He’s being driven by desperation and hope as much as anything else, and when those look a lot like the denial and bargaining stages of grief from the outside looking in….how exactly do people fault the characters looking at this from the outside for not drawing the same conclusions as Tim, who is deliberately keeping himself the only one privy as to his actual hopes and theories?Īnyway, follow along beneath the cut for complete scans of a whirlwind tour of Tim’s actual narrative here, and please know that my commentary is just a general thing aimed at fandom perceptions and readers at large, NOT specific to you as the asker of this question, lol: Tim’s only ‘on his own’ for much of Red Robin because Tim literally WANTS it that way, because he doesn’t even trust HIMSELF, that he’s not chasing just a fairy tale but that there’s a real answer out there to find….and he knows these doubts of his have validity and thus he doesn’t want to give anyone else even the OPTION of backing up those doubts with more of their own, and weakening his resolve. What’s also significant is even WITH all of this, at not just one point but TWO distinct points in Red Robin’s first twelve issues….Tim asks Dick to just trust him and let him keep going with his search (still not having yet revealed anything that prompted him to go on his search or that he’d found thus far on it.) In both cases, Dick says yes like, the very next panel….and lets Tim get back to what he’s doing.ĭick never shuts Tim down or out, he never refuses to help him, he never denies him resources, tries to bench him, ANYTHING of the sort. Which, I hope we can all agree describes two very different scenarios that are not actually interchangeable. Meaning there’s no point in which “Dick didn’t believe him” describes Dick hearing Tim out about his findings and just deciding nah, I don’t buy it, you’re just crazy kid…….no, “Dick didn’t believe him” literally ONLY describes….‘when Tim just insisted Bruce was alive, he just knew it, and refused to go into specifics ever as to why he thought so.’ So in absence of Tim actually DIVULGING his actual THEORY about how Bruce is alive and why he knows this….what possible reason should ANYONE have for assuming Tim isn’t just….in denial due to his grief?īut again, what’s very key here is at no point along the way did Tim actually share his suspicions with Dick.
Throughout the first twelve issues of Red Robin, Tim’s inner monologue FREQUENTLY cycles through self doubt, his fears that he’s just clutching at straws and seeing what he wants to see from his evidence.īut like….he’s the only one making himself think that, because literally nobody but him knows what he’s found! This isn’t Dick making Tim think he’s crazy or gaslighting him….īecause the literal only thing Dick has heard from Tim is that he just knows Bruce is alive, without Tim even offering up WHY he thinks that!Īnd so all along, Dick is just trying to get him to talk to him, talk to a therapist maybe, because like hello, denial is a THING with grief, y'know? This is a normal part of MOST peoples’ grieving process. Personally, I think he never shared this with Dick because he himself was afraid the evidence was flimsy and that showing it to someone else would expose it to being poked and prodded at for viability….which he not so secretly was scared it wouldn’t hold up to. He’s never shown drawing any specific conclusions so its up to the reader to guess at that themselves. He even monologues about it, asking himself WHY didn’t he share his findings with Dick at any point, like when he went back to Gotham to help out during Blackest Night. He never so much as uttered a PEEP to Dick about his theory about Bruce being lost in time, OR his reasons FOR believing that. He never actually shared any of this with Dick? Not until the very end once he had conclusively assembled all his proof as well as how they were gonna go about getting Bruce back. Like there WAS something Tim based his initial hunt on, and then his world tour was all about gathering more evidence to support his conclusions, but like….
Okay, so this is a particularly interesting question to answer, because the thing is….yes and no?
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