Doom Patrol returns with all of its quirkiness intact

Warner Bros. Television

When the first season of Doom Patrol ended, fans were left wondering if the show would return for a second season. With the world of Warner Bros. in flux due to a merger with AT&T that resulted in the new WarnerMedia conglomerate, many wondered what would happen to the DC Universe streaming service as almost all of WB’s other streaming properties were being shuttered and folded into a new service that we now know as HBO Max. DC Universe had quickly renewed Titans for a third season and cancelled Swamp Thing before it had a chance to get started (bad, bad decision). Stargirl was delayed from the Fall of 2019 to the Spring of 2020, and Doom Patrol was just left hanging. It seemed that the fates were not going to be kind to the best of the DC Universe series and then a miracle occurred when HBO Max stepped in and came to an agreement to share the show with DC Universe. Thus, with that partnership (and one wonders how much longer DC Universe will survive as a separate entity), a second season of Doom Patrol was announced and all was right with the world.

It felt like a very long wait but it’s only been one year and one month since the first season finale. Let me tell you … the wait was worth it! To bring you up to speed, the first season ended with the members of the still not quite yet formed Doom Patrol tricking Mr. Nobody into helping them escape from a painting while also hoping to save Chief’s daughter Dorothy and Danny the Street. When all was said and done, Larry was the only member of the group who was his normal self. Everyone else who had escaped via the insides of Ezekiel the cockroach were actually smaller than Ezekiel, and Danny was reduced to a single brick.

Season 2 begins with a three-episode bang. The first episode, ‘Fun Size Patrol’, finds the group still small, living in a miniature town, sort of like a Christmas train garden but with a slot car race track, while Larry attempts to find a solution to bring everyone back to their normal size. Of course the current situation hasn’t helped soothe emotions that came from everyone learning why Niles had done what he did to them. He was looking for a way, any way, to find some way to outlive his daughter by one day so she’d never be alone. The question is … is Dorothy immortal? Because the episode also gives us a flashback to 1927 when Niles (who admits to the group he is well north of 100 years old) first encounters Dorothy as a side show freak at a circus. Dorothy is the child he never knew he had after his romance with Oyewah in 1913 (as seen in Season 1 Episode 10, ‘Hair Patrol’), the cavewoman with mystical powers. Poor Dorothy has her mother’s features, labeled the Ape Faced Girl, and she seems to have inherited her mother’s special powers, able to conjure up her ‘imaginary friends’ into reality. But Dorothy can’t control one of those friends, and it goes on a rampage in the circus tent, killing everyone but Niles. The two leave and he places Dorothy in the care of Danny and that’s where she remained, unchanged until now.

But Cliff is still furious about being a science experiment and learning his family was expendable, Vic has decided to ditch the group and head to Detroit, Rita is still upset about also being an experiment but wants to learn to use her elastic powers, and Jane is still drugging herself to keep all of her parts quiet … and they are not happy about that, preparing a revolt to remove Jane as the primary. And Niles, after another disappointment with Larry’s experiments, finally decides he’s going to need a little help from an old friend, Willoughby Kipling, to use some magic to get everyone back to normal. But that will come with a steep price that will hasten the Chief’s demise.

Warner Bros. Television

I won’t give away too much about the second and third episodes except to say that they will include some classic comic villains. Episode 2, ‘Tyme Patrol’, finds Jane, Rita and Cliff reluctantly helping Niles, for Dorothy’s sake, to retrieve the time-altering space mineral Continuinium from Dr. Tyme, who they locate in a 1970s roller disco where the DJ plays ‘Bad Girls’ on an never-ending rotation. Also, Larry learns that one of his sons has died, and we get more looks into his past as a not great father who now needs to confront that past in a very moving scene.

Episode 3, ‘Pain Patrol’, finds Larry kidnapped and tortured by the notorious Red Jack, ho feeds on pain, which requires Niles and Rita to travel to the interdimensional palace to face the villain and save Larry (at least Rita and Larry still have their bond). Meanwhile, Jane is brought to the Underground for an intervention where she’s given the ultimatum to stop the drugs or lose her position as the primary, and Cliff travels to Florida (with Jane in body if not mind — and it’s good to see these two have repaired their broken bond) to prove to his now grown daughter that he is a good father. But he finds she just may not be ready to accept this mechanical monstrosity as her father at this point in time.

Warner Bros. Television

The throughline here is Dorothy, who has one friend that she is never allowed to make real. We hear the ominous voice talk to her and, at one point after Niles makes the deal with Willoughby, she’s told her father is dying. But that can change if she makes a wish. She offered early in the premiere to make a wish to return them all to normal size but Niles forbid her from unleashing that terror. Unfortunately when she becomes upset, she loses control and all of her friends begin to materialize. It took all of her strength to keep the worst one from appearing. Niles assures her he’s not going anywhere, but the voices in her head may convince her otherwise.

I loved the first three episodes of Doom Patrol as much as I loved the entire first season. I thought I was going to miss Mr. Nobody, but the addition of Dorothy and the storyline to keep Niles from dying is intriguing, mainly because Timothy Dalton is so good as Niles. Really, the entire cast is great. It’s a shame the Emmy Awards tend to overlook shows like this because every performance, including the voice work by Matt Bomer and Brendan Fraser and the actors who portray their on-screen characters, are excellent.

One of my biggest complaints of Titans is that we’ve now gone through two seasons of a show about a team of superheroes who still haven’t become the team of the title. Doom Patrol follows a similar trajectory with the group still struggling over their feelings of betrayal by the man who should be their leader … and I don’t care that they haven’t yet become the new Doom Patrol (we’ve seen what happened to the original group in Season 1) because while they may bicker amongst themselves, and gang up on Niles to hold him accountable for what he did to them, they still always manage to come back together as a family, something the Titans have not really managed to do. Doom Patrol is so well acted, written and produced that it’s a joy to watch every week and I hope the new, wider audience provided by HBO Max will give the show the long life it deserves.