Doom Patrol: What Is The Eternal Flagellation? Everything We Know

Warning: Contains spoilers for Doom Patrol season 3, episode 7.

Since early in Doom Patrol season 3, the series has been dropping hints about what the Eternal Flagellation is. The end of Doom Patrol‘s season 3 episode “Bird Patrol” reveals the prologue to this bizarre upcoming event, but doesn’t explicitly explain what it is. Here’s everything we know about the Eternal Flagellation, what it is, and why it is happening.

Doom Patrol often obfuscates its main villains and their plots, but this is especially true in season 3. Aside from the introduction of The Sisterhood of Dada, each member of the Doom Patrol has had their own storyline going on. Plus, the group visited the afterlife and were saved by the Dead Boy Detectives, and The Brotherhood of Evil and Garguax both made key appearances. With so much going on, it can be easy to forget that the overarching Eternal Flagellation has been launched and could be a threat to human existence.

The Eternal Flagellation is first mentioned in the Doom Patrol season 3 episode “Dada Patrol,” when Laura De Mille (Michelle Gomez) shows the Doom Patrol an insignia and message that has been left around the world reading “The Eternal Flagellation is coming.” The information that she provides answers the question “who is the Eternal Flagellation?” as it is tied to The Sisterhood of Dada, and that connection is confirmed in later flashbacks. However, this reveal creates as many new questions as it answers.

What Is The Eternal Flagellation?

The phrase “Eternal Flagellation” itself suggests a lot about the event, assuming Jane and Robotman’s assumptions that it’s an “extended flatulence” are ignored. A flagellation is most commonly a self-administered beating used for religious purposes, designed as a form of penance, purification and punishment. Based on the events of the Doom Patrol season 3 episode “Bird Patrol”, the Sisterhood of Dada’s version of this includes strange birds that Rita Farr (April Bowlby) refer to as Malcolm—a member of The Sisterhood who died—and that she reluctantly releases in response to Laura de Mille’s betrayal. As each bird approaches someone, it wears a version of their face. Jane receives multiple birds and each bear the face of one of her alters. The birds make each person disappear, presumably transporting them to the location of some sort of test of morality, as the Eternal Flagellation is intended to cleanse the world of all that the Sisterhood views as evil. It’s noteworthy that the whole plan is intended to be a form of artistic expression, drawing on the group’s absurdist Dada roots.

Why Is The Eternal Flagellation?

All of this leaves one obvious question for Doom Patrol: Why is the Eternal Flagellation? While Shelley Byron (Wynn Everett) gives a lot of exposition about The Sisterhood of Dada, it’s Lloyd Jefferson’s speeches that really make it clear why they feel it is necessary to enact the Eternal Flagellation. In 1947, when they first decide to do it, he draws attention to their surviving within an oppressive power structure in a position of relative privilege, while others suffer and die. He notes how that makes them complicit in that structure as they persist and keep their heads down, attempting to make change only through ultimately indirect action.

In 2021 when talking to Cyborg he notes that this resolve has only been solidified as they were locked away from the rest of the world by the Bureau of Normalcy for the better part of a century and when they escaped, they found a world that was still harsh, unjust, and treated people poorly. As with the way that The Sisterhood of Dada’s story drives Cyborg’s season 3 narrative, the Eternal Flagellation is part of Doom Patrol’s response to the civil rights movement and the increased awareness of certain issues since the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Doom Patrolreleases new episodes Thursdays on HBO Max

About The Author

Faefyx Collington
(487 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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