Doom Patrol season 2, episode 9 review: Wax Patrol

“Why are you doing this, man?! You’re supposed to be all peaceful and #%!&!” Spoilers for Doom Patrol season 2, episode 9 follow.

Candlemaker has finally broken free of his prison in the Doom Patrol season 2 finale and the only ones that can stop him are, the Doom Patrol? Yeah, this isn’t going to end well.

While the end of the world is happening on the DC Universe show, we also learn more about what sent Miranda into the Well inside of Kay’s mind.

The end of the world

As much as Niles tried to keep Candlemaker from emerging out into the world, he failed and now the villain is preparing to bring on the end of the world. Before that can happen though, the Doom Patrol has to have at least one chance to stop it. How the show does that though isn’t by punching, at least for the most part, but rather having the crew confront their imaginary friends.

It may seem silly, which it is, but having everyone, except for Larry, confront their old imaginary friends makes a lot of this episode come together. Everyone now gets to confront the issues that they’ve been facing this entire season and it’s a great way to get inside each character’s heads without just being exposition without conflict. The imaginary friends, especially Rita’s, take a while to get used to, but once you are used to them, they work wonderfully, especially Jesus. Cliff fighting his imaginary version of Jesus is hilarious.

The problem with this portion of the episode though is massive. This doesn’t feel like a finale. No, it feels like the penultimate episode of the season. This is more than likely due to the fact that filming had to halt on the tenth episode of the season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so it’s clear that this isn’t what the writer’s room intended to do.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that the season now ends in a pretty unsatisfying manner and a cliffhanger to boot as Dorothy gets swallowed by Candlemaker and Niles can only cry. Hopefully the tenth episode will be finished eventually so that the story can actually conclude properly.

Fathers of the year

So, even though this episode as a whole is quite disappointing given its current nature of being the season two finale, that doesn’t mean its individual parts aren’t still good though. So much of this season has revolved around parenthood, especially fatherhood, and those parts in this episode contain some of the best moments.

Seeing Cliff fretting about what to wear to his daughter’s wedding is genuinely heartwarming even though it’s something so small. He may be a big robot, but he’s still human where it matters and what matters at that moment is trying to make sure he doesn’t ruin his daughter’s wedding. It’s sweet and a nice touch of excitement for the character before he has to go try and stop Candlemaker.

As for Niles, we don’t see much of him in this episode, but when we do, it’s probably at his most sympathetic point. He’s crawling on the ground dying and the only thing he can think about is protecting Dorothy. Yeah, his attempts to protect her don’t work, but it’s the thought that counts. It’s a nice culmination of Niles’ journey throughout this season even if it is only for just one scene.

Miranda’s past

With everything else going on, we also get to learn about Miranda’s past and why exactly she threw herself into the well in the first place. Everything that happens in these flashbacks is interesