Rose Wilson is a character who has always been in search of autonomy. She’s been a Teen Titan, a government agent and a hired mercenary, but above all else she’s someone desperately trying to forge her own identity while attempting not to get sucked into the black hole that is her family. It’s been a difficult journey full of setbacks, contradictions and emotional turmoil, but Rose has never been one to shy away from a challenge. And trust me, it’s been challenging.

Rose first appears in 1992’s Deathstroke #15 when Slade Wilson temporarily returns to the home of his ex-lover Lili Worth. Rose is Lili’s daughter from a previous tryst with Slade, and the two are initially unaware of their relationship. In true superhero comic fashion, Lili is killed and Slade discovers Rose is his daughter, but he’s reluctant to take her in, fearing he would only cause her pain. Spoiler alert: he’s right.

From here, Rose would become a minor character in New Titans, but her story really picks up in 2004’s Teen Titans #1/2 (reprinted in Teen Titans by Geoff Johns Book One). Rose’s uncle Wade LaFarge kills her foster family and Slade rescues Rose before Wade can finish her off. Slade then manipulates his daughter into killing her uncle and becoming his apprentice. This is when Rose begins to lose her autonomy, and it happens so slowly, she doesn’t even realize it.

We start to see it as she takes on the codename Ravager, which had previously been used by her uncle Wade and her half-brother Grant. She also wears a modified version of the Ravager costume. Unbeknownst to Rose, all of this is playing out exactly as her father wants it. Slade had secretly manipulated Wade into going after Rose, knowing it would bring the two of them together. He also began secretly drugging Rose with a serum that enhances her physical abilities but also messes with her mental state, making her more susceptible to Slade’s influence.

This partially explains what Rose did next. In 2004’s Teen Titans #12, Slade calls Rose a failure, saying she’s nothing like him, and Rose responds by stabbing her left eye out. What drives a woman to cut out her own eye? We could blame the brainwashing, but I think it was largely due to fear. Rose had lost her mother, her foster family and her entire identity. Her entire sense of self is now wrapped up in her father, and when he threatens to take that away, she will go to desperate lengths to preserve it.

However, by removing her eye, she’s made herself look more like her father, losing more of herself. She starts wearing an eyepatch like her father, and she’s wearing her brother’s costume. Is Rose even in there anymore? What’s more, her father’s threats have sent a very clear message to her that his love and acceptance of her is conditional. This is something that would drive many of Rose’s future relationships for years.

It’s Nightwing that shows Rose that she can be her own person. In 2005’s Nightwing #112, Slade tasks Dick Grayson with training his daughter. At the time, Dick was pretending to be a mobster and Slade (surprisingly) falls for the act. This is where things start to change for Rose. In Nightwing, she sees someone like herself. He’s a former junior partner to a large personality, yet he was able to break away and form his own identity. Dick Grayson is his own person outside of Batman, and as she spends more time with him, Rose realizes she too could be her own person.

The final straw for Rose comes in 2006’s Nightwing #117. Slade had planted Kryptonite in her empty socket, making Rose the ultimate weapon against Superman and other Kryptonians. Nightwing tells Rose that the radiation from the Kryptonite is harmful to her body and that Slade was aware of this. This angers Rose and causes her to break away from her father for good.

Nightwing #117 is told from Dick Grayson’s perspective, so we don’t get Rose’s point of view. We can only imagine what this revelation meant for her, especially in the context of everything she had gone through. She had lost her autonomy, and now she was no longer a person. Her father had made her into a weapon, with no regard for if she lived or died. She may as well have been another sword in Slade’s armory.

Rose is so desperate to find purpose as her father’s daughter that she doesn’t realize how much of her own identity she has stripped away. In 2006’s Teen Titans #34, she joins the Titans, but Rose sees her membership as conditional. It was sponsored by Nightwing, who is not an active member of the group, and she feels like the team is only keeping her around as a favor to him. This reflects back to the trauma she faced under her father, who made her believe her place in the world was conditional.

We never really outgrow our trauma, but we grow around it and learn how to manage it. Yes, Rose lost much of her autonomy in becoming Ravager and partnering with her father, but over time, she’s responded by making the identity her own. Rose now fully owns the mantle of Ravager. When people hear the name, they don’t think of her brother Grant, they think of her.

Things come full circle in the 2023 limited series Knight Terrors: Ravager. The villain Insomnia places Rose in a nightmare world where she protects a younger version of herself from her father. This not only forces Rose to see just how corrupted she once was, but she’s also able to see just how much she’s grown. After defeating the nightmare version of Slade, she tells the younger version of herself that she’s free.

“I freed you,” Rose says. “If there’s any of me inside of you, then I know that you’re better than this. You’re not a monster. You can be more to these people. You need to be.”

Rose was never going to find her sense of autonomy from her father, her brothers, Nightwing, or the Titans. In the end, she came to realize her worth on her own and in so doing, she proved that she was better than where she came from.

The trauma of Rose Wilson’s past is a battle she will have to fight every day. The good news is that it’s now a battle she’s winning.
 

Keep up to date with the latest drama between Rose Wilson and her father Slade in Deathstroke: The Terminator on DC UNIVERSE INFINITE.

Joshua Lapin-Bertone writes about TV, movies and comics for DC.com, is a regular contributor to the Couch Club and writes our monthly Batman column, "Gotham Gazette." Follow him on Bluesky at @joshualapinbertone and on X at @TBUJosh.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Joshua Lapin-Bertone and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.