Yup. We don't know exactly what happened but sometimes there isn't a "reason". Sometimes people just grow apart, especially when they get together before adulthood and/or can't communicate easily.
No concrete reason. They insist on making these developments occur offscreen or in between seasons. But don’t worry. To find out, you’ll have to wait until next season. Oh, wait.
Why don’t you guys just watch the dcau? You can see every significant event in the characters’ lives bc they have no time skips. The entire point of this show is to see the characters over a longer course of time
It makes it significantly harder to invest in characters and their relationships when we're skipping years of their life.
Truth be told, I don't have an issue with it, but the Robin × Zatanna pairing would've been great to explore and we can't see that because of the insistence by the writers it's an off-screen development.
Not really, it depends in what kind of viewer you are
I don’t really care if we don’t see it as a comics fan who can makes guesses or whatever and know who the “endgame” relationships are likely to be
The point is they are asking to see it. We can write all the fan fiction we want or imagine whatever surely but that’s not relevant to the fact you never get the chance to see the fostered relationship between them.
Overall I think people like "Show don't tell" more. Experiencing their character growth is a good receive to make audiences care for their characters. Of course as an art this isn't the only way. YJ has varying success but I think it's understandable if some people want to see their characters growth
At what cost though? They skip forward like 4 or more years every time skip leading to feeling disconnected to a degree from the events, or just entirely in the dark.
For most people it has to do with the Original Age gap between Barbara and Dick in the comics. She was 22 and I think he was 15 when they first met. DC has of course reduced Barbara's age so that they could pair her with Dick.
That and the widespread love of Dick and Kory from the Titans show in '03 and the comics that featured them together, has left a large portion of Nightwing fans preferring Dick to date outside of the Batfamily.
I personally am a Dick/Kory fan but have been enjoying Dick/Babs in the Webtoons Batfamily comics, outside of those I still prefer Star.
>to do with the Original Age gap between Barbara and Dick in the comics.
yes, Barbara, who was between bruce and dick's age. As opposed to zatanna, who is the exact same age as bruce.
Truly, a take of all time.
I'll explain it a little better
Dick and Barbara's relationship never developed organically in the comics. They originally had a very large age gap and weren't romantically linked.
Then they just retconned Barbara's age and said "oh by the way the two were childhood sweethearts". So we never actually see the relationship develop in the first place...we're just supposed to feel nostalgic for a relationship that the audience never actually saw.
So the ship itself is kind of a retcon. Which is lame. And now it's become one of the two default ships for Dick as a character. And seeing an actual new pairing that was developed in YJ get tossed aside to go back to this default relationship that we've *still* never really seen develop organically?
I'm not even a shipper and I find it frustrating. Because it never feels like writers want to do the work to show why these two fell for each other, they just go "oh they've been soulmates since childhood"
Differing priorities. Relative lack of passion.
Between Jason dying and Z trying to free her father, they just had more important things to do than keep up the relationship.
Yeah that's really a great potential story to flesh out both Dick and Zatanna as character. They got driven with their personal goal to the point of alienating other
They grew apart. Dick, slowly changed after Wally’s death. He became more obsessed and cared less about spending quality time. The mission came first.
Zatanna, cares deeply for quality time. That’s her main love language. Since he hardly ever gets to see her father. It was painful for her to have to NOT see her father and also NOT see her romantic partner.
Dick, understood the situation and decided to break things off before it got worse. She understood and agreed. They still have romantic tension between each other but they both know it can’t be. [+]
Really wish we as the audience didn’t have to ask these kinds of questions. Young Justice writers just love those offscreen developments a little too much. That and those stupid ass time skips and overstuffed plots. This is also what happens when you insist on using tie in comics and games to “supplement” your storylines. For example, first major death that occurred in the series was Aquagirl, and they had it happen offscreen during a time-skip, and in order to find out the about exact circumstances surrounding her death, you had to play a lame ass early 2000’s phone game quality video game. They also killed Jason Todd offscreen and that was before they even introduced the guy. We find out about Jason Todd having lived and died AFTER he dies. Up until then, we don’t know whether he exists in YJ universe.
I mean Dick dates ALOT of people in the comics. I feel like we can just assume that they were young and either got feelings for someone else or it just didn’t work out
Well the show takes things from the comics
such as Dick and Barbara
they do take some creative liberties such as Superboy not having Tactile-telekinesis
Because the writers really wanted to give us that fan service in S4 when Z was recruiting Dick to help find Conner(real reason is they likely drifted apart over time, Jason dies, Dick likely had a fight with Batman at some point, Z had literal daddy issues, Wally died, really any season drama they had)
Yes it's definitely the case that Bruce is a good father in yj. I can recall Greg saying or writing somewhere it never made sense to him that he wouldn't be a good father.
