WEIRD SCIENCE
SHOWRUNNER JEREMY CARVER UNPACKS THE STRANGE AND WACKY THIRD SEASON OF DC’S DOOM PATROL
MONSTER HUNTERS Sam and Dean Winchester in Supernatural often got thrown into zany and outrageous scenarios. From being stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque death loop, to the boys finding themselves trapped in an alternate universe where they played various characters from popular television shows, clearly somebody was thinking outside the box when it came to the show’s storylines.
Meanwhile, in Doom Patrol there’s giant cockroaches, cannibalistic butts, Doctor Tyme’s roller disco party, sex ghosts and imaginary friends. More wacky and bizarre – to the extreme. The common denominator? Showrunner Jeremy Carver… and he’s fine with that.
WAX ON, WAX OFF?
“In Doom Patrol, we are definitely trying to stretch the boundaries of the traditional way you would tell a story on a TV episode,” Carver tells SFX. “We tend to have a lot of episodes that don’t really follow a tried-and-true structure. I’m thinking of something last season in ‘Sex Patrol’.
“That episode started pretty normally, but went off the rails, which was all by design. We had a ton of fun putting it together. We are definitely trying to challenge ourselves, or outdo ourselves, throughout the season. I wouldn’t say it’s been an out-and-out mantra in the writers’ room to go absolutely nuts, but we certainly do encourage it.”
The Doom Patrol consists of oddballs shunned by society after receiving their powers in tragic accidents. When the superhero drama returns, season three will pick up exactly where things left off. The team remains encased in wax, and young Dorothy (Abigail Shapiro) must stand against the nightmarish Candlemaker alone. Whatever the outcome, the group will suffer a devastating blow.
“Without divulging too much, you are going to see this found family deal with loss, and everyone brings their own history and experiences to it,” Carver says. “We will have very different reactions. What is interesting about this group of people is that at this point, they understand they are going to react differently to things like this. They all need a bit of space.
“For Rita/elasti-girl [April Bowlby], she has flirted with this idea of being something more or something better, or even flirted with using her powers for good,” he continues. “She will be confronted with that very dilemma right from the get-go of the season. Her arc will be very much about, ‘Am I going to be something bigger than myself or not?’ She literally goes on a time-hopping journey to answer that.”
On the other hand, Cliff/robotman (Brendan Fraser) literally lost his head in a battle with the Candlemaker. Some assembly
will be required, but not without consequences. “At the heart of the invention of Robotman, it’s this notion going back to the comic books, that this is an indestructible robot body he’s in,” Carver explains. “The removal of the head, and subsequently trying to figure out how to fix him, only draws a spotlight on that part of Cliff that may not be indestructible. What is the one human part of him that is still fallible? That is at the heart of Cliff this season.”
In addition, the season two finale left Jane (Diane Guerrero) and the Underground’s fate up in the air. After relinquishing her role as Primary to one of her other 64 personalities, Miranda, Jane discovered a disturbing truth. Miranda’s true identity is Daddy, the manifestation of original host Kay Challis’s sexually abusive father – and now he’s the one in control.
“Jane knows that her job is to be the one amongst them to help Kay and the Underground to survive,” Carver says. “When we talk about Jane’s mindset, we are talking about someone who is really beaten down and really exhausted and really scared that she may not be able to pull a rabbit from out of her hat and help the Underground survive. She’s going to need help from a very unlikely source, which will then propel and motivate Jane’s arc for the coming season.
“The feeling in the writers’ room is that people who experience trauma very rarely are able to completely bat that trauma away and be done with it,” he continues. “You may have highs and lows. You may have moments you think you have vanquished it, but somewhere within you, there’s always that trauma.
“We are trying to acknowledge with this villain that it’s much more than a supernatural thing. It goes straight to the mental health of Kay Challis, the girl whose mind they’re living in.”
ROUGE AWAKENING
Adding even more drama will be the arrival of Madame Rouge (Michelle Gomez). A master of disguise in the comic books, she underwent an operation that allowed her to alter her appearance and stretch her limbs. Rouge became a member of the Brotherhood of Evil and enemy of the Doom Patrol. That might be the case on the show, too, if she wasn’t suffering from amnesia.
“It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that when we meet Madame Rouge, she is not Madame Rouge, at least in our own minds – because she has no idea who she is,” Carver says. “She’s travelled here from another place and another time, on a mission that she can’t remember, except she’s convinced it has something to do with the Doom Patrol.
“Madame Rouge, like our other characters on Doom Patrol, has her personal struggles, mainly trying to understand whether she is a good person or a bad person,” he adds. “Much of that exploration happens this season. There’s lots of surprises. Lots of trips to the past. It’s a fun and rich story.”
Other DC faces making an appearance include the Sisterhood of Dada and the Dead Boy Detective Agency. And the Butts will return. “I’m pretty much thinking we might be doing one of the most outlandish episodes of all with Butts versus zombies in an all-out brawl,”
I’m thinking we might be doing one of the most outlandish episodes of all with Butts versus zombies in a brawl
says Carver. The new season will also pit the Doom Patrol against the Brotherhood of Evil, most notably with the live-action debuts of Monsieur Mallah, a super-intelligent talking gorilla, and the Brain, a disembodied brain in a metallic case. Yep, you read that right.
“My friend, you are going to see the Brain and Monsieur Mallah in full glory this season,” Carver promises. “I didn’t have to wrap my brain around them too much because we have a stellar team at Doom Patrol to bring them to life. What they did is absolutely remarkable. It works wonderfully. It becomes seamless storytelling as opposed to staring at your screen and being like, ‘I’m looking at a brain and a gorilla’.
“This goes back to the pilot, where I realised we were going to have two of our main characters, Cliff and Larry/negative Man [Matt Bomer], sharing scenes where neither of their mouths move,” he says. “I had a panic attack thinking, ‘How the heck are we ever going to pull that off?’ Each time we attempt to do something like that, the panic is always there, but it gets a little quieter as the seasons go on.
The Brain and Mallah are a lot of fun, and they are very much woven into the story as the villains we always hoped they would be.”
The Doom Patrol appear to be forging their own separate paths. But as they grapple with personal issues and come into their own, the team will face the idea of who they want to be. And that could either unify them again… or further tear them apart.
“Everybody at one point or another this season is brought low not just by their limitations, but the limitations of those around them,” Carver says. “I don’t just mean the family of the Doom Patrol, but the other family members as well.
“Cyborg [Jovian Wade] goes on one of the most heart-wrenching journeys of the season, in which he has to confront his father and, yes, his dead mother, in ways that will become apparent about choices that were made that led him to become Cyborg.”
He concludes, “The basic question they are asking themselves is, ‘Is this as good as it gets? Is this what life is going to be? Or is there something better?’ The answer to that question is what propels them to the end of the season and seasons beyond.”
Doom Patrol is on HBO in the US from 23 September and Prime Video later this year.