Tag: Doom Patrol

The title of the Doom Patrol Season 3 finale is more relevant than usual. Amends Patrol is all about redemption. Redemption here is most literal—making amends—and figurative. Our main characters finally make definitive choices as to who they are and who they want to be, taking control of their often-rocky narratives and owning up to the insecurities and flaws that have held them back for three seasons. As is typical for the series, redemption happens on an individual level for the characters, but perhaps the most exciting part of the finale is that we also get a major transformation on a group level. It is still abundantly obvious that Doom Patrol keeps finding ways to be successful in ways that most superhero or comic book shows cannot. It succeeds by refusing to yield to convention or by taking an easy story-telling route. It has consistently paid off for the series, but this episode is one of the finest examples of the series’ talent.

Where the episode ends highlights just how far the group has come. Where revelations and breakthroughs have come in the past, they are sometimes undone or overshadowed by the next conflict. Interestingly, they were often not accompanied by physical changes even though a lot of the internal struggles were pretty connected with the physical abilities or burdens of the characters. Here, there is no ambiguity—through all the turmoil, they seem to have settled into the new mental and physical places that they couldn’t previously access.

Season 3 made the decision to take its 10 episodes to genuinely develop and play out the characters’ arcs. The show could have easily turned the group into a formal super team at the end of the first or second season. In fact, it’s arguably bold that it avoided this very expected and anticipated element for as long as they did. But the result is a slow but rewarding burn that makes the “Doom Force” moment all the more exciting and meaningful. 

The episode begins with most of the group in the last episode’s bus wreckage after Kay/Jane screamed and Larry’s parasite baby essentially blew everything up. While Rita is still obsessed with continuing on to find Laura, Larry and Vic are done following her after it became obvious that the whole situation is based on Rita’s selfish interests, which eclipse any concern she might have had for her teammates. Vic, who had been the biggest proponent of the super team concept, breaks and yells at Rita that they are absolutely not that. The Fog shows up as well to call out Rita. She tells her that neither Rita nor Laura are completely lost.

This sets up a make-or-break moment for Rita as a character, which was foreshadowed at the very beginning of the season. Will she take her newfound confidence and self-identity to pursue revenge and her own personal interest, or will she figure out how to direct it to something bigger? Not surprisingly, she ultimately makes it clear that she’s not truly evil, notably by coaxing the Brain into thinking she will help him only to kill him with boiling water. Her presence as a leader is finally realized in a positive way at the end of the episode as she seems to take on that type of role with the newly minted super team. If you remember the Rita of season one, it’s amazing how seamlessly and gradually she’s made it here.

Laura—definitively known as Rouge now—ends up a member of the Doom Force after she used the time machine’s amnesia to help herself make amends to the main group. Rita, for her part, decides at the last minute not to kill Rogue, further establishing that Rita will move forward.

Larry has a pretty straightforward path to “redemption.” The larva, a negative spirit named Keeg, needs to merge with Larry or it will die. He struggles with the decision of whether he can let himself go through it all again. Vic reminds Larry that he decided during the eternal flagellation to try and let love in. Larry ultimately takes in the negative spirit, saying “I swear I will try my best to do right by you. Always.” We later have a moment of glorious negative spirit flight and action before it suddenly fails and falls to the ground unceremoniously. He’s trying.

Jane’s decisions are less clear. She has been in constant conflict with the other personas over her beliefs on Kay’s growth. It turns out the personas fled the Underground and are living in the Fog because they are afraid they will disappear as Kay evolves. Yet they are still dying. Apparently, Dr. Harrison is the persona behind the scheme, only looking for control. Jane makes a deal with her that if she helps the personas return and rebuild the Underground, Dr. Harrison can be primary. It seems to suggest that Jane’s redemption is geared towards the personas now, not Kay. With all the previous focus on “the girl” with last season’s Miranda plot, Jane spent this season alienating and ignoring the concerns of the other personas in order to focus on Kay. By sacrificing potentially quite a lot in both the Underground and on the surface, Jane manages to make amends to the personas—it’s unclear if this will undermine some of her journey with Kay.