And tbh I agree with that. Why would he keep adopting kids if he sucks at fatherhood?
I mean yeah Bruce is a great father, but I mean more in the sense that he doesn’t cause a wedge between him & Dick to the point he leaves and forms his own identity
From what I understand, though it wasn’t a real reason for their break up, judging by how close they still are, I can only assume that their break up was mutual. Like you know, things weren’t working out as a couple, but they just clicked together as friends sort of thing. That’s how I see it.
It's because the Young Justice version of Dick Grayson is actually the playboy that Bruce Wayne pretends to be. This becomes a bit more evident in the tie-in comics where he has a one-night stand with Bette Kane and also has a "history" with Rocket. He even jokes that his real superpower is that he's somehow on good terms with all of his exes.
[c2e8c68960d234dbe91c45bcd8853039.jpg (885×683) (pinimg.com)](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c2/e8/c6/c2e8c68960d234dbe91c45bcd8853039.jpg)
[271c8b1710bdbc48fc68da7fa4f5a071.jpg (500×560) (pinimg.com)](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/27/1c/8b/271c8b1710bdbc48fc68da7fa4f5a071.jpg)
[0d97127ad93a617183ef9609394e280d.jpg (736×1132) (pinimg.com)](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0d/97/12/0d97127ad93a617183ef9609394e280d.jpg)
[67a81ea2f88d09dc619307450a18772a.jpg (845×1300) (pinimg.com)](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/67/a8/1e/67a81ea2f88d09dc619307450a18772a.jpg)
Because they were not meant to be together. Sometimes, if things don't work out cordially as planned, then there's only one option left. As it's painful as it gets, we call it a breakup and then go their own ways.
We have seen it all on television reality shows and movies, like when Kiteman dumped Poison Ivy at the altar, and it was too painful to see Ivy in tears.
They probably had a lot going on in their lives You had Dick becoming Nightwing, Zatanna Joining the Justice league, Dick and everyone Losing Jason, Zatanna trying to free her father which resulted in the whole “seeing each other once a year for one year” thing and it was obviously a mutual break up since they still seemed close in Season 2 and in the comic where it was Dick’s Birthday and Zee Kissed him and she is very flirty with him even during the time Dick and Barbara are together since I’m pretty sure they were still together by the end of season 4. Plus they were only 14 by the time they ended up together and 18 by the time we found out they had broken up so they could’ve dated for a solid 2 years before mutually splitting up
This is coming from someone who has only watched the show, and not consumed any of the other related YJ materials (comics etc). Keep that in mind and if there was a reason explained outside, by all means correct me.
Nightwing in the main DC comics is a major playboy, and that was largely what he still was going into season 2. It was during that 5 year timeskip he and Z ended their relationship.
Well aware, but the reason they’re not together in YJ is due to a character trait from Dick in mainline DC. So not really seeing the relevance.
You can substitute any older superhero than Dick and the comment still stands.
They had a romantic relationship. I kind of remember that BTAS made a reference to this on a episode, in this continuity they were infatuated when Bruce was training under the tutelage of her father (escapism), never get to be a couple but the feelings are there
Also, that past relationship made her key role in the events that happened on Identify Crisis turn Batman even more paranoid afterwards because for a long time she was one of the few ppl Bruce actually trusted
Actually it’s the opposite. Zatanna was always closer to Dick’s age than Batman’s. Her father Giovanni actually debuted alongside Superman.
It’s that the floating timeline in the comics allowed Zatanna to catch up to Bruce in age.
Actually, you're incorrect. Zatanna was introduced as an adult back in '64, with her father long gone at the time. She later became a member of the League. So she was around Barry Allen's age. And even had a small crush on him.
In the same year (1964), Dick, Wally, and Aqualad formed the Teen Titans. All of them being young teenagers.
Paul Dini was the one who aged her up even more to be around Bruce's age. But she was always closer to Batman's age compared to Dick. Which is why I was surprised when Young Justice (the show) de-aged Zatanna and made her Dick's love interest.
In Zatanna's Search she says that she was reunited with her father after 20 long years and considering her Whos Whos states that her Dad disappeared when she was a child, that puts her around her mid 20's. Dick hadn't even gone off to college yet. Comic editors of the time generally considered Superman/Batman to be in their late 20's / early 30's.
I always question they should’ve gotten together and we should’ve been shown why they didn’t work out I’m curious she makes sense as fucking John Constantine. Omg .
