Titans: Starfire's New Origin, Powers & All Comic Changes Explained (2024)

Warning: Contains spoilers for Titans season 3 episode 11.

In Titans season 3 episode 11, “The Call is Coming from Inside the House,” the show finally explained its changes to Starfire’s backstory, origin, and powers from the comics. While the Titans TV show has always taken its own spin on the team’s heroes and villains, a strange plot has been set up with Starfire for a while now. Titans episode 11 finally pays it off after it being set into motion during the battles with Deathstroke in season 2 and seemingly forgotten at the beginning of season 3.

Titans season 2 introduced Starfire’s sister, Blackfire (Damaris Lewis). During the end of the season, Kory (Anna Diop) began having difficulties using her powers, but by the beginning of Titans season 3, she is fighting alongside the Titans and reliably using her powers once more. However, as the season progresses, strange visions and trances lead her to her sister’s prison cell and then to a store in Gotham and it is clear that all is not quite right with Kory.

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Titans season 3 episode 10 saw Blackfire apparently absorb all of Starfire’s powers when being healed by her, leaving Kory powerless. Now episode 11 has demonstrated that Kory has another set of previously unknown powers and has provided a more detailed origin story for the Titans version of Starfire. Here’s everything that has happened to Starfire in Titans, what her powers are, and how they’ve changed from the original comics.

Starfire's Origin Story In Titans Explained

From the start of Titans season 1, Koriand’r’s origin story was obfuscated by her memory loss. Even once she regained her memories, she played her history close to the chest before slowly revealing that she was a crown princess and heir to the throne of Tamaran. Her younger sister, Komand’r, had apparently been born without the powers that were a sign of royalprestige on her planet and was always jealous of Kory for this. In Kory’s absence she had killed their parents and seized the throne for herself, but the people of Tamaran had refused to accept her claim to the throne.

Through a dream sequence, after Kory was shot in Titans season 3 episode 11, the show has demonstrated that this story was not entirely accurate and that there was more to the pair's sibling rivalry than had appeared. Koriand’r was the firstborn to their parents who, without an existing heir, were facing civil unrest and attempts from others to claim the throne. Unfortunately, Kory was born without the power of fire and therefore had no claim to the throne. In desperation, her father lied to the people, claimed that Kory did have the power, and named her as heir to the throne.

This caused an issue when Komand’r was born and did possess the royal power of fire and therefore would have a stronger claim to the throne than the child that their father had already named successor, risking outing his lie to the people. To avoid this issue in Titans, the king ordered the soothsayer to cast a spell to take the gift of fire and give it to Koriand’r instead. This meant that the power Kory had always claimed as her own was her sister's and when she used it to heal Blackfire, Komand’r reabsorbed the power that had originally been her own, unbeknownst to either of them.

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Starfire's Powers In Titans & DC Comics

In Titans, Kory possesses certain powers that are related to being a Tamaranean. She has extreme strength, constitution, and has been shown to possess accelerated healing. Until the events of Titans season 3 episode 10, she possessed Blackfire’s power of fire that enabled her, like much of the Tamaranean royal family, to absorb ultraviolet light from the sun and use it to create huge blasts of fire, manifest a shield from fire capable of stopping bullets, or generate a controlled source of heat to burn up an object or a person individually.

After losing her powers in Titans season 3 episode 10, Starfire presumably still has her basic Tamaranean physiology; however, she has lost her abilities related to fire. In the run-up to this event, she has demonstrated an ability for prophetic dreams that were able to lead her both to Blackfire and to Kapelwa and Maya for an unknown reason. When she is shot in Titans season 3 and has a vision of the past, it is unclear whether the vision is a simple memory or, as she is able to walk through the scene, an extension of her prophetic dreams. She also gains access to powers that she claims she must have had all along but are of unknown origin which allow her to generate bolts of blue light, heal quickly from a potentially fatal gunshot wound, and levitate off the ground.

In the comics, Starfire’s Tamaranean structure gives her similar powers of strength and resilience. While part of this physiology allows her to draw in ultraviolet radiation, she does not use it to generate fire the way that Kory does in Titans. Instead, it grants her power for other purposes. Kory’s newfound ability to levitate in Titans might be a suggestion that she will be gaining an ability that she has in the comics and many other adaptations that allows her to fly, including traveling through space at extreme speeds, an ability which is supposed to be innate to all Tamaraneans. Starfire also has the ability to produce starbolts in the comics,which appear to work in a similar way to Kory’s Titans fire powers, but are the result of alien experimentation. Visually, they look more similar to the blue light that emanates from Kory in Titans season 3 episode 11.

All Titans Changes To Starfire's Backstory

Thenew Titans season 3 reveal of Starfire’s full backstory highlights the true changes the show made to the original narrative when adapting the comics. In the comics, Komand’r is the older sibling and would be first in line for the throne. However, a childhood illness robbed Blackfire of the Tamaranean ability of flight and she was deemed unworthy. Titans has swapped the birth order and powers for the two and switched the Tamaranean power of flight for the royal power of fire, while performing the spell to keep the original dynamic between the siblings the same.

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In both the comics and Titans, Blackfire betrays Starfire and the Tamaraneans out of spite for being denied the throne. However, the comics see this result in both of the sisters being experimented on by the Psions, an alien race known for their sad*stic experimentation. These experiments ultimately gave Starfire and Blackfire the power to produce starbolts. While Starfire has not yet been revealed to have been experimented on to produce starbolts in Titans, it is possible that this will be a later reveal and may not be as large or a change as it seems, and the experimentation by Cadmus in earlier episodes works as a parallel for this narrative.

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Titans releases new episodes Thursdays on HBO Max.