WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the Titans Season 1 episode "Koriand'r," streaming now on DC Universe.
Dick Grayson's troubled relationship with Bruce Wayne has been a prime source of drama for much of the season, and will be again in the finale, but Rachel Roth's unseen, and unnamed, father has driven most of the action on Titans. The mysterious Organization sent assassins in pursuit of Rachel, and imprisoned her birth mother, on his behalf, while the inscrutable Kory Anders crisscrossed the globe, and the galaxy, to either protect or kill the girl. This week, after nine episodes, Rachel's father finally makes his debut, even if he's not quite what DC comics readers might have expected.
"Koriand'r," as the episode's title suggests, fills in some of the remaining gaps in the past of Kory (Ann Diop). But for anyone with a passing familiarity with the comics, or even the animated series, there are no real surprises: She is, indeed, an alien from the planet Tamaran. After nearly killing Rachel (Teagan Croft) at the farmhouse, Kory flees, with Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites) and Donna Troy (Conor Leslie) in hot pursuit, led by her fractured memories to the conveniently nearby hiding place of her spaceship.
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The vessel is presumably named the Exposition, because it's there that viewers learn all about Kory's mission, the high stakes and, yes, the name of Rachel's father: Trigon.
Introduced in 1980 in DC's The New Teen Titans #2, by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, Trigon is a tyrannical, world-conquering demon from another dimension who mated with an Earth woman, who later gave birth to a daughter, Raven. When, as a teen, Raven learned of her father's plan to conquer Earth, she seeks out the help of Robin, Wonder Girl, Beast Boy and other young heroes, who re-form the Teen Titans.
In the comics, as well as in animation, Trigon is traditionally depicted with red skin, four eyes and antler-like horns; he's often shown as a gargantuan figure, although he can change his size at will. When he finally arrives in the closing moments of "Koriand'r," summoned through a full-length mirror by Rachel ("the doorway that he can walk through"), he's decidedly not that. He's a very human-looking Seamus Dever, best known for his roles on General Hospital and Castle.
But, of course, that isn't Trigon's true form. We receive a glimpse of that earlier in the episode, aboard the spaceship, as Kory explains to Dick and Donna that Trigon will cover Earth in his darkness on his way to destroying every world in his path. She shows a hologram of her home planet Tamaran on fire, a prediction of what's to come if this demon isn't stopped, before displaying another image.
While not quite in line with the comic book source material, the holographic figure is more in keeping with Trigon's demonic roots. He sports goat-like horns and legs (and presumably hooves), with some added junk in the other-dimensional trunk, so to speak. This Trigon is thicc. It seems likely we'll see this version of the demon, in all his glory, in the inevitable showdown in next week's season finale.
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But, of course, none of that is as surprising as the revelation that Rachel's loving mother Angela (Rachel Nichols), so cruelly kept from her daughter for years, is actually in league with Trigon. It turns out that Dick was right about the asylum, but not in the way he thought: It was a trap, but more important than delivering the Titans to the mysterious organization, it reunited Rachel with her mother. Now, left alone at the farmhouse with Rachel and Gar, Angela secretly poisons the latter, which forces her daughter to make a choice. Unable to heal her friend, she summons her father, who can.
Now streaming on DC Universe, Titans stars Brenton Thwaites as Dick Grayson, Anna Diop as Kory Anders, Teagan Croft as Rachel Roth and Ryan Potter as Garfield Logan, with Conor Leslie as Donna Troy, Rachel Nichols as Angela and Seamus Dever as Trigon.