‘Be a better Batman’: Titans S3 trailer thrusts Nightwing out of Bruce Wayne’s shadow on HBO Max

Dick Grayson’s got a lot of growing up to do — and he’s gotta do it fast. As HBO Max's dark new Season 3 trailer for Titans teases, Batman’s receding into the shadows, and won’t be there to mentor him this time around.

With spirits low as a Batman ally goes down, Bruce Wayne appears to be checking out for good on Gotham’s crime cleanup project. Passing the torch to Nightwing, a broken Bruce brings a big admonition for Dick in the new clip: “Be a better Batman,” he urges, channeling all the intensity of a superhero who thinks he’s past his breaking point.

Check it out:

Now that the Caped Crusader’s out of the picture, Gotham needs Nightwing to step up as more than a mere figurehead leader for the Bat-gang. But that just means the target on his back — and the Titans as a group — is about to get a whole lot bigger. With Red Hood on the rise and the city descending deeper into chaos, Scarecrow (Vincent Kartheiser) even shows up right on cue, ready to foment fresh madness at Arkham.

It’s a super-dark setup for Commissioner Barbara Gordon (newcomer Savannah Welch), as well as Nightwing (Brenton Thwaites), Koriand’r/Starfire (Anna Diop), Raven (Teagan Croft), and the gang — especially with former friend Red Hood (Curran Walters) poised to emerge as perhaps the biggest threat of all as Season 3 looms closer.

The stakes are definitely higher than they’ve ever been…but after all the team has been through over the first two seasons, we’d expect nothing less. Watch for Titans to swoop back to HBO Max for Season 3 on Aug. 12, when the first three episodes will premiere all at once. Subsequent episodes will arrive every Thursday after that, leading up to the Oct. 21 Season 3 finale.