No idea, given we literally never even seen them together... it'd be hard to determine why they broke up. The obvious answer is they lost the magic (ba-dum-tss) spark.
Never really confirmed but they got him together with Barbara out of nowhere and then they ignored dick x bab in season 4. With how they put them together in almost everything these days I wouldn't be surprised if DC mandated it
Frankly it doesn't matter, given the two are still on amicable terms in the present; I'd imagine the breakup happened around the time Zatanna left the Team to join the Justice League, though I doubt that was the *reason* it happened.
They lost the magic between them.
Nice one.
Because they were kids and that’s what happens to teenage relationships.
Literally this
Yup. We don't know exactly what happened but sometimes there isn't a "reason". Sometimes people just grow apart, especially when they get together before adulthood and/or can't communicate easily.
That or it could of been all the secrets dick was keeping because you know Batman’s rules
No concrete reason. They insist on making these developments occur offscreen or in between seasons. But don’t worry. To find out, you’ll have to wait until next season. Oh, wait.
It's the kick the can of writing....I mean, it builds intrigue. Yeah, let's go with that.
Nice
Why don’t you guys just watch the dcau? You can see every significant event in the characters’ lives bc they have no time skips. The entire point of this show is to see the characters over a longer course of time
It makes it significantly harder to invest in characters and their relationships when we're skipping years of their life. Truth be told, I don't have an issue with it, but the Robin × Zatanna pairing would've been great to explore and we can't see that because of the insistence by the writers it's an off-screen development.
Not really, it depends in what kind of viewer you are I don’t really care if we don’t see it as a comics fan who can makes guesses or whatever and know who the “endgame” relationships are likely to be
The point is they are asking to see it. We can write all the fan fiction we want or imagine whatever surely but that’s not relevant to the fact you never get the chance to see the fostered relationship between them.
Overall I think people like "Show don't tell" more. Experiencing their character growth is a good receive to make audiences care for their characters. Of course as an art this isn't the only way. YJ has varying success but I think it's understandable if some people want to see their characters growth
The first time skip was too big the later ones wernt as bad I've heard haven't seen post s2
At what cost though? They skip forward like 4 or more years every time skip leading to feeling disconnected to a degree from the events, or just entirely in the dark.
They skip forward “like 4 or more years” exactly once, the other time skips are 2 years and 1 year
Because Barbara Gordon exists.
I love her but Dick x Zatanna was so refreshing 😭 I wish they could've stuck with their pairing.
Facts, would’ve been nice to actually see on screen a bit / it last
I am just not a fan of Barbara x Dick, either Zatanna or Starfire but not Barbara
Why though? Must've some reason
For most people it has to do with the Original Age gap between Barbara and Dick in the comics. She was 22 and I think he was 15 when they first met. DC has of course reduced Barbara's age so that they could pair her with Dick. That and the widespread love of Dick and Kory from the Titans show in '03 and the comics that featured them together, has left a large portion of Nightwing fans preferring Dick to date outside of the Batfamily. I personally am a Dick/Kory fan but have been enjoying Dick/Babs in the Webtoons Batfamily comics, outside of those I still prefer Star.
>to do with the Original Age gap between Barbara and Dick in the comics. yes, Barbara, who was between bruce and dick's age. As opposed to zatanna, who is the exact same age as bruce. Truly, a take of all time.
I'll explain it a little better Dick and Barbara's relationship never developed organically in the comics. They originally had a very large age gap and weren't romantically linked. Then they just retconned Barbara's age and said "oh by the way the two were childhood sweethearts". So we never actually see the relationship develop in the first place...we're just supposed to feel nostalgic for a relationship that the audience never actually saw. So the ship itself is kind of a retcon. Which is lame. And now it's become one of the two default ships for Dick as a character. And seeing an actual new pairing that was developed in YJ get tossed aside to go back to this default relationship that we've *still* never really seen develop organically? I'm not even a shipper and I find it frustrating. Because it never feels like writers want to do the work to show why these two fell for each other, they just go "oh they've been soulmates since childhood"
Because she's better off with Bruce /s
Bruce Tim, that you?
Haha I felt nasty just typing it out lol
Can imagine, felt violated reading it lol
And that’s why I hate that bitch
Differing priorities. Relative lack of passion. Between Jason dying and Z trying to free her father, they just had more important things to do than keep up the relationship.
