Doom Patrol returned for its third season last week, but getting to the next chapter of the story for the series’ misfit heroes required a bit of closure in terms of where things left off in Season 2. Thanks to the pandemic, Season 2 left off with a cliffhanger that saw the Doom Patrol encased in wax as Dorothy (Abi Monterey) prepared to confront the Candlemaker. With what would have been the Season 2 finale now the Season 3 premiere, when the wax melted, there was a major change to the Doom Patrol team – one that series creator Jeremy Carver says is the springboard for the season.
Warning: spoilers for the Season 3 premiere of Doom Patrol below.
When Season 3 picks up, Dorothy confronts the Candlemaker, but instead of giving into the terrifying being, she ends up making the case that they don’t have to be enemies, but friends. With Dorothy and Candlemaker now on the same side, the wax melts from the heroes only to reveal a different tragedy. Niles Caulder (Timothy Dalton) has died, leaving the Doom Patrol without their Cheif and Dorothy without her father. It’s a death that forces everyone to deal with their complicated emotions and grief and kicks things off for the rest of the season in a major way.
“It’s certainly a springboard at the beginning of the season,” Carver told TVLine. “People working through their reactions to his death, that process begins to manifest other paths of discovery for them. His death takes a little bit of a backseat but it is ever-present in the way that the death of any sort of father figure – or meaningful figure in your life, good or bad – never quite fades away.”
And Niles’ death does take a backseat almost immediately. It’s not long after his death that Madame Rouge (Michelle Gomez) makes her unexpected and slightly foreboding arrival in Cloverton – right off the bat she simply watches Cloverton resident Isabel (Charity Cervantes) die by falling into the chasm created by her time machine. Carver explained that the introduction tells you a lot about Madame Rouge and her journey this season.
“It tells us a lot about Madame Rouge that even she doesn’t quite realize about herself yet,” he said. “It kicks off this process of discovery for her, which is sort of a study in contradictions – she can’t quite figure out if she’d good or if she’s bad. We drop little hints both ways, and I think that’s what makes the struggle even more confounding for her.”
The first three episodes of Doom Patrol‘s third season are now streaming on HBO Max. New episodes arrive on Thursdays.