Doom Patrol Season 4 Review

Overview

After four incredible seasons, Doom Patrol has finally come to an end. The fourth season was released in two halves. The first half was released immediately after Titans aired its first half of its final season, so I had assumed that Doom Patrol season four’s second half would come after Titans aired the last episode of its fourth season. Unfortunately, that turned out to not be the case. For whatever reason, Warner Bros refused to air the last episodes of Doom Patrol for nearly an entire year. Without any explanation we were forced to wait to see how the Doom Patrol’s story would end. It got to a point where even the actress for Madame Rouge, Michelle Gomez had to express her concerns on social media that they may have been shelved by David Zaslav for yet another greedy and infuriating tax write off. Thankfully, James Gunn confirmed that this wasn’t the case (though part of me thinks it would have happened if Michelle Gomez didn’t say anything). 

The final season opens with the Doom Patrol finally becoming a team of superheroes. During the opening we see our heroes take on many ridiculous and bizarre supervillains, most notably the infamous villain Codpiece, who is known to be one of the dumbest comic book villains of all time. Cliff, Rita, Larry and Jane even take up their iconic superhero names. Rita becomes Elasti-Woman, Cliff becomes Robot Man, Larry becomes Negative Man and Jane becomes Crazy Jane. Meanwhile, Rita forces Madame Rouge to use the name “Dogshit McGivens” out of spite for her actions last season. While they still bicker and struggle, the team actually manages to be successful as a superhero team, something that not even they thought was possible. It was so satisfying to see the team finally become heroes after building it up for three seasons.

However, when the team decides to take the time machine to see Cliff’s daughter and grandson in Florida, they are all flung into the future, where they see that the Earth has fallen into an apocalyptic state as the world is now ruled by the butts, the strange and gross but nonetheless powerful and feared creatures that they unwittingly released from the Bureau of Normalcy headquarters all the way back in the first season. Nearly all of the human race has been transformed into a zombie werebutt creature following one escaping after the Doom Patrol had an encounter with them last season. The only known survivor is Vic, while the rest of the team has died and become a ghost, except for Rouge who is said to have left the team a few years prior. Desperate to stop this future from happening, the team goes back to the present to find the last zombie werebutt and kill it before it can infect anyone else.

Unfortunately for the Doom Patrol, the zombie werebutts aren’t the only problem they have to deal with during the season, as a threat even greater than the butts have appeared in the form of a dark cult that worships an evil deity known as Immortus. The cult of Immortus aims to bring their idol back by stealing the longevity of the Doom Patrol, the rare item that is used to keep them from aging. 

Thanks to a warning from Willoughby Kipling, the Doom Patrol are able to find out about the cult of Immortus and shift their focus towards stopping them once they think they have dealt with the butts. Unfortunately, the cult of Immortus manages to steal the longevity from each member of the team one by one. Once they are able to steal Cliff’s longevity, the cult resurrects Immortus, who turns out to be none other than Isabel Feathers, a vain and shallow wannabe actress who portrayed Rita in a negative play about her and fell into the time stream after Madame Rouge arrived in Cloverton with her time machine.

After killing the members of her cult, Immortus returns to Cloverton where she demands respect from everyone. When the Doom Patrol starts to get more attention than she does, Immortus is sent into a fury and keeps trying to change reality where she is worshipped and loved by everyone. However, when that doesn’t work she decides to take over the world by forcing everyone to love her through fear. The last episodes revolve around the Doom Patrol attempting to stop her before she can carry out her plan.

Making matters worse, the team finds out that the butts are still very much a threat as Cliff never managed to kill the last one and let it escape thanks to his carelessness. The butts soon infect everyone in Cloverton and set their sights on the Doom Patrol to kill them, as they had killed several members of their kind during their fight with them in the third season. The Doom Patrol becomes forced to contend with these two massive threats at the same time, realizing if they can’t stop both of them, the dark future will definitely happen.

Despite the threat of both Immortus and the butts, the true conflict of the season is the Doom Patrol’s impending deaths after they have lost their longevity. The team has never been forced to face the problem of them aging as the longevity that Niles gave them had always kept them immortal. However, now that their longevities have been stolen, the team is forced to confront their personal issues and resolve them before they die.