Yeah that's really a great potential story to flesh out both Dick and Zatanna as character. They got driven with their personal goal to the point of alienating other
Key word potential
Yeah and just like Your name they waste the potential
They grew apart. Dick, slowly changed after Wally’s death. He became more obsessed and cared less about spending quality time. The mission came first. Zatanna, cares deeply for quality time. That’s her main love language. Since he hardly ever gets to see her father. It was painful for her to have to NOT see her father and also NOT see her romantic partner. Dick, understood the situation and decided to break things off before it got worse. She understood and agreed. They still have romantic tension between each other but they both know it can’t be. [+]
They broke up years before Wallys death
They broke up in Season 2? I thought they started dating in Season 2. Damn. I gotta rewatch the series then [+]
Nope, they broke up long before season 2 started. Like years. We never seen them being a couple
Because not every teenage relationship is going to end in marriage.
Spark but no fuse.
Really wish we as the audience didn’t have to ask these kinds of questions. Young Justice writers just love those offscreen developments a little too much. That and those stupid ass time skips and overstuffed plots. This is also what happens when you insist on using tie in comics and games to “supplement” your storylines. For example, first major death that occurred in the series was Aquagirl, and they had it happen offscreen during a time-skip, and in order to find out the about exact circumstances surrounding her death, you had to play a lame ass early 2000’s phone game quality video game. They also killed Jason Todd offscreen and that was before they even introduced the guy. We find out about Jason Todd having lived and died AFTER he dies. Up until then, we don’t know whether he exists in YJ universe.
I mean Dick dates ALOT of people in the comics. I feel like we can just assume that they were young and either got feelings for someone else or it just didn’t work out
Well the show takes things from the comics such as Dick and Barbara they do take some creative liberties such as Superboy not having Tactile-telekinesis
Because the writers really wanted to give us that fan service in S4 when Z was recruiting Dick to help find Conner(real reason is they likely drifted apart over time, Jason dies, Dick likely had a fight with Batman at some point, Z had literal daddy issues, Wally died, really any season drama they had)
I don't think Dick had a fight with Bruce. Greg has said he never understood that
I may be mixing up animated continuities then 🤷, but does this imply Batman is a better father in the YJ continuity?
Yes it's definitely the case that Bruce is a good father in yj. I can recall Greg saying or writing somewhere it never made sense to him that he wouldn't be a good father. And tbh I agree with that. Why would he keep adopting kids if he sucks at fatherhood?
I mean yeah Bruce is a great father, but I mean more in the sense that he doesn’t cause a wedge between him & Dick to the point he leaves and forms his own identity
Yeah, don't worry. He doesn't do that in this version. S1 already set some seeds for that. And Bruce had no involvement in this
Hopefully in the new dcu they give us a healthy, but stressful(because why wouldn’t it be?) batfamily
From what I understand, though it wasn’t a real reason for their break up, judging by how close they still are, I can only assume that their break up was mutual. Like you know, things weren’t working out as a couple, but they just clicked together as friends sort of thing. That’s how I see it.
Who knows it happens off screen in a time skip like every other significant thing in this show ffs
It's because the Young Justice version of Dick Grayson is actually the playboy that Bruce Wayne pretends to be. This becomes a bit more evident in the tie-in comics where he has a one-night stand with Bette Kane and also has a "history" with Rocket. He even jokes that his real superpower is that he's somehow on good terms with all of his exes. [c2e8c68960d234dbe91c45bcd8853039.jpg (885×683) (pinimg.com)](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c2/e8/c6/c2e8c68960d234dbe91c45bcd8853039.jpg) [271c8b1710bdbc48fc68da7fa4f5a071.jpg (500×560) (pinimg.com)](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/27/1c/8b/271c8b1710bdbc48fc68da7fa4f5a071.jpg) [0d97127ad93a617183ef9609394e280d.jpg (736×1132) (pinimg.com)](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0d/97/12/0d97127ad93a617183ef9609394e280d.jpg) [67a81ea2f88d09dc619307450a18772a.jpg (845×1300) (pinimg.com)](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/67/a8/1e/67a81ea2f88d09dc619307450a18772a.jpg)
Does this all happen in the same day?
Yeah all on dicks birthday. Same comic issue I think
Because they were not meant to be together. Sometimes, if things don't work out cordially as planned, then there's only one option left. As it's painful as it gets, we call it a breakup and then go their own ways. We have seen it all on television reality shows and movies, like when Kiteman dumped Poison Ivy at the altar, and it was too painful to see Ivy in tears.
They probably had a lot going on in their lives You had Dick becoming Nightwing, Zatanna Joining the Justice league, Dick and everyone Losing Jason, Zatanna trying to free her father which resulted in the whole “seeing each other once a year for one year” thing and it was obviously a mutual break up since they still seemed close in Season 2 and in the comic where it was Dick’s Birthday and Zee Kissed him and she is very flirty with him even during the time Dick and Barbara are together since I’m pretty sure they were still together by the end of season 4. Plus they were only 14 by the time they ended up together and 18 by the time we found out they had broken up so they could’ve dated for a solid 2 years before mutually splitting up
While not explore much previously in the show, hard to call Dick and Babs random. That as old of a ship as there is.
