In these first chapters, Jason’s character arc has been defined by The Impact of the Past and Present on Personal Identity, as he looks to the past to help him define himself in the present. He is insistent on finding his birth mother because he hopes and believes that someone can love him in ways that his two paternal figures, Willis and Bruce, have failed to do thus far. In Chapter 3, Starlin introduces a complication to that hope, challenging Jason with the possibility that his birth mother might be a bad person. Sharmin Rosen teased this idea in the previous chapter when Batman and Robin suspected that she was doing business with the Joker, while Lady Shiva overtly functions as the antagonist for the chapter, directly threatening the two superheroes with physical force.

Ideologically, Lady Shiva represents an amoral entrepreneurial spirit that mirrors the Joker in his attempts to sell his cruise missile, exemplifying the fatal flaw of Seeing People as a Means Rather Than an End. During her first appearance in the comic, she confirms Batman’s suspicion that she has been hired to train a terrorist camp. Shiva’s presence in the Middle East is tied purely mercenary. She has no real sympathy for the ideals of her employers or what they want to achieve. She wants to leverage her skills in service of those willing to pay for them. Fighting Batman provides an opportunity to advance this personal goal. Rather than negotiating with him or asking him about his purpose, Shiva says, “I don’t care about the whys of your visit […] A chance to test one’s skills against such talents is indeed rare” (66). As a character, Shiva views every encounter as an opportunity to advance her own agenda and reinforce her own wealth and position. 

Like Jason, Shiva is driven by the impulse to enact violence, which serves as a red herring suggesting that she’s Jason’s birth mother. Once Robin regains consciousness, he finds himself faced with a moral dilemma: either help Batman, his adoptive guardian who rejected him as a sidekick, or Lady Shiva, the ruthless and amoral villain who may help him answer questions about his sense of self. The comic visualizes the pressure of this choice by gradually zooming in on Robin’s face over three panels on page 69. The third panel features an extreme close-up of Robin’s eyes, which are covered by his mask. Starlin and Amparo use this focus to emphasize Robin’s internal reflection on the dilemma that this choice represents: Either he is Jason Todd, the boy behind the mask, or he is Robin, the mask itself. Ultimately, Robin’s choice to help Batman signals a rejection of Shiva’s amoral agenda. Later, when Batman asks him if he would have wanted a mother like Shiva, Robin says no, signaling his growing ability to push back against his more destructive tendencies and The Dangers of Impulsive Thinking to carve out his own identity in the world.

As for Batman, this chapter pushes him to the ethical limits of his practice as a crimefighter. While he commits himself to the idea of keeping the world safe and orderly, he finds himself in a situation where he must reflect on what it will cost him morally to achieve this end. His resolution to help Robin reflects this commitment, as he understands that the only way to help Robin work through his issues and become a better crimefighter is to help him complete his personal quest. When Lady Shiva refuses to answer Robin’s questions, Batman is forced to deploy an alternative method for cooperation: truth serum. He expresses his moral opposition to this method in the caption, “Every fiber of my being is revolted by the thought of what I’m about to do” (72). Batman knows that the suppression of Shiva’s free will goes against his moral code, contradicting the ideals of justice. Again, Starlin and Amparo visualize this internal dilemma through external details. As Batman reveals the truth serum on page 72, blood streams down his nose in the wake of the fight with Lady Shiva, pointing to the ways that the use of the truth serum degrades Batman’s moral integrity, wounding the spirit of what he stands for as a superhero. Batman thus comes dangerously close to engaging with the violent impulses that define the world around him in this storyline.