After traveling through time and meeting their old mentor Niles one last time, the Doom Patrol confronts the butts and Immortus head on. However, the situation weirdly resolves itself, as once Immortus and the butts meet, they get along instantly through their love of theater and become a famous troupe of inter-dimensional time traveling performers. Out of gratitude for giving her the opportunity to truly become famous, Immortus redeems herself and gives the team their longevity back (through gross toenails that they have to eat). 

Once it seems like everything will be okay, Rita dies of old age before she is able to take the longevity. The team initially plans to travel to the afterlife and bring her back, but Rita’s ghost dissuades them from doing so and declines to be resurrected, as she would rather move on and believes that the best thing for the team would be to go their separate ways and find their place in the outside world. 

The team adheres to Rita’s advice and leaves the manor. Despite being unsure about what they are going to do next, they are still all able to find closure and finally overcome their traumas after so much turmoil and grief. The Doom Patrol may have parted ways, but they will always be a family.

Characters

Despite leaving the Doom Patrol to join the Dead Boy Detectives, Dorothy winds up back with Danny the Street. She has been shown to be much more closed off and angry, with her not yet being over her father’s death. When Immortus’ cult members invade Danny to try and steal her father’s necklace from her, Dorothy unintentionally brings her favorite comic book character Casey Brinke/Space Case, to life to defend her and the Dannyzens from this threat. Unfortunately, Casey is unable to defeat the cult due to one of the members being her father, which forces Dorothy to give up the necklace to save everyone. Realizing that she needs to leave Danny behind and rejoin her family with the Doom Patrol, Dorothy leaves with Casey to find them. While most of the characters got a satisfying ending, the one exception was Dorothy. I’m still not sure as to why. After rejoining the Doom Patrol, Dorothy just suddenly disappears from the show without any explanation. Why did she leave again? Where did she go? What is she doing now? None of that is ever answered. I don’t know why we even got that standalone episode with her if she was just going to leave and never show up again. Abi Monterey did such a fantastic job as the character, so it was very disappointing for her to just leave at the end to never be seen again. Why did they even bother having her join the Dead Boy Detectives if she just left them off screen as well? I can’t say Dorothy’s absence hurt the show, as it was still fantastic, but it’s weird that the series just forgot about her in these last episodes.

If you’re a big fan of the Doom Patrol comics, the chances are you might know the villain General Immortus, an immortal soldier who has lived through and fought in every single war throughout history and a high ranking member of the Brotherhood of Evil. When it was revealed that the big bad of the final season would be Immortus, I wasn’t sure how the show would handle him. During the first half of the season, Immortus is built up as this unstoppable time deity who is after the longevities of the Doom Patrol. However, it is revealed that Immortus is really Isabel Feathers, the vain and shallow wannabe actress who portrayed Rita in the play about her. It turns out that when Madame Rouge arrived in Cloverton with her time machine, Isabel fell through the hole it came out of and was stuck endlessly floating through the time stream where she gained reality warping powers. After being brought back, Isabel is enraged that the Doom Patrol is getting more attention than her and warps reality into a world where every day is a holiday that celebrates her called “Immortimas.” When that doesn’t work, she decides to force the world to fear her by becoming a supervillain after Madame Rouge unintentionally gives her the idea by mentioning the Brotherhood of Evil. Her plan suddenly goes sideways when she discovers the butts singing and dancing together. When she gets all of them to sing with her, she forms a successful theater troupe with them and decides to give up being a supervillain. After giving the Doom Patrol their longevities back, she leaves and continues her new successful career. This version of Immortus is practically nothing like the character from the comics, only sharing the name and nothing else. However, I think the show does a good job with her. It was a twist I was not expecting and they really do make it work. Immortus managed to be both very funny and threatening at different moments and the dangerous powers that she possesses gives this season a good amount of stakes. While she doesn’t quite have the brilliant writing of Mr. Nobody or the terrifying presence of the Candlemaker, she is still a credible threat for our characters and a good final main villain for the show.

