  |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
| “ | The plan is simple. We immerse the good citizens of Gotham in a world of fear and terror where there is no one to protect them. Then when they feel that all hope has been exhausted, we swoop in and be the answer to their fear. You feed a starving dog, it's always by your side. | „ |
| ~ Jonathan Crane explaining his plan to Jason Todd. |
Doctor Jonathan Crane, also known as the Scarecrow, is the main antagonist of Season 3 in the DC Universe original series Titans.
He was a psychologist conducting illegal experiments on people using a toxin that causes them to hallucinate about their worst fears, until he was apprehended by Batman and institutionalized in Arkham Asylum. He later manipulated Jason Todd into mass producing anti-fear gas as the vigilante Red Hood. When that failed, he framed the Titans for tainting Gotham's water supply, and made Red Hood out to be the city's new savior - all part of his ultimate plan to use Jason as his puppet to control the city's inhabitants like a god. Out of spite for Bruce Wayne, he would later change his plan, using corrupt GCPD officers bribed by Jason to reacquire his fear toxin and reignite an old plan to kill Gotham's entire population.
He is portrayed by Vincent Kartheiser, who also portrayed Steve Getz in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
History[]
Early life[]
Little is known of Crane's early life, other than he allegedly suffered psychological abuse (and also possibly physical abuse) at the hands of his mother, who demanded that he become a doctor like herself. To accomplish this, Crane enrolled in Gotham University, where he befriended Bruce Wayne's future ally Leslie Thompkins, and eventually graduated with a master's degree in psychology. Crane would later become a psychologist himself, during which he conducted illegal experiments on his own patients, using his newly-developed fear toxin to torture them with hallucinations of their greatest terrors. His mother would also abandon him for a new family despite his achievements, which may or may not have been a catalyst for his path to villainy.
Becoming Scarecrow[]
At some point, Leslie Thompkins discovered Crane's experiments and outed him, to which Crane retaliated by poisoning her with his fear toxin. She was saved by Batman, but Crane would soon begin a criminal career under the influence of his Scarecrow persona. He devised a plan to detonate a series of explosives to spread his toxin all over Gotham, placing the bombs in locations that referenced the W. H. Auden poem "September 1, 1939". To taunt Commissioner James Gordon, Scarecrow left him with a copy of the poem to deduce the locations of his bombs. In order to thwart Scarecrow's master plan, Batman had to use the Oracle program to track and eventually apprehend the madman. With his scheme left in ruins, Crane was incarcerated in Arkham Asylum. However, at Bruce Wayne's suggestion, Crane was made into a consultant for the Gotham City Police Department, where he proved exceptionally skilled at profiling criminals.
Titans[]
"Lazarus" (flashbacks)[]
After Bruce Wayne forced him to abandon his position as Robin, a disillusioned Jason Todd would visit Crane in his cell at Arkham Asylum, demanding the formula for his fear toxin so that Jason could reverse-engineer it into an anti-fear drug. After returning to Crane with evidence that his new drug worked, he and Jason conspired to finally bring down the Joker. High on the anti-fear drug, Jason confronted the Joker at an abandoned amusement park, where the Clown Prince of Crime bludgeoned Jason to death with a crowbar.
Unbeknownst to Jason, this was part of Crane's true plan all along. Crane would soon have Jason resurrected via a Lazarus Pit that had been left beneath Arkham by Ra's al Ghul, using his henchman Cyrus Beake to smuggle the body from the morgue. Upon returning from the dead, Crane used Jason's own anti-fear drug to brainwash him into becoming the new vigilante Red Hood, following Bruce Wayne's retirement from the Batman mantle and leaving Gotham.
"Red Hood" and "Blackfire"[]
Crane during his transfer to Blackgate.
