#ofc if you enjoy duke in wfa that's totally fine but please i beg of you read we are robin first

[casscainmainly]

What do you think of how WFA is currently using Duke so far? On the one hand bringing in We are Robin is good but on the other hand I feel like it they still are sidelining him. He's still benched and sure they brought in We are Robin but it felt like they were more used for Damian and his story, and they had Duke set up this support system but we've seen others like Steph doing more with it and really interacting with it. I feel like them say introducing We Are Robin but like making interact more with Damian and be there for his story is like "see we read Duke, now here's the other characters we really want to focus"

I've fallen behind on WFA for a few weeks so I just caught up! And. Yeah. I have thoughts. (Also again disclaimer I don't have FastPass so this is based on the free eps as of now).

In August last year I did an analysis of Duke Thomas in WFA, where I outlined my gripes. Then, in December, I praised the We Are Robin-centric episode. Right after, I wrote about how the next episode was making me a little wary but I was still optimistic.

Just outlining this to demonstrate that my feelings on WFA bounce back and forth a lot, but I do think it can do better and it has done better. So I'm gonna read on (because it's the only consistent place for Duke content, and because I like the Batgirls in it enough), but long story short: I'm pissed.

(Putting a rant under the cut; if you're enjoying S3 of WFA, I'm genuinely happy for you! I'm going to take a more negative stance than usual though so don't read if you don't want to hear that stuff).

Okay first of all the benching. All the way back in August I complained about Duke being benched, in a season that started with his kidnapping and revolves around the Joker. At the time I was hopeful he'd be unbenched, but it's been 34 eps and he's STILL BENCHED!! Even if he's unbenched in the FastPass eps I don't have, it's still ridiculous that he was out of the field for that long.

What happened when canon Duke got injured I wonder??

Oh yeah, in the Cursed Wheel he SNUCK OUT!!! Because he has agency!!!! What's frustrating about benching Duke for the entirety of S3 so far is that Duke, at his core, is a character of action. From his very first appearance in Zero Year, he's defined by an absurd amount of agency, wanting to fight the Riddler (then finding his parents, then joining WAR, then becoming Signal). A Duke that sits by for THIRTY FOUR EPISODES is NOT DUKE THOMAS!!!

But he's broken his arm, right? It makes sense for him to be benched?? Well first of all it was WFA's CHOICE to break his arm, a choice I do not think added anything to Duke's character or to Bruce's paranoia (which was clearly the entire point of Duke's kidnapping in the first place). Secondly, another character was injured in a fight with the Joker and benched. Another character who REJOINED THE FIELD IN 16 EPISODES!!!!

Dick gets injured in #130 and goes back out in #146. That is under half of how many episodes Duke's been benched for, AND Dick got injured in a fight against Joker. Duke didn't even get to fight!!! He didn't get to do anything!!! Dick's injury was also stupid, but the way WFA handled his benching versus Duke's is worlds apart, and shows to me how much less they respect Duke than the others.

Also can I just say how gross it was to use Duke's kidnapping merely to kickstart the plot? An astonishing 14 episodes pass before we get any mention of how Duke feels (in #132, he says he has nightmares). Then another 11 eps pass before we get to him talking to Lucius + calling WAR. That nightmares thing is never followed up on either! In #124 and #132, Duke's dialogue functions to further the plot or other characters - in #124, Duke justifies the others going out, and in #132, he helps Bruce through his feelings. Even when the episodes are about him, they are not about him!!! I genuinely think only 2 eps out of this entire season haven't used Duke as a prop for someone else.

I'm going to briefly detour to discuss #132 because I loathe that episode. In Homebound, Bruce visits Duke and they play Battleship (it was cute. fine. whatever). And then Bruce offers to hear Duke out on how he feels. Smash cut to:

ARE YOU SERIOUS??? We spent more than 3 episodes on Jason's PTSD, but we couldn't even spend a single panel on Duke talking about his own trauma???? Whether or not you liked the Jason bits this season, he had a moment. Babs also has her moment, and a whole ep is spent with just her and her dad. Duke, of the 3 Bats that have the biggest associations with the Joker, never gets to fully express how he feels. This off-panel cop-out is honestly kind of insulting.

Another detour: the kidnapping ep. We finally get Duke's full backstory after TWO WHOLE SEASONS (besides a brief mention in #76), and it was just not good. Besides the fact that Duke's kidnapping is, as I've mentioned, just a way to get the plot moving, I don't like the way WFA handles his parents:

What on EARTH are you talking about. This feels like a justification for Duke having never mentioned his parents before, but it's completely untrue to Duke's canon character. Sure, he thinks about his parents more than he talks about them, but WFA Duke never thinks about them either!! This narration box just riles me up whenever I think about it.

