DARK CRISIS: YOUNG JUSTICE #6 canonizes a longtime fan theory

WARNING: The following post contains spoilers. If you don’t want to know anything about Dark Crisis: Young Justice #6, out today, do not read any further.

This week sees the release of Dark Crisis: Young Justice #6, the final issue of the event tie-in series from writer Meghan Fitzmartin, artist Laura Braga, colorist Luis Guerrero, and letterer Pat Brosseau. The series has followed the original Young Justice team of Robin (Tim Drake), Superboy (Connor Kent), Impulse (Bart Allen), Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark), and Arrowette (Cissie King-Jones) as they’ve dealt with the aftermath of the apparent death of the Justice League, and with Mickey Mxyzptlk, the supposed son of Superman’s 5th Dimensional foe, who separated the team by placing Robin, Superboy, and Impulse in a ’90s-esque alternate reality of his making.

An element that has loomed over the series from the beginning is the relationship between Robin and Wonder Girl, who infamously shared a kiss – and only one kiss – in the aftermath of Superboy’s death in 2005’s Infinite Crisis. Since then the two characters were largely distant from each other, even after Connor’s return a few years later, though the 2019 Young Justice series brought them back together with no mention of the kiss (and with continuity having been rewritten and restarted several times in the past fifteen-plus years it was up in the air whether that kiss ever occurred in the current timeline). Now Dark Crisis: Young Justice #6 finally sees Tim and Cassie address the moment the two shared, and recontextualizes it in light of current goings-on with Tim Drake.

(SPOILERS FOR DARK CRISIS: YOUNG JUSTICE #6)

In the final pages of the issue, with Mickey Mxyzptlk defeated, Tim asks Cassie if they can talk privately. “I–I wanted to say–…I’m sorry,” Tim says, “For how you and I…after Connor died.” Images show Robin and Wonder Girl’s kiss, and Tim walking away from a crying Cassie. The final panel shows a crying Robin standing below the memorial statue for Superboy, with the caption, “I didn’t understand what I was feeling.”

Given what readers now know about Tim Drake, and how much writer Meghan Fitzmartin has been exploring Tim’s newly-realized bisexuality, the implication of the sequence is that Tim unknowingly had romantic feelings for Connor, and those combined with his grief over Connor’s death are what led him to act the way he did with Cassie.

The notion of a romantic relationship between Tim and Connor, or TimKon (Kon for Connor’s adopted Kryptonian name, Kon-El) has been a popular fan theory/fanon for decades, with thousands of fan-written stories about Robin and Superboy currently up on sites like AO3 and Tumblr. The acknowledgment of the fanon, even if only on Robin’s side, opens up the possibility for some interesting stories between Tim and Connor going forward, and with Fitzmartin currently shepherding Tim’s stories in the pages of the ongoing Tim Drake: Robin series it seems likely we haven’t heard the last of this development.

Dark Crisis: Young Justice #6 is out in stores and digitally now.