Doom Patrol Season 3 premieres with three episodes on Thursday, Sept. 23. Below is a spoiler-free review.
No matter what WandaVision or Loki would have you believe, Doom Patrol is the most bonkers, cuckoo-bananas superhero TV show that’s also a complex, layered, and poignant character-driven exploration of grief and trauma. This is a series that can go from a muscled man accidentally giving everyone standing on a street an orgasm by flexing a muscle, or actual butts with teeth attacking people, to one of the characters being shunned out of a party for his own son because he’s considered a monster. Season 3 continues this trend, with hilariously weird moments seamlessly giving way to internalized therapy sessions you can't find anywhere else in the genre.
The second season ended on a huge cliffhanger, with the Doom Patrol losing the fight against the Candlemaker, an apocalyptic entity residing inside the mind of young Dorothy Spinner (Abigail Monterey). Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the last episode of Season 2 was not finished in time, being pushed into becoming the Season 3 premiere, "Possibilities Patrol." This is by far the weakest of the three-episode premiere, with the long wait working against it. For one, we pick up exactly where the previous episode left off as if there had just been a week between seasons rather than a full year. Likewise, even if this show has never really relied on big superhero fights or long action sequences, the Candlemaker ends up as an anticlimactic villain that is dispatched just as quickly as he is introduced. The rest of the episode, then, is all about tying up loose ends for the characters. Worse yet, the episode over-relies on big, CGI monsters for spectacle, with the digital effects looking like something out of network TV.
Thankfully, the next two episodes are much better, as they get the ball rolling on the story for the rest of the season as well as manage a nice balance between hilarious weirdness and complex character stories. Episode 2, "Vacation Patrol," introduces the Brotherhood of Evil, who are as nefarious as they seem foolishly incompetent, sending an alien conqueror to a mountain resort on a mission and forgetting about it for decades. The second and third episodes serve as a single cohesive story about trauma and how you can’t just overcome it in one fell swoop; it’s something you have to continue to work through and improve on bit by bit. As opposed to doing a hard reset like many shows do with new seasons, Doom Patrol dresses the same character beats with wildly different and unique plots, making it feel fresh and exciting.
This season seems to be about acknowledging when you need help and learning to ask for it, whether it’s Victor (Joivan Wade) struggling with the fact that he can't control his remote-controlled body, Jane (Diane Guerrero) reeling from her experience in the Underground, or even Cliff (Brendan Fraser) realizing that a robot form doesn't necessarily make you invincible. After beginning to accept their powers and fates — then the origin of their powers — this season is about acknowledging that they won't be able to fully heal on their own, but that they need each other before becoming a proper team or even a family. The cast continues to give great performances, with Guerrero being a standout in the premiere, showing vulnerability and strength with nuance.
The third episode, "Dead Patrol," sends our don't-call-them-heroes heroes down a fun trip to hell with the assistance of the Dead Boy Detectives, in what is essentially a backdoor pilot for the potential spin-off based on the characters created by Neil Gaiman. Still, this works much better than the time the Doom Patrol was clunkily introduced in Titans Season 1. The boys are a fun, gloomy addition to the patrol, with their own emotional baggage, fun dynamics, and scary villains that they don’t give a s**t about, since they have better things to do than play superhero. Like usual, the episode gives us a few wild moments, like Cliff's dad hunting down pegasi in the afterlife, and a cool horror moment with a spider-mouth lady that tortures dead souls. By the end of this episode, it’s clear what the goals are for the rest of the season, setting the table for the characters' individual stories and motivations for the future. It’s a testament to the show's commitment to intimate character stories that the premiere ends before we learn who the Big Bad or the overarching plot for the season is, but we do know what each of the characters wants for their own self betterment.
In fact, these first three episodes give only glimpses of the villains for the season. We get the briefest of introductions to the enigmatic time-traveling Madame Rouge (Michelle Gomez), but spend more time with the evil duo of Garguax, the alien conqueror that has spent 70 years hiding in a mountain resort, and his faithful assistant, an alien completely covered in red body paint played hilariously by Billy Boyd. Like our patrol, the alien duo is also struggling with their own sense of purpose, and whether their lives have been building up to something or if they've spent decades waiting in vain.
Despite production problems murking the first episode, Doom Patrol Season 3 is off to a promising start, having tied up loose ends and setting up some emotionally devastating stories for the main characters, and also some time-traveling shenanigans that will hopefully pay off this season rather than in the next one. By the time "Dead Patrol" ends, Doom Patrol has fully reintroduced itself as the most imaginative and nuanced superhero show currently on TV.