After joining the Doom Patrol as a permanent member at the end of season 3, Laura DeMille/Madame Rouge does her best to try and make up for her actions with the past, especially with Rita. Despite genuinely trying to change and be a better person, Rouge finds herself as somewhat of an outcast with the team. Rita still holds a strong grudge towards her, while the rest of the Doom Patrol merely tolerates her presence, with them openly stating that they do not trust her. When Rouge finds out that she left the team in the future, she makes it her goal to stay and help her teammates before they are all killed by the butts or someone else. After the Doom Patrol drops Rita as leader in favor of Rouge (much to Rita’s anger), she is able to find the last zombie butt who is revealed to be Darren Jones and get Cliff to kill him. However, she is plagued with guilt when she realizes that she turned yet another decent human being into a weapon. Throughout the rest of the season, Rouge focuses on trying to make amends with Rita, who eventually does forgive her. Rouge’s last test of whether or not she’s truly a bad person appears when Immortus offers her a place by her side in conquering the world. Instead of accepting her offer, Rouge tries to steal her longevity for the Doom Patrol, proving that she is not the person she used to be. After Immortus is defeated (more or less), Rouge leaves the team to find a new purpose. She goes to the Bureau of Normalcy headquarters and burns it all down with a flamethrower with everyone inside, showing that she may not be a truly heroic character, but she will fight for what she believes in, and is no longer the self-serving and power hungry coward she once was. Rouge had a fantastic character arc that was wrapped up beautifully and Michelle Gomez was fantastic in the role like she always is.

After his surgery last season, Vic has been struggling with being unable to be Cyborg again. He attempts to justify his decision many times, but nobody buys it, especially his teammates. Instead of leading the fight like he normally would, Vic is forced to serve as the IT guy for the Doom Patrol, with him feeling like he could be much more useful. To take his mind off of this, Vic reaches out to his childhood friends back in Detroit, Michigan. However, when he reunites with his friends, he finds out that they do not care about his new appearance and have moved on from him. Furthermore they are resentful of him for leaving to be a superhero and never keeping in touch, especially his best friend Deric. Despite that, Vic is able to reconnect with Deric after some time, even bringing him on one of his dangerous adventures. When Immortus and the butts become even more of an urgent threat than before, Vic ultimately decides to have the surgery to become Cyborg again, this time on his own terms. After seeing the future in which he works as a teacher with his best friend, Vic leaves the manor to do this, finally being truly happy after so long. It was so satisfying to see Vic go through this arc. I have to admit that I didn’t expect him to become Cyborg again. I figured that Vic’s decision last season would be a permanent change. However, I was glad to see him come to terms with his tragic past and accept his role as a superhero. Him being able to reconnect with Deric is something so relatable, which makes it all the more satisfying. When I first watched this show, I was puzzled as to why Cyborg would be a main character on Doom Patrol as opposed to Titans, but after seeing how well this character was written, I am so glad that he was put in this show. Joivan Wade was absolutely fantastic as this character and in my opinion will always be the definitive Cyborg.

After giving up her role as the primary persona in the Underground to Doctor Harrison, Jane has been forced to watch from the sidelines and sit helplessly while the others look for Kay as she is still missing. However, when she sees the dark future, Jane takes back her position as primary when Kay reappears and gets rid of Doctor Harrison. Throughout the season, Jane struggles to find her true purpose outside of protecting Kay. She is given a jigsaw puzzle by the girl, with no instructions on how to assemble it as it is a blank picture with all the pieces being the same. When her longevity is stolen by the Immortus cult members, Jane desperately searches for a way to figure out her own issues, as the other personas in the Underground have all vanished and she is slowly dying, while she constantly hears them yelling at her to “Say it,” without any clues as to what that means. She is offered a chance at a romantic relationship with Shelley Byron/The Fog, a member of the Sisterhood of Dada. Jane considers dating Shelley, but ultimately decides not to as she is afraid of this new choice and can only think about the poor relationship choices the other personas made. However, when Jane meets Casey, she finds a deep connection with her. Casey is able to help her figure out the puzzle and even holds romantic feelings of her own towards her. When the team is thrown into the time stream by Immortus, Jane travels back to Doom Manor in the year 1996 where she meets Niles. Through one final session, Niles is able to help Jane discover the meaning of the puzzle and what the other personalities meant when they were trying to get Jane to “Say it.” Jane admits that she was raped by her father, just like all of them were. This allows Jane to complete the puzzle and be brought back into the Underground station with the personas, where they go to a new location as the old one collapses. Jane soon finds herself with all the other powers of the Underground, as all of the other personas have merged into one personality called the Kaleidoscope. After she gets her longevity back and the other members of the Doom Patrol leave, Jane goes with Casey to space to start a new life with her. Jane has always been my favorite character in this show, so it was so satisfying to see her get a happy ending. It makes it even better because Jane’s life has always been a miserable one. Unlike the other members, she never had a good life that she wasted. She has been broken since her childhood. It was honestly fitting that she got to make her own choices for once and pursue a romantic relationship with someone who actually cares about her. Diane Guerrero absolutely knocked it out of the park like always. Of all the performances in this show, I will definitely miss watching her the most. This was genuinely one of the best performances in not just a comic book show, but tv in general. She truly deserved all the best awards for her performance as Jane in this show.