Three months later, Dick Grayson - initially unaware of Crane's involvement with Red Hood - would visit Crane in Arkham to help the GCPD in solving the Red Hood mystery. However, Dick would later learn Red Hood's true identity during a confrontation between the two. After Jason staged an attempted assassination on Crane in order to have him prematurely transferred to Blackgate Penitentiary, Dick would piece together the clues and abduct Crane during the transfer himself. Dick took Crane hostage and locked him in an old cabin on the outskirts of Gotham, a place where Bruce had trained both Dick and Jason for their roles as Robin. Knowing that Jason would come for his mentor, Dick used Crane as bait for Red Hood. However, Jason would ultimately prove victorious during a battle with Dick in the Gotham outskirts, and he escaped the scene with Crane.
"Lady Vic" and "51%"[]
Now reunited with Jason and free from Arkham, Crane hired the assassin Lady Vic to steal a special machine designed to mass-produce and multiply chemicals, as well as using her to snap a picture of Barbara Gordon so that Crane could use it to hack into the Oracle program via its facial recognition security. This would horrify Barbara, scaring her into destroying the very weapon Bruce had once used to defeat Crane. Crane later conspired with Gotham's top mob bosses to spread the anti-fear drug throughout the city and control its population, using the Snowy Cones Ice Cream Factory and the stolen chemical multiplier to manufacture the drug. However, his operation would soon be thwarted by the combined efforts of the Titans, Superboy, and Blackfire, forcing Crane to flee with Jason.
"Home" and "Troubled Water"[]
Emboldened by the foiling of his first plan, Crane plotted to poison Gotham's entire water supply with the anti-fear drug, taking shelter in an old pumping station. After visiting his mother and snapping her neck out of hatred and resentment for her abuse, Crane returned to the pumping station and waited for Jason to return. With the drug's influence on his pawn wearing off, a remorseful Jason would plead for amends with Dick, but unbeknownst to them, Crane had secretly overheard their conversation. A curious Tim Drake would follow Jason to the station, only for Crane to shoot him in the back in order to be rid of the witness. When the Titans arrived, Crane took advantage of the opportunity by tricking Starfire into attacking him with her powers. The blast missed Crane, and instead allowed his entire vat of anti-fear toxin to seep into Gotham's water system, plunging the city into further chaos.
Crane and Jason later framed Dick Grayson and the Titans for the poisoning, through a propaganda video that blamed Nightwing and his allies for the disaster, while promoting Red Hood as Gotham's new savior. After Jason bribed GCPD commander Fletcher with a modest sum, the two villains gained the allegiance of corrupt officers under Fletcher's control, using the police to hunt down the Titans as criminals and having Barbara Gordon arrested. Feeling victorious, Crane and Jason took up residency in Wayne Manor, where the two planned to continue their work.
"The Call is Coming From Inside the House" and "Prodigal"[]
While helping himself to the weapons of the Batcave, Crane uncovered an audio file on himself from Bruce's records. Bruce correctly deduced that Crane was a petty coward who used others as proxies to fulfill his plans, while the Scarecrow personality was deemed the true evil mastermind. Enraged by this, Crane would secretly change his plans altogether. After a public battle between Nightwing and Red Hood in Gotham City - which resulted in Dick being shot in the back by an angry bystander - Jason would leave him for dead and return to Wayne Manor, where he discovered Crane in the aftermath of a psychotic break. Crane had disemboweled a pizza delivery worker named Owen to prove himself as horrific as Scarecrow, and then scarred his own face with a straight razor.
Crane revealed that he was no longer satisfied with controlling Gotham through the anti-fear drug, and instead, he planned to commit genocide by killing the city's entire population. Reigniting his old plan in order to prove to Bruce Wayne that he was indeed a capable villain without Scarecrow. Disillusioned with Crane, Jason refused to help him any further, to which Crane responded by attempting to kill Jason with Scarecrow's sickle weapon that Crane had recovered from the Batcave. Jason escaped, and Crane set out to forward his plan by having his rogue GCPD officers recover his original fear toxin from the Gotham Armory.
