Titans is returning, and in true fashion, the show is going to bring in a bunch of villains. We have Brother Blood (Joseph Morgan), Lex Luthor (Titus Welliver), Mother Mayhem (Franka Potente), and Jinx (Lisa Ambalavanar). The latter is of particular excitement.
Jinx became a fan favorite for many due to the Teen Titans cartoon show. That was when I was first introduced to the image of Jinx as this pale, pink-haired, purple dress-wearing fun witch villain. So imagine my surprise when I would eventually pick up the comics and see that Jinx, in the source material, was a dark-skinned, bald-headed Indian woman.
Jinx in the comics is an Indian elemental sorceress who is the leader of the Fearsome Five. Her powers, rather than being some DC version of Scarlet Witch, are elemental control similar to Storm. She can also manipulate magical energy, create offensive energy bolts and green flames, and perform all sorts of sorcery that is both really cool and that we wish we could’ve seen in the cartoon. To keep her from being too overpowered, her abilities require her to have a physical connection to the ground, which is why she is often drawn as barefoot, and I guess also something for the wiki feet fans out there.
Lisa Ambalavanar will be playing Jinx, and her design is very much a combination of both. She is wearing a less revealing version of Jinx’s comic outfit, but rather than being bald, is sporting pink hair. The image above washes her out, but she is brown, and the actress has an Indian background. I’m always going to root for seeing dark-skinned women of all ethnicities in roles like this (especially when it is in the source material), but I am glad that they made the choice to cast Jinx as an Indian woman while also shouting out a design that was pretty cute in the cartoon series. Of course, I guess now she doesn’t need to worry about showing feet?
One of the repeated problems in Titans is that it will always have too many characters for such a short season run. Plus they have a crossover planned. I wonder if they’re going to be able to do justice to all the characters they have brought together. It is likely that Jinx and Mother Mayham will be more side characters in comparison to Brother Blood and Luthor, but it’ll be interesting to see where it all comes from. I’ll take as much sexy Lex Luthor with a beard as I can get.
(featured image: HBO Max)
Published: Oct 19, 2022 05:34 pm