After seeing his future self, Larry becomes at odds with Keeg, the new Negative Spirit inside of him. Keeg constantly flies off and hides from Larry, much to his confusion and sadness, as Larry has desperately wanted a second chance at fatherhood. Larry soon meets Rama/Mr. 104, a meta-human with the powers of controlling the elements who is a member of the Immortus cult. Despite him technically being his enemy, Larry discovers through Keeg that 104 was a prisoner of the Bureau of Normalcy and was tortured by them for decades just as Larry was. Larry is able to connect with 104 and even convinces him to turn on the Immortus cult members. However, when Larry is eventually captured by the cult who take his longevity, he discovers that Keeg was forced to kill him in the future when Larry’s body became unstable and radioactive. Larry is eventually able to understand Keeg more when he travels back to the past and reunited with the original Negative Spirit, who reveals that Larry’s constant worrying and pessimism has been rubbing off on Keeg who has been taking after him. On top of that, Larry finds out that he will become a sun in the future. Realizing that he needs to take risks and stop torturing himself, Larry pursues a romantic relationship with 104 after the Immortus conflict is dealt with. He takes 104 to space and the two become a sun together. Larry has always been the character I felt the most sorry for. On top of his condition, he was forced to deny his homosexuality, his wife abandoned him after his accident, his older son killed himself while his younger son grew to hate him, his lover died of old age and he was tortured by the Bureau of Normalcy for decades. Seeing him find peace was so satisfying and his relationship with 104 is genuinely believable. Matt Bomer and Matthew Zuk were both equally incredible as this character. Larry was a fantastic character in both terms of the story of the show and for representation in general.

At the start of the season Rita is shown to be greatly enjoying her role as team leader. She has led the Doom Patrol on several successful missions against so many bizarre foes. Overall she has proven herself to be a very competent leader. However, after the team returns to the present from the dark future, they vote Rita off as leader in favor of Madame Rouge due to her past with both the Bureau of Normalcy and the Brotherhood of Evil. This absolutely enrages Rita, as she loves being team leader and is losing her spot to someone she hates on top of that. After Rita’s longevity is stolen, she begins to reflect on what she has gone through. It takes her a while to come to terms with Rouge, but she eventually forgives her. She even tries to drop her grudge against Isabel Feathers, feeling that it is not worth hating someone she can’t fight and with such little time left already. As the season goes on, Rita becomes older and older to the point of being unable to walk on her own without the use of a wheelchair. When she makes dinner for the team and nobody comes, Rita is extremely hurt and opens up to Larry as to why she was so angry with him and the others for dropping her as team leader in favor of Rouge. When Niles died, Rita felt the need to be the one to keep everyone together and was devastated that she wasn’t even able to do that. She and Larry eventually reconcile not long before Rita’s age catches up with her to near death. Despite Immortus giving back the team’s longevities, Rita dies of old age before she can take it. Rita’s ghost soon appears before the team to disband them and asks them to burn her body so she can move on in the afterlife. The team does so, but can only leave mementos that barely meant anything to her such as mirrors and alcohol while her body blobs out and inflates to the point where it has to be popped. There’s something kind of tragic that the people she had been with for years couldn’t even think of something that defined her as a person. Despite that, Rita is able to find a happy ending in the afterlife when she reunites with Malcolm, the member of the Sisterhood of Dada whom she fell in love with when she traveled back in time. Rita was a character who grew possibly even more so than the others. I never would have guessed that she would be one of the Doom Patrol members who would die, but it was such a powerful end for the character. April Bowlby really left such a phenomenal impression as the character and I will be shocked if anyone can top her if the character is recast.

