Warning: spoilers ahead for Robins #5!
While Batman has had many Robins, few have truly escaped his shadow, but Red Hood is getting closer and closer. While Jason long ago broke from Bruce's control, he's still generally been understood in opposition to the Dark Knight, with his adventures ultimately ending up back at Batman's door. Of course, Red Hood is fascinating as the black sheep of the Bat-Family, but he also deserves to take the same route as fellow Robin Dick Grayson, aka Nightwing, in being beloved by fans as a standalone hero. Strangely, recent mentions of Jason's mother seem to be making that possible.
Jason Todd became the second, replacement Robin when Dick Grayson left to become Nightwing. It was evident from the beginning that Jason was a much different kind of Robin and he was infamously killed off by the Joker. Jason returned, however, as the semi-villainous Red Hood. While he was reintroduced as a villain, he eventually reconnected with Batman, and the entered a holding cycle of growing closer only for Jason's methods and Bruce's poor communication to shatter their relationship once again.
In Batman: Urban Legends #1, Jason ended up killing a man who caused a woman to overdose and reminded him of his own abusive childhood, in which he pushed his mother's drug dealer down the stairs. Similarly, in the pages of Robins #5, Jason saw the life Batman believed he'd have lived if he hadn't become Robin. In this theoretical world, Jason is a race car driver who uses his winnings to fund drug rehab in his mother's name. The interesting part about these stories is that they no longer treat Jason's time as Robin as his true origin. As Jason's appearances simultaneously move away from blaming Batman for his death, DC Comics is shifting away from Jason's traumatic superhero origins and instead focusing on his own personal origins with his mom, separate from his time as a bad boy Robin and Batman's tragic sidekick.
He is also standing apart from Batman on a philosophical and ideological level. In the recent Task Force Z #4, Jason calls out Batman for "beating up drug addicts and mentally ill people all night." Batman's crusade is against criminality. He wants to punish those who break the law and his protection of the innocence is a byproduct of that mission. This is in contrast to Red Hood, whose first introduction was actually as a criminal himself when he tried to steal the tires from the Batmobile. Red Hood doesn't care about the law, and has grown more focused on punishing those prey on the vulnerable, no matter how powerful they may be - his mission is no longer to be the lethal version of Batman, but to answer the injustices in his own childhood, long before he was Robin.
When Jason Todd first returned, he was there to torture Batman as a deeply personal villain, but since then he's grown into a complex and fascinating character, beloved by many. Now, it seems DC is slowly and subtly redefining Red Hood, giving him a wider mission that speaks to the themes and events of his own life, not the conditions of his death. While Red Hood has had his own series before, his past stories never quite let go of defining him by his relationship to the Dark Knight. Just as Nightwing needed to exist apart from Bruce for a long time before stepping out of his shadow, Red Hood is undergoing the same process, and the tragic events of his childhood - specifically the death of his mother - are seemingly forming the foundation of this promising new approach.
