After captivating viewers with a brilliant first season, “Doom Patrol” returned with its sophomore one on June 20, 2020. Unfortunately, due to the COVID pandemic, the developers had to cut the season short and reschedule their pre-planned story progression, which resulted in the second season having only nine episodes. However, that didn’t undermine the quality in the slightest as we move from Mr. Nobody’s meta-commentary shenanigans of season one to the horror elements introduced in season 2, courtesy of Dorothy’s imaginary friends, new characters, and Zane’s history of personalities. The second season of “Doom Patrol” premiered simultaneously in “DC Universe” and “HBO Max.”
Spoilers Ahead
‘Doom Patrol’ Season 2: Recap And Ending
The second season picks right from the ending of the first one. Larry’s negative energy managed to save the team, and Mr. Nobody got stuck in the white space of the painting. However, everyone on the team except Larry had become miniature versions of themselves. In the first season, it was revealed that a young Niles Caulder fell in love with the last survivor of an ancient tribe, Slava, and had an ape-faced human daughter with her named Dorothy Spinner. Due to the immortal lineage of her mother, Dorothy received similar powers from birth, and she also has the power to summon incredibly strong psychical creatures who are her ‘imaginary friends.’ Due to her mixed lineage, Dorothy is also forever trapped in the psyche and physical form of a teenage girl. In order to keep his daughter away from intrusive eyes and keep her safe, Niles felt the need to attain immortality himself by any means possible. This was why the Doom Patrol members had to go through traumatic events in their lives that transformed them physically and mentally. Even after rescuing Niles and his daughter in the first season’s final episode, the shrunk-down team is understandably disgruntled over the fact, as we see in “Fun Size Patrol,” the first episode of season two. In a flashback sequence, we are shown that in 1927, Dorothy is being used as a freak attraction in a circus and is tasked by the ringmaster to use her “imaginary friends” as crowd attractions. A malicious abstract entity called Candlemaker calls out to Dorothy to make a wish to stop it in its entirety. A candle appears in her palm, and as Dorothy makes a wish by blowing off the candle flame, everyone in the circus is killed off-screen gruesomely, except for Niles Caulder, who came to rescue his daughter.
In the aftermath of Niles’ betrayal, the estranged team is drifting apart. Jane is intoxicating herself into a stupor, and Vic helps Rita find her better self. Larry is unable to bring the team back to its regular size despite several attempts. Niles decides to ask for occult detective Willoughby Kipling’s help to return the team to their original form and succeeds, but only in exchange for his talisman of immortality. (Well, except for Danny the street, who has now become Danny the brick.) Dorothy comes to know of this, and even though Candlemaker tries to use her emotions to make her cast another wish, she refuses.
Jane’s different personalities, or “alters,” are frustrated over her condition, and to protect Kay Challis (the original person all 64 personalities are assigned to protect), they try to usurp Jane’s position as ‘primary.’ Vic leaves Doom Manor and attends a therapy session to ease the trauma of the accident and his mother’s death. He befriends a war veteran, Roni Evers. As she is getting mugged, they catch the perp, and when Vic thinks of calling the cops, Roni helps him see the reality of the situation: that the perp being a POC and a teenager, would have been treated terribly by the administration, and sparing him might save his future. They move to Roni’s place and share the stories of their physical disfigurements, and bond over their deceased mothers’ memories. They make love, and Vic decides to give their brief fling a shot.
Meanwhile, Cliff, with the help of Vic, discovers that his daughter is still alive, but he is too timid and unsure of visiting her in his robotic form. He finally musters the courage to go to her place, but instead of revealing the truth, he fumbles to the point that his daughter Clara calls the cops on him. Larry visits his family home to attend the funeral of his elder son Gary. Out of time, a repentant Larry sees evidence that his elder son tried to track down his father and, after failing to trace his whereabouts in the last fifty years (when Larry secluded himself from the public eye), has committed suicide. As Larry returns from the funeral, he is kidnapped by the villainous Red Jack, a version of Jack the Ripper who sees his sadistic nature as an expression of art.
Rita heroically saves Larry from the clutches of Red Jack as Niles kills the villain using his own knife. In order to prolong Niles’ life for the sake of his daughter, the team decides to gather the substance called “continuum,” which grants the user the mastery of time. They visit the pocket dimension where Doctor Jonathan Tyme, a hardcore disco-loving clock-headed scientist, resides. He modeled the dimension of the 80s disco era with Donna Summers’ Bad Girls playing in a perpetual loop. (After visiting the entirety of the past and future, the doctor thinks this is the particular time when humanity peaked.) The team fails to get a hold of the element and is cast out of the dimension. Meanwhile, while playing with her imaginary friends, Dorothy accidentally breaks Danny’s brick into two. Chief and the team try to restore Danny to live but fail.