"Purple Rain"[]
Taunting the resurrected Dick Grayson, Crane set off the first of his bombs in Gotham Town's Square, killing thousands of civilians. However, instead of searching for the other bombs as Batman and Jim Gordon had done before, Dick worked with the resurrected Tim Drake and Gar Logan to infiltrate Wayne Manor and bring down Crane. After the trio defeated Crane's GCPD guards, now joined by Jason, Crane attempted to detonate all of the bombs at once, but became infuriated when the computer failed. Confronted by the heroes, Dick revealed to Crane that Barbara Gordon had worked with ARGUS to hack the system and create a fake screen, preventing Crane from setting off the explosives. Tim Drake would then punch Crane in the face for killing him and attempting to murder all of Gotham, subduing him.
Crane was then apprehended and returned to Arkham Asylum, this time in solitary confinement. He was later visited by Dick, to which Crane assured that Gotham had not seen the last of him and that he would eventually escape again. However, Dick has Rachel Roth subject Crane to the Lazarus Pit's dark magic, forcing the madman to forever endure the suffering and trauma of all those resurrected by the pit.
Personality[]
| “ | It's a broken record. You're afraid to take risks, John. Loved ones, career, physical confrontation; So you apply the cold and calm coward's vices. Drugs, weak friends to speak for you, shields you from the world. | „ |
| ~ Crane's mother on his psychology. |
| “ | Addendum, psych profile, Jonathan Crane. After a detailed study of Crane's criminal record, as well as an assessment of his particular form of psychosis, I can conclude that Crane's efforts are most effective via the use of proxies. Unwitting associates commonly drugged into submissive complacence, as opposed to any direct actions of the dominant personality. In other words, Jonathan Crane, the victim of abuse and neglect, was ill-equipped for the Scarecrow's unique form of brutality. Taking into account that Crane's alter ego was the mastermind, while Crane himself, the scientist, the diligent student, was wholly ineffectual. It is my opinion that Crane is one of the most pitiable among Gotham's violent criminals. A broken man without a voice doomed to speak through others. | „ |
| ~ Batman's audio file on Scarecrow. |
Crane is a sadistic and remorseless psychopath who revels in the suffering of others above all else. According to Leslie Thompkins, he was a brilliant but egotistical man driven by pride and who was always obsessed with fear, even back in his college years. He is shown to have a prominent humorous side, albeit his amusement almost always comes at the expense of another's suffering. He is revealed to be deeply insecure, as shown when he decided to coldly murder a pizza delivery worker for the sole purpose of proving to himself that he wasn't the petty coward who Bruce Wayne had deemed him, and then choosing to murder Gotham's entire population just to further spite the already broken Bruce.
Little is known of how the Scarecrow persona differentiates from Crane himself, other than Scarecrow clearly looks down upon the man he once was, at one point taunting Crane for being the coward that his mother always said he was. Scarecrow was also the true mastermind behind Crane's most destructive plot, suggesting that Crane himself lacked the ambition to see it through without his villainous altar personality.