Last but not least we have Cliff. After reassembling most of his body, Cliff is once again able to function in his original robot body. Unfortunately, his Parkinson’s disease still remains and is slowly getting worse. However, things start to look up for Cliff when Vic and his father engineer his hand to give him the sense of touch. Cliff is overjoyed with this new ability but refuses to touch anything until he goes to Florida and touches his grandson. He even puts on an oven mitt that he wears over his hand for the entire season so he won’t be able to touch anything (even though he’s technically touching the oven mitt as Silas points out). Unfortunately, when he needs to kill Darren Jones, he accidentally removes the oven mitt, making a human brain the first thing he ever touched since his accident. This horrifies Cliff and prevents him from killing the last zombie butt, which allows it to escape. After he willingly gives up his longevity to the Immortus cult members, the other members are furious with Cliff for his foolishness and criticize him for doing something so reckless. Cliff’s problems only worsen as on top of him rapidly aging, his Parkinson’s disease is starting to overwhelm him. When traveling back in time to get the longevity back, Cliff meets Niles in the 1940s right after the latter had taken it from Mr. Nobody. When Cliff tries to throw the Chief out the way to avoid a Nazi firing an electric blast, he accidentally breaks his back. Cliff is shocked to find out that he is the one who broke Niles’ back and is unwilling to take the longevity from him as a result. The season constantly shows Cliff’s reluctance to kill and for good reason. The reason he screws up so many times this season is that underneath the robot body he’s still a human. He doesn’t want to be a weapon for people to use, which sadly none of the other characters realize and are so hard on him when he can’t do what they need as a result. At the end of the season, Immortus shows up at the manor to give Cliff a mysterious crystal in addition to his longevity. After he parts ways with Jane one final time, Cliff finally makes it to Florida to see his grandson Rory’s first birthday. Unfortunately his Parkinson’s disease overcomes him and he spends his last moments with Rory in the car that he got for him. He sees the crystal and discovers the future Rory will have. His grandson will ultimately make the same mistakes he did but will still be able to reconcile with his family at the end. After he sees this, Cliff finally accepts his fate and dies between his daughter and grandson, reassuring the two of them that everything is okay as he made it home. He then shuts down and dies and the show ends with that last shot of him. Cliff’s story this season was honestly my favorite. While he made so many stupid mistakes, I always understood why he did the things he did. It was heartbreaking to see him lose his battle with Parkinson’s and die, but it was such a beautifully tragic end. It’s fitting that the show ends with Cliff just like it opened with him. Cliff was the true main character heart of Doom Patrol and it couldn’t end with anyone else. Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan both brought Cliff to life in such an amazing way. Shanahan physically gave so much life to a robot whose face you couldn’t see while Fraser did a fantastic job of giving Cliff the human voice that came out of the big tin man. Cliff had the best ending out of everyone in my opinion and when so many of them had near perfect endings that is so impressive. I will die on the hill that Doom Patrol is responsible for bringing Brendan Fraser back into the spotlight and it is one of the main reasons I love this show so much. 

For more information on the full cast list, you can visit IMDb by clicking here.