Cliff is the one who embraces making amends directly. Laura winds up early on putting his brain in a giant robot that the Brotherhood of Evil had thrown out at some point. He then convinces Laura to stop her rampage toward Rita, telling her that she’s, essentially, not completely evil. This is seemingly confirmed as Laura cannot bring herself to kill Cliff, and flies off instead. He then goes to Clara’s to genuinely apologize for being a terrible father.

The ultimate conflict of the finale ends up being Cliff, who has Parkinson’s, losing control of the giant robot which is stampeding into Cloverton. Jane, via Flit, teleports into the robot to try and help Cliff, and they have a tender moment while thinking that they are both about to die. Ultimately, Rita grows into the size of the new Cliff and stops him. It’s a very dramatic moment for her that speaks to a level of control over her powers that we have absolutely not seen before.

Later, the group reacts to what they had accomplished. Rita is particularly proud that they saved a town, even though Larry reminds her that they were the only threat in the first place. They finally agree to be a super team, with Cliff hilariously proclaiming them to be the “Doom Force.” It’s going to be a wild ride because the episode ends with the team labeling themselves and making a to-do list to fight a monster that they are using the time machine to get to.

Amends Patrol is undoubtedly one of the best episodes of the season. It leaves you excited for the next season while managing to be an engaging and compelling episode by itself. While Doom Patrol seems to finally make itself about the Doom Patrol, it’s also clear that the series is not going to be any more predictable. Yes, we now have an official team. But Vic isn’t Cyborg, Jane may not be primary, and Cliff is a giant robot. Larry still hasn’t mastered his new negative spirit, and Rita and Rogue have a tense relationship. And, of course, they are inducing amnesia to go fight monsters with all of these defects. But somehow, this episode ends in one of the most optimistic places Doom Patrol has ever been. The series is not taking the easy way into the superhero plot, which is what makes this show so unique. The individual character grind over the past three seasons made this space better and more meaningful than it could’ve possibly been had the series jumped into the super-team quickly. After this season, there’s every reason to believe that this show will only get better.

Season 3’s penultimate episode of Doom Patrol is all about dysfunctional relationships. In fact, it is nearly impossible to point to any element of this episode that isn’t quite clearly a representation of a rocky and toxic relationship. It’s a theme that pervades Doom Patrol as a whole, but it was certainly wrung out in all of its glory in the previous episode. Evil Patrol makes it quite clear that the bulk of this season did the messy work of getting our characters to a significantly different place than they have ever been before in the series. As a result, this episode feels like Doom Patrol is now at a spot where the audience is no longer forced to try and figure out and parse through what is going on, but rather just getting to enjoy it uninhibited. And this episode—which could also be fairly named “Plot Patrol”—does what the series does best: be extraordinarily fun.

This season of Doom Patrol seemed to be setting up Rita as a major player at the very start of it, and it’s become more than obvious that Rita is really who is driving the show now. Even though the clearest conflict is Rita against Laura, Laura only becomes an arguably villainous figure in the present day because Rita pushes her into survival mode. Without Rita plotting to destroy Laura, the latter never would have returned to the Brotherhood of Evil or hatched any nefarious plot. Rita’s obsession with revenge is the only true adversarial threat of the story at this point—it’s pretty safe to say for certain that Season 3 does indeed lack a strong villain, but it isn’t suffering for it.

Rita’s loss of Malcolm turns her into a staunch vengeful personality with the confidence and motivation that comes along with it. It allows her to be an extremely different Rita than ever before. She makes it clear to Laura that she won’t let her ruin anything else and that she won’t stop fighting until she’s ended her life. She doesn’t hesitate to start gathering a team to help her, but she quickly realizes that almost all of her potential “assets”—Vic, Jane, and Larry—are no longer assets. It doesn’t really deter her, and she’s more than willing to go the extra mile in keeping everyone around to help. That’s how desperate she is to get revenge on Laura, and that’s how clear it is that she has little concern for the friends she used to have much more compassion for.