Relationships[]
Family[]
Allies[]
|
Enemies[]
|
Quotes[]
| “ | Dick Grayson: A woman killed herself today, doctor. Very strange case. Jonathan Crane: I heard. She asked for a new guy, Nightwing. Poor Batman, I mean the dude has one little murdering spree, and all of the sudden, he's yesterday's news, right? |
„ |
| ~ Crane talking with Dick Grayson. |
| “ | Your story's biblical, brother, I mean, really. You ditch the family safety net, you flee swinging Wayne Manor, and then years later, like the motherf****ing prodigal son, home again, home again, jiggity-jig. | „ |
| ~ Crane to Grayson. |
| “ | Jonathan Crane: It's the Bird's opening. Dick Grayson: What? Jonathan Crane: It's the Bird's opening. It's one of the oldest known openings in chess. It was made famous in 1855 by Henry Edward Bird. It's a classic king-pawn opening. The two are connected, relying on each other. The king moves stealthily in the shadows, while the pawns are sent into the teeth of destruction so that he may advance. Dick Grayson: And you got all that from the police cheat sheet? Jonathan Crane: Yeah. The note, it's written on the back of a page, torn from a chess manual. It's just his opening move. |
„ |
| ~ Crane explains that Red Hood's actions are his opening move to Dick Grayson. |
| “ | You were just a boy. Those were the lessons that he taught you. It's not your fault. But you need to make sure this doesn't happen to someone else. That it stops with you. Now you let Gotham take care of Gotham. The water will find its level. Stop trying to prove something here. | „ |
| ~ Crane trying to manipulate Dick Grayson. |
| “ | Get your chemistry kit, an RV, and you've got a TV show. | „ |
| ~ Crane after seeing Jason on anti-fear toxin. |
| “ | You're gonna give this city what it really needs with no hesitation, no guilt, no fear. New mask, new name, new you. We'll punish all of them for what this city has done to us and then you'll be their symbol. Gotham doesn't understand justice, it only understands terror. You'll be their mirror now. Stand tall Red Hood, show them what they are. | „ |
| ~ Jonathan Crane turning Jason Todd into Red Hood. |
| “ | Jonathan Crane: I have... I have terror, Mom. Mrs. Crane: Terror? Jonathan Crane: Terror that I'll fall short again. Terror that, my ambitions will be unrealized and I see it all. I see it all laid out right before me, and just.. just as I'm about to break through, this dark creature just swoops through and it just steals it all from me. Mrs. Crane: Does this creature have a shape? A color? Jonathan Crane: It's just darkness. Mrs. Crane: Like Batman? Jonathan Crane: There is no actual dark creature Mom! It's a f****ing metaphor! There's no man in a cape, there's no boy in a mask that's gonna keep me from Valhalla. I am both the dreamer and the thief! Are you unable to grasp such a simple psychological concept?! |
„ |
| ~ Jonathan Crane talking to his mother. |
| “ | Welcome to Crane Manor. | „ |
| ~ Crane taking over Wayne Manor. |
| “ | Jason. Ah, finally home. Finally home. I see you lost the hood, too. Good call. You know, the time for masks is over. | „ |
| ~ Crane to Jason Todd revealing his scarred face. |
| “ | I've always wanted to help Gotham, that was my plan two years ago when Batman disrupted it and now I can finally see my plans come to fruition. I've designed a superior product and I've produced enough of it to medicate this entire city placing them under our control. (Gangster: You call this under control?) Well, you know, we've had to tweak some of the dosage, make it a little more happy, a little less stabby. Your basic instincts set free. Free from restraint, free from conscience. That's what my drug offers, freedom, and what is more addictive than that? So you all want business, and I want a distribution for my product at a premium price. The good people of Gotham, they just want a feel-good drug. So we have Red Hood who will protect our operation, and within twenty-four hours, you'll all be richer than your wildest dreams. | „ |
| ~ Johnathan Crane's speech to the crime bosses. |
| “ | I used to come here during lunch when I was a med student. There's nothing like pairing an egg salad sandwich with a craniotomy. | „ |
| ~ Crane to Jason. |
Trivia[]
- This is the first adaptation of Scarecrow with facial hair, though he shaves it off later in the season.
- This version of Scarecrow is also a smoker, often using cannabis.
- Toward the end of the series, Crane repeatedly references the poem "September 1, 1939" by W. H. Auden.
- Crane's Scarecrow personality never manifests throughout the series, only appearing within his subconscious in a single episode.
- Jonathan Crane and Scarecrow being depicted as two separate personalities is similar to fellow Batman rogue Two-Face.
- During his resurrection in the Lazarus Pit, Dick Grayson sees a subconscious hallucination of Crane, who taunts him over his failure to save Jason.
- This incarnation of Scarecrow could be considered one of the few to appear in recent media who is not used as a plot device to deliver his fear toxin to the hero, as the entire Titans series never depicts a single fear toxin-induced hallucination. Instead, the story of season 3 revolves around the anti-fear drug developed by Jason Todd, and Crane's traditional fear toxin is instead used as poison.
.jpeg){kind=link}