I was a bit nicer to this part in my first analysis, but no this part just straight up sucks. First off, I don't believe canon!Duke fears being turned into "something like [his parents]". In Cursed Wheel, he more or less comes to terms with how his parents are: "every horrible thing coming out of [my parents'] mouths? They're actually telling me how much they love me. [...] Let them stay." WFA always picking the weirdest things (becoming like his parents, his powers) for Duke to be scared about!

Secondly, this part juxtaposes the 'horror' of becoming like his parents ("something like them") and the wonderful, beautiful vision of "home": Bruce Wayne. Not only is this in direct defiance of Duke's canon character, it just strikes me as an odd and mean-spirited comparison. It essentially erases Duke's parents from his vision of 'home', just to fit him into the Wayne nuclear family.

But to get to the actual topic of the ask: We Are Robin. I still think the We Are Robin ep (#144) is the best Duke in the entirety of WFA, but did things improve afterwards? Did we focus on the WAR kids, their relationship to Duke, or their overall relationship to Robin? Nope. Turns out WAR, like Duke, was a prop for Damian!!

Damian is too harsh in training the Robins, so Duke intervenes. Damian stomps off and has a heart-to-heart with Jon, during which he admits he was trying to prove himself as Robin by training WAR. I actually like this premise!!! Duke and Damian have always had a contentious relationship to each other's Robins, and it makes TOTAL sense for Damian to be dismissive of WAR and think of it as a way to 'prove' himself. The problem is we did this already. TOM KING did it, in Robin War!!!

This is literally a microwaved TK story with worse writing and less nuance. In Robin War, we explored the way Damian dismisses Duke + WAR, both Duke and Damian's feelings of inadequacy around being Robin, and both of them eventually finding common ground and accepting each other. This arc is that except we cut out Duke's perspective. Now, it's all about Damian's feelings about Robin, and nothing about Duke or WAR's relationship to the mantle!

I cannot stress enough that this is a worse version of Robin War, and Robin War isn't even that good!!!

By centering We Are Robin's appearance on Damian, we lose about 99% of WAR's relationships to each other (and especially to Duke). The only specific relationship we see is Duke and Izzy blushing around each other. No acknowledgement of the Dre-Duke beef, the Riko-Duke crush, Dax-Dre friendship, these are a bunch of extras in a movie about Damian Wayne I guess.

You get absolutely no sense of who Izzy, Riko, Dre, or Dax are. The only thing you learn about them is that they're incompetent!

It's been a couple of episodes and they've been beaten TWICE. I get that they're not the main characters, but compared to the Outlaws or other affiliated teams, WAR is portrayed as ineffectual. And both times it's for Damian's sake. This is so frustrating because Damian + WAR is a really interesting relationship, but because WFA never focuses on WAR's feelings or reactions, it doesn't feel like an equal conflict. It feels like Damian vs. some cardboard cutouts.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE??? Why aren't they even a tiny bit mad at Damian for either Robin War (WHICH DID HAPPEN BECAUSE WE ARE ROBIN IS CANON HERE) or what he did to them literally a few eps ago?? You know what, why aren't they mad at DUKE for ghosting and abandoning them?? They mention very briefly at the start that it's 'all good', but why??? Is it because WFA is not invested in their feelings??? Is it because we don't have space to explore even a modicum of Duke's story??????

Having a We Are Robin plot not focused on Duke Thomas or even We Are Robin is so upsetting, especially because the WAR ep was genuinely grounded in canon. Like you said in the ask, it does feel like they put that in there just to prove they've read WAR. What is clear to me now is that, though they've read the run, they didn't understand it. They did it for a perfunctory 'here's some Duke stuff' and never bothered to be interested in any of these characters' stories.

Because we should have gotten Duke's side of things. Damian gets an entire ep to talk to Jon and another to prove himself by fighting Joker, and Duke gets a few panels where he's like 'Damian don't usurp my training I forgive you though'. Season 3 has come the closest to giving WFA!Duke some depth, and because it comes the closest, it also fails the hardest. I still have hope that Duke will get some moments in this season, but I'm losing hope that it will make up for his treatment at all.

Apparently an upcoming Cass ep isn't great so they're really attacking me personally at this point. Idk what gets me is that for some people, this is their first exposure to Duke and WAR. For some people this is and will continue to be their only exposure. And it's this watered-down, uninteresting, bland, prop version of him that just is not the Duke Thomas I know and love.