Doom Patrol Season 3’s Extreme Weirdness Was Actually Perfect

Warning: Contains spoilers for Doom Patrol season 3.

The Dada influence on Doom Patrol made the season feel especially weird, but that weirdness was necessary to be able to enable character growth for the cast. Doom Patrol has never shied away from weirdness or absurdity whether it be including Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, sex ghosts, or the Beard Hunter. However, Doom Patrol season 3 paid off all this weirdness by making it essential to how the show was able to explore the characters.

Doom Patrol season 3 introduced time travel to the series which led to some strange and convoluted timelines (although only a couple of small paradoxes related to the invention of the time machine). The season also saw the Doom Patrol die, go to the afterlife, come back as zombies, and fight a load of mutant butts, before being cured by eating Niles Caulder’s head. A lot of these antics are the usual background for Doom Patrol, but the introduction of the Sisterhood of Dada, their philosophies, and the plan for the Eternal Flagellation got especially surreal in ways crucial to the plot that were not always fully explained.

While the weirdness of the plot surrounding the Eternal Flagellation and the plans from the Sisterhood of Dada might have alienated some viewers by being too opaque, it was ultimately essential for the show to move forward properly. The strange storyline serves as something between a blank slate for Doom Patrol to explore its characters upon and a plot device created to be able to dive deeper into those characters’ narratives. Several members of the Doom Patrol had begun to stagnate in their character arcs throughout season 2 and early season 3, having recognized their flaws and either refused or failed to move past them. The Eternal Flagellation and the weirdness associated allowed the show to convincingly push all of the characters on to the next stage of their development and prepare for Doom Patrol season 4.

All of this is most evident during the Eternal Flagellation itself during Doom Patrol season 3, episode 8 “Subconscious Patrol.” The Sisterhood of Dada were used to magically place the Doom Patrol in positions where they had to face off against their traumas and secrets and find a way to move past them, or at least begin to, if they wanted to escape. This will allow Doom Patrol to explore more areas of these characters’ personalities than simply their denial or desire to wallow in self-pity. However, once the Eternal Flagellation was over, the Sisterhood of Dada served little purpose and are not seen for much of the rest of the season.

This weirdness and the outspoken artistic expression of the Sisterhood of Dada also allowed Doom Patrol season 3 to provide more direct social commentary than it had done before. The events of the last few years have made it more important for shows like Doom Patrol to examine ideological issues. The Sisterhood of Dada are a way to do this in spades as they speak mostly through manifestos and both Shelley Byron (Wynn Everett) and Lloyd Jefferson (Miles Mussenden) gave great oratory in a way that was only possible because they were surrounded by surreal circumstances and free to speak their minds.

While the Sisterhood of Dada disappeared towards the end of Doom Patrol season 3 without much of a conclusion to their story, this only helps to highlight how much of the show was focused upon telling compelling stories about the lead characters. To an extent, a lot of Doom Patrol season 3’s absurdist plot served primarily as a vehicle for their character progression and examination and was effectively unimportant in the grander scheme. The new weirdness of the show is hopefully a setup for further exploration of the Sisterhood of Dada in Doom Patrol season 4, but ultimately the use of absurd weirdness to make important points about characters and the world feels like the natural progression for a show that opened with Mr. Nobody and a donkey fart.

About The Author

Faefyx Collington
(488 Articles Published)

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Faefyx Collington (They/Them) is a senior features writer for Screen Rant. They’re a British writer of both fiction and non-fiction, focussing on science fiction, fantasy, and mystery for the former and on culture, gender, and current affairs for the latter.
Never content to settle to one thing, Faefyx is also a co-host and producer of the podcast and video series “Unramblings,” and can occasionally be found making music around the internet as well.
Having acquired degrees on both sides of the Atlantic, Fyx has settled (for the moment) in the southern United States where they live with their spouse and an entirely appropriate number of cats.

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