**This review contains some spoilers**
Watch the SPOILER review on YouTube
After the previous season ended abruptly, “Doom Patrol” returns. And after quickly and awkwardly wrapping up the major loose ends, show returns to is gloriously weird form.
The final episode of season 2 ended with a major cliffhanger. However, the plan was to wrap things up in the next episode. But due to production shutting down because of COVID, that next episode ended up becoming the season 3 premiere. I’m not sure how this episode was originally supposed to play out, but the entire thing felt rushed and anticlimactic. This season’s plot takes a few episodes to get going, and even then it lacks focus, but the trip is more fun than the destination. The show’s trademark mixture of bizarre and wacky moments, combined with some genuinely great and sincere character moments, continue to make it the most unique superhero show. While it didn’t quite recapture the magic of the first season, things felt more natural as opposed to last season’s attempts at weirdness for weirdness sake. The biggest flaw is that this is the first season without a big bad or any real build up to an endgame. And also, half the characters fail to have a solid resolution to their arcs.
Rita probably has the strangest arc, and a lot of ends up revolving around time-travel. The predestination paradox was a nice twist, and we got a slightly darker take on her character before she appears to have finally become a superhero. Jane also had a pretty strong story arc, as Kay begins to assert herself and peak into the real world. But, just as that plot starts to gel, it takes an odd turn that leaves almost everything unresolved. While we essentially got more of the same from Cliff, there were some strong emotional beats as we finally dig into what truly makes him tick. Even though he did seem to turn a corner, it was too late in the season to see if he’s ready to change. Larry seemed to be on a good path to begin with, so it was weird that he took almost the entire season to basically end up where he started. And it was also too late to see if there’s any lasting change in his status quo. Cyborg probably had the biggest mixed-bag of a character arc. His relationships with his ex-girlfriend and his father started to take a step forward before suddenly taking U-turns, and even though he finally got what he wanted, it leaves him almost useless as far as the team goes. Dorothy and The Chief are both dropped pretty early on (although they find some creative ways to keep Niles around for a bit even though he died last season), but then we are introduced to a new cast member with the character of Madame Rogue. Partially because the character has amnesia, and partially because she’s overly-eccentric, it takes a long time for her to feel like she was a part of the show. Once we see how she was in the past, and we see how she went wrong, she feels like a real character. While the redemption arc doesn’t feel completely earned, it works for the most part.
Overall, the show still looks pretty good. There’s some great design work, and some pretty trippy sequences that help keep things feeling fresh. The special effect range from looking great to occasionally looking terrible, but in general things tend to look pretty good.
“Doom Patrol” returns with its third season, and after awkwardly wrapping up last season’s cliffhanger and getting off to a slow start, the show returns to form by delivering bizarre people and places, while still giving us misfit characters that we care about. The lack of any real big bad or disaster that needs averting hurts things a bit, as does some of the unresolved character arcs.
***1/2 out of *****