Of the ‘Titans’, the one that viewers have seen the least is Ryan Potter’s Beast Boy. He made a brief cameo at the end of the first episode, in which he was seen shape shifting from a tiger into a human, after stealing video games from a local electronics store. He also popped up in the third episode when he met Rachel (Teagan Croft) while playing video games at a roller rink.
But the fourth episode shines the light on this fourth Titan, as fans will get a glimpse at his private life, which includes his surrogate family, the odd-balls of the Doom Patrol.
Some viewers are getting impatient, waiting for the Titans to come together as a unit and fight bad guys, but Potter says that the slow burn is intentional, so that when this does happen, viewers are already invested in the characters as unique individuals.
As he explained to Entertainment Weekly:
“I think what makes his introduction dope is because of the family you get to see Beast Boy come from: The Doom Patrol. Every episode has a different emphasis on a different character, or relationship, or story point. It’s a slow build. We’re gonna take time to sit and marinate with these characters, to get to know them and their quirks and get a sense of how they think and how they feel. Before we get them all together for these big action scenes and loud noises, we are trying to build these character pieces.”
Viewers may have noticed in the first episode that this Beast Boy doesn’t simply “pop” from one form to another the way he did on the cartoons. Instead, this is more like a werewolf’s transformation, with his bones and joints cracking and snapping from one configuration to another.
Potter elaborated on that as well:
“It’s not as gelatinous and fluid as the animated series, because they’re trying to ground it. If you could change your molecular structure at the subatomic level, it would feel really weird! The tiger was one of my favorite transformations because I spent hours watching tiger videos to learn the breathing and stuff. If people catch that, they catch it, but it’ll also be cool to see him transform into other animals as the series progresses… The gorilla is great, the elephant is iconic, but we’ll need to get some of that Eastern flair.”
To that end, Potter, who is half-Japanese, hopes to see Beast Boy take on the form of a panda bear and an octopus.
Having spent his younger years in Japan, Beast Boy holds a special place in his heart, as one of the first American characters he gravitated to.
“Beast Boy was one of the characters I grew up watching, and I learned how to assimilate to American pop culture because of his attempt to try and learn pop culture. I was like, okay, let me try some of this out! It worked, and now I’m here!”
Fans should be happy to get a better look at Potter’s take on Beast Boy when he finally gets his chance to shine in Episode 4 of ‘Titans’, “Doom Patrol.”
New episodes of ‘Titans’ are available every Friday on DC Universe.