In “Sex Patrol,” Dannyzens, led by Flex Mentallo and Karupt, visit Doom Manor and try to revive Danny by partying incessantly. Rita tries to seek Flex’s counsel about being a hero and the maneuverability of her limbs, but Flex’s muscle kinesis ends up giving her an orgasm. A sex demon named Shadowy Mister Evans is awakened by this and gets impregnated by the essence. A team of sexual energy trackers sent by the Pentagon named “SeX-Men” tracks down the demon and, with the help of Jane’s personality, sends him back to his dimension. (It is as weird and funny on screen as it sounds.) All these activities restore Danny to live in a new form, Danny the tire, and Dannyzens leave with her.
Dorothy befriends Kay’s babydoll personality and plays around Doom Manor. However, friendly banter turns heated as Babydoll traps Dorothy in a furnace and threatens her. This causes a scared Dorothy to summon one of her imaginary animal friends, Manny. To protect Kay, another of her personalities, Flaming Katy, emerges and kills Manny. Candlemaker manages to persuade a distraught Dorothy into making a wish and emerges. The extent of his power is shown as he goes to Kay’s subconscious plane, “Underground,” and brutally kills Flaming Katy and a repentant, afraid Babydoll.
Niles’ former space adventurer ageless teammates named ‘Pioneer of the Uncharted’ visit the Doom Manor. Out of them, the female member Valentina Vostok bonds with Larry as she, too, is tangled with a negative spirit, with whom she has formed a friendly relationship. Larry learns from her that two other teammates are actually dead, and their bodies are possessed and reanimated by alien fungi. Valentina wanted to give them a proper burial on Earth, and they managed to do that. Meanwhile, Dorothy is remorseful for what she has done, and she steals the Pioneer’s spaceship to isolate herself on the moon. Cliff and Niles chase after her in Niles’ own demon-headed spaceship, and after a heartfelt chat, Cliff manages to convince Dorothy to return to Earth. As the team returns to Earth, Niles inexplicably throws Cliff out of the spaceship.
Cliff crash-lands miles away from Doom Manor and starts walking towards home, all the while cursing Niles nonchalantly. Turns out Niles threw Cliff out to keep Slava’s location a secret, whom he wants to consult regarding Dorothy’s situation. Candlemaker gives Niles a visit in vision to threaten him about Dorothy’s future. Larry helps Rita become more confident as she lands a role in a local performance theater; in turn, Rita goes with Larry to meet his family. Unfortunately, Larry’s younger son Paul betrays them by calling the Bureau of Normalcy on them after knowing of his father’s metahuman condition. Larry’s negative spirit saves the day, but his grandson gets shot, and a devastated Larry escapes with Rita. Cliff finally arrives at Doom Manor to discover his daughter has arrived there in search of him, and they both reconnect as Cliff makes his daughter a meal like he used to do during her childhood.
After the deaths of her two alter, Kay removes Jane from her position as the primary, and a former-primary personality called Miranda resurfaces. In her emergence, Jane sees strange occurrences taking place in the underground that put other alters in danger, but she is unable to help unless she proves her worth. Vic finds out Roni has turned rogue in order to enhance her strength and confronts her, only to engage her in a battle and break their relationship. Kipling warns Niles about the impending doom regarding the Candlemaker and that Dorothy needs to be taken away. A heartbroken Chief spends the entire day with Dorothy at a carnival to make her last day with him the most memorable one. Elsewhere, Jane, on her quest to prove her worth, discovers Miranda died long ago in a traumatic memory, and her origin is linked with that. Almost at the same time, Kay figures out that the one posing as Miranda is none other than the personification of her abusive father’s traumatic memories, which caused the fracture in her personality in the first place. Candlemaker starts manifesting in the real world, and Dorothy’s imaginary giant spider friend, Herschel, calls the team into action. At the carnival, the team members face their individual imaginary friends. (For Cliff, it’s Jesus.) Candlemaker easily turns the team into wax, and under Slava’s guidance, Dorothy prepares to face Candlemaker, much to Niles’ dismay.
Thoughts
The second season of “Doom Patrol” plays with equal amounts of humor, weirdness, and emotion while moving away from the meta-narrative of the first season. The series once again introduces a number of odd-ball characters and, even with a checked budget, manages to provide some really good VFX (Candlemaker, Red Jack). Characters like Shadowy Mr. Ivans and SeX-Men are additions to the long list of Doom particles, in this case of Grant Morrison himself (as if bald, Kathmandu-residing demon wasn’t hinted enough) and Marvel’s mutant team. Character dynamics in and outside the team are also portrayed brilliantly as the core characters continue to grow and help each other in the process. Larry and Rita’s friendship is definitely one of the key highlights of the season, along with Dorothy’s arc. Although Dorothy can be made a soft target for much of the mischief the team has to manage this season, it should be understood that she was a troubled child reared in seclusion by a troubled father, Niles. Speaking of Niles, his layered character portrayal continues to amaze viewers, and Timothy Dalton proves just how good he is for the role. Crazy Jane’s introspective journey goes strong, with Babydoll’s death being particularly haunting (considering her psyche, Babydoll was just a child). The season ends on a cliffhanger with major questions remaining unanswered, which get resolved in season three.
See more: ‘Doom Patrol’ Season 1: Recap And Ending – Mr. Nobody Plays The God