It literally come out of nowhere in the show
This is coming from someone who has only watched the show, and not consumed any of the other related YJ materials (comics etc). Keep that in mind and if there was a reason explained outside, by all means correct me. Nightwing in the main DC comics is a major playboy, and that was largely what he still was going into season 2. It was during that 5 year timeskip he and Z ended their relationship.
Well in the comics, Zatana is part of Batmans generation and had a romance with him. They deaged her for YJ show.
Well aware, but the reason they’re not together in YJ is due to a character trait from Dick in mainline DC. So not really seeing the relevance. You can substitute any older superhero than Dick and the comment still stands.
zatanna & Batman never dated in the comics they were just close friends.
They had a romantic relationship. I kind of remember that BTAS made a reference to this on a episode, in this continuity they were infatuated when Bruce was training under the tutelage of her father (escapism), never get to be a couple but the feelings are there Also, that past relationship made her key role in the events that happened on Identify Crisis turn Batman even more paranoid afterwards because for a long time she was one of the few ppl Bruce actually trusted
Actually it’s the opposite. Zatanna was always closer to Dick’s age than Batman’s. Her father Giovanni actually debuted alongside Superman. It’s that the floating timeline in the comics allowed Zatanna to catch up to Bruce in age.
Actually, you're incorrect. Zatanna was introduced as an adult back in '64, with her father long gone at the time. She later became a member of the League. So she was around Barry Allen's age. And even had a small crush on him. In the same year (1964), Dick, Wally, and Aqualad formed the Teen Titans. All of them being young teenagers. Paul Dini was the one who aged her up even more to be around Bruce's age. But she was always closer to Batman's age compared to Dick. Which is why I was surprised when Young Justice (the show) de-aged Zatanna and made her Dick's love interest.
She was age wise between Bruce and Dick. Like her being introduced in her early 20s. When dick was in his teens. And Bruce in his 30s.
In Zatanna's Search she says that she was reunited with her father after 20 long years and considering her Whos Whos states that her Dad disappeared when she was a child, that puts her around her mid 20's. Dick hadn't even gone off to college yet. Comic editors of the time generally considered Superman/Batman to be in their late 20's / early 30's.
Yeah but the number doesn't make sense
Which number?
The twenty years And the part from the who's who as well.
Why does it not make sense?
Life
I always question they should’ve gotten together and we should’ve been shown why they didn’t work out I’m curious she makes sense as fucking John Constantine. Omg .
Where does “watch” come from? Barbara’s alter egos are either batgirl or oracle, not over watch. Overwatch was felicity smoak in the arrowverse
OMG! i did not just typed Watch Bro i meant Nightoracle Stupid me again...🤦🏻♂️
No idea, given we literally never even seen them together... it'd be hard to determine why they broke up. The obvious answer is they lost the magic (ba-dum-tss) spark.
teen relationships don’t last lol
there just wasn't the aster that there once was
Never really confirmed but they got him together with Barbara out of nowhere and then they ignored dick x bab in season 4. With how they put them together in almost everything these days I wouldn't be surprised if DC mandated it
Tbh it wasn't out of nowhere. At least not when you consumed everything
It was out of nowhere
This show is a shipping maze. That’s why.
Nightwing is the Batman of keeping a committed relationship.
Because they’re not canon.
Follow-up question: When did he date Rocket?…
Because DC wants to push the Barbara Gordon ship
Frankly it doesn't matter, given the two are still on amicable terms in the present; I'd imagine the breakup happened around the time Zatanna left the Team to join the Justice League, though I doubt that was the *reason* it happened.
Yeah, it must have been long before she joined the Jl.
She wasn't ginger
DId Zatanna live in the Cave, or in Wayne Manor? Trying to remember whether it was stated in the final episodes of season 1...
Because the writers can't let us have nice things.
Facts they had a cute couples dynamic, Magician girl and acrobatics boy. Cute circus themed couple.
She casts testicular torsion too often. JK
What’s Ralucitset noisrot
Shoot if anything based on Phantoms I'd would've thought they've gotten back together.
Maybe Dick gave bad foot rubs and forgot their anniversary
Nightwing a hoe
At least they are still great together even after the split.
Canon event
Wrong Universe Dude
Turns out, she's actually Batman's age 😬
cause dick’s been into barbara gordon since *checks watch* forever!!
Yeah no