Her loss of herself seems most apparent when she becomes extremely paranoid that Cliff’s daughter Clara is actually Laura in disguise. It comes off as more of a blow to Cliff’s sense of worth, but it turns out that Laura did, in fact, infiltrate Doom Manor, but as Clara’s baby. The result is one of the funniest moments the series has put together—Laura shapeshifts into some kind of elf-sized, disturbingly proportioned creature that looks like it could have come straight out of a Shrek film. She essentially bounces around while the new and mostly depowered team swat at her with objects. The intentionally rough visual effects, including the awkward tempo of it all, fits with the series’ aesthetic perfectly, and it’s just a near-perfect moment. In the end, Laura teleports away with Cliff.

The fight comes after Laura rejoins the Brotherhood of Evil. The group—which is just the Brain and Monsieur Mallah—is a standout in Season 3 despite being minimally involved and having little screen time. Laura finds the two living in a retirement community in Florida, done with the life of the Brotherhood. Laura convinces the Brain to work with her to both keep herself from being killed but also to supposedly destroy Niles Caulder’s legacy. While they ultimately betray her, it’s not until after the Brain puts himself in Cliff’s body—he is living his best life. While the Brotherhood stand out particularly for the humor they bring, it’s ironic how they just truly aren’t villains here. Both Rita and Laura essentially use the Brotherhood as an excuse to target the other, and the threatening-sounding organization is just sort of the connector. The Brain and Mallah were perfectly content with their retirement before these two women came along. 

Apart from the main Rita-Laura situation, the other characters have strong moments both alone and together. Vic probably has the rawest and compelling moment with his conversation with his father after Vic has his tech removed. Joivan Wade really delivers, and the scene grows from comforting nostalgia to completely chilling. It’s also the best Vic/Cyborg mental and emotional moment the series has given us. Vic’s arc was always very interesting—and this moment doesn’t make it more or less so—but it always felt like it was missing some intensity. Vic’s pushback against his dad’s attempts to convince him that turning him into Cyborg was the right thing to do, and claiming that he is ready to be able to actually define himself undoubtedly provides that intensity. It also feels like a watershed moment in the character’s development that was a long time coming. While we arguably “lost” the character of Cyborg, the fact that Vic otherwise remains himself is pretty cool. He’s such a strong personality with a good heart. When the team asks him why he came back to Doom Manor now that he is “normal”, he simply says, “I live here.” He has no interest in not being some kind of hero or doing the right thing—losing the tech highlights that Vic, not Cyborg, was always the hero.

Larry’s parasite baby is a delight. We get sweet and funny dad moments, but we also learn that the little larva can sense and react to everyone’s emotions leading to Larry being zapped by it every few minutes. Jane and Kay are still on rocky and fragile ground, especially now that the rest of the personas have left the Underground. Kay tries to take the reins but flees when she gets scared, and it becomes clear that the Underground will destroy itself if it remains empty. Cliff gets convinced that Clara coming to help him is too good to be true because he doesn’t deserve another second chance.

The overall theme of “dysfunctional relationships” is at its height at the end of the episode when the team takes the bus to go save Cliff. Everyone is resentful that Vic seems to actually have figured things out about himself after the eternal flagellation. Larry confronts Rita about how the mission really has nothing to do with Cliff for her, and she admits she chose not to save them all from dying to not risk erasing the life she built with Malcolm. Larry’s parasite makes it clear that everyone is emotionally toxic. It’s entertaining and laugh-worthy, and it seems true to the “team” we have known in Doom Patrol. 

Because this episode seems to have started from somewhat new ground in terms of the overall plot—notably, getting the Brotherhood of Evil involved as a major piece—it was not predictable and it makes it hard to predict where the finale is headed. This isn’t anxiety-inducing, as the series in general and the second half of Season 3, in particular, has been very successful at making stories come out of nowhere and still be great. While we can say goodbye to the idea of a “big bad”, the Rita-Laura situation can probably be seen as a villain in and of itself, with Rita in particular actually giving off the “evil” vibes. Evil Patrol sets up an entertaining finale at least, and probably an exciting one as well. While only time will tell, Doom Patrol has done the work this season to make it something special.