Standout Character

It was extremely difficult to choose the standout character for this season. Part of me wanted to give the MVP award for the season to all of the members of the team, as it’s the final season and I wanted all the characters to get the honor. However, I didn’t want to do a cop out and had to choose one person. Overall, while everybody had a fantastic story during this season, I have to give the ultimate MVP award of this season (and to an extent the show as a whole) to Cliff. While everyone had their own stories during the season, Cliff’s was by far the most powerful. He makes so many stupid mistakes during the season. From not killing the zombie butt and accidentally letting it go, to willingly giving up his longevity to the Immortus cult. In any other show, I’d hate a character who would screw up this much. However, everything Cliff does this season makes it hard not to empathize with him. He has always been one to make mistakes, but he is running out of time regardless of if he keeps the longevity or not. His Parkinson’s has gotten far worse and it’s clear by the beginning of this season that he will not make it to the end of the show alive. Despite that, Cliff is finally able to overcome his trauma and be at peace. His newfound ability to touch lets him make true physical contact with his family for the first time in decades and he is able to be with them right before he dies. Despite his impending demise, he finally gets closure seconds before he passes after seeing his grandson’s future. It was a heartbreaking final scene, but it’s so fitting that the show ends with Cliff just like it started with him. Brendan Fraser honestly deserves to win an Emmy award for this season and it’s a shame that something like that won’t happen, but this is a masterful performance nonetheless. Equal credit should be given to Riley Shanahan, who had the task of portraying Cliff in the robot body and getting the same emotions across without any facial movement. Cliff has become one of my favorite fictional characters of all time after this season.

Favorite Episode

Choosing my favorite episode from the third season was incredibly easy, as Subconscious Patrol was such a powerful and entertaining episode. However, there were so many fantastic installments in this season that often tied for my favorite episode. I had considered choosing the final episode Done Patrol as it ended the show so beautifully. However, I realize now that I have to go with the ninth episode Immortimas Patrol. I’m quite honestly shocked that it took so long for the show to give a musical episode but it was absolutely worth the wait. The songs weren’t amazing but the energy from the actors and atmosphere more than made up for it. It had the right amount of cheesiness mixed with the adult themes that Doom Patrol is best known for. Plus it was a treat to see Brendan Fraser and Matt Bomer in person one last time before the show ended. After waiting for this show to do a musical episode for so long, I’m so glad we got it. 

Worst Episode

I want to state that this show had no bad episodes whatsoever. All of them were so well written and entertaining to watch. However, some were just weaker than others and the biggest example of that has to be the fourth episode Casey Patrol. I’m not against doing an episode that solely focuses on Dorothy without the Doom Patrol. However, looking back I really don’t understand the purpose of this episode. If it’s a way of wrapping up Dorothy’s story I really don’t think it works since she comes back. If it’s a way of setting Dorothy up to join the Doom Patrol as a full time member it still doesn’t work because she still disappears after the musical episode with no explanation as to where she went or what happened to her. The most this episode does is introduce Casey, who is a likable enough character, but even then aside from helping Jane, she doesn’t even add much to the story of the season. As stated earlier, this episode isn’t bad, but compared to everything else in this season, I really don’t think it adds much to anything aside from Casey who becomes a romantic interest for Jane.

Episodes & Their Ratings

Episode 1: Doom Patrol – 10/10
Episode 2: Butt Patrol – 10/10
Episode 3: Nostalgia Patrol – 10/10
Episode 4: Casey Patrol – 9.2/10
Episode 5: Youth Patrol – 10/10
Episode 6: Hope Patrol – 10/10
Episode 7: Orqwith Patrol – 10/10
Episode 8: Fame Patrol – 10/10
Episode 9: Immortimas Patrol – 10/10
Episode 10: Tomb Patrol – 10/10
Episode 11: Portal Patrol – 10/10
Episode 12: Done Patrol – 10/10

Average rating – 9.9/10

Our Overall Rating 10/10

Does It Deserve Another Season?

While I’m satisfied with how the show ended, I definitely think that there was still so much more that Doom Patrol could have done if it was allowed to continue. I think it’s obvious that if the merger between Warner Bros and Discovery didn’t happen, we would have gotten at least one more season. Nevertheless, I’m glad the show at least went out on its own terms. Not many series are able to do that.

I am devastated that this is the last time I will ever see my favorite adaptation of these characters. They were all so perfect and I don’t think any other live action adaptation will ever be able to top it. However, as a final installment, the fourth season of Doom Patrol more than lived up to the hype. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my favorite super weird and dysfunctional team of misfits, but I’m glad I was able to get closure with them and on such a powerful note.

Season Trailer

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