an idyllic little house in Caul’s Folly. The last time we saw Dick he was getting tased and arrested in front of the gawping townsfolk. Now he’s someone else entirely?
Titans Season 4 Episode 8 Recap
Who are Ted and Carol?
This is the hook of the episode. Ted and Carol are Dick and Kory. They haven’t just woken up with similar PJs, but in a house with a history they’ve apparently shared together. There are photographs of them on the mantel. They have matching cars outside. The other residents of Caul’s Folly seem to know them as Ted and Carol.
Throughout this episode, Dick and Kory almost become Ted and Carol. Which is, again, the point. It’s integral to the very nature of Caul’s Folly as an interdimensional bank vault for a mystical artifact that’ll herald the return of a demon.
Speaking of which, Mother Mayhem and Brother Blood picked that up the very same morning. The former gave a sermon at the church while the latter plunged his hand into a vat of bubbling lava to withdraw the horn. After stoking the townsfolk into a murderous frenzy about “the heretic”, aka Rachel, they left, this stage of their mission accomplished.
How does Caul’s Folly control its citizens?
When Dick and Kory drive into town, they stop by the diner and Megan slips them a note. Outside, she explains what’s going on.
It’s the music. That’s how all the citizens of Caul’s Folly are brainwashed. They have little receivers implanted behind their ears connected directly to their hippocampus. There are speakers all over the place. Eventually, the music that is constantly pumped out wipes away your entire identity. Dick and Kory, who were implanted with the receivers when they were unconscious, are on a ticking clock. Pretty soon, they’ll literally become Ted and Carol, their real identities irretrievable.
Megan and her dad know all this because they’re deaf. They can communicate via lip reading, so nobody else knows. This keeps them safe and protected, but both are pretty keen to leave, especially since Megan’s brother William is trapped outside of Caul’s Folly.
As it happens, William is with Tim and Bernard, who are trying to communicate with the others by sending sound waves through dimensions.
How does Dick save the town?
Dick and Kory try to preserve their identities by recording their memories, especially painful ones — a typically nihilistic trick taught to Dick by none other than Bruce Wayne. Kory isn’t quite on the same wavelength when it comes to reveling in past traumas, so she isn’t quite as inured against the brainwashing as Dick is, so she eventually succumbs to the music.
In the episode’s bigger action sequence, Dick, who suddenly remembers he can fight, rescues Rachel from the church by beating up all the Sheriff’s deputies. Together, they go to the broadcast station where the music is coming from, leaving Kory in the car outside, still thinking she’s Carol.
The room that controls the music is full of pipes siphoning blood from a withered old dude who looks a little worse for wear, to put things mildly. Dick smashes the place to pieces which, in turn, smashes up the control room in the other dimension where Tim, Bernard, and William are.
Titans Season 4 Episode 8 Ending Explained
The episode ends with the realities blending together, the simulacrum of Caul’s Folly bleeding away. Megan and her father tearfully reunite with William, while the Titans all meet up again, their memories intact.
The final scene of the episode catches back up with Conner, who is in a bar somewhere. He sends Sebastian a drink over, and they toast together, to “the future”.
You can stream Titans Season 4 Episode 8, “Dick & Carol & Ted & Kory” exclusively on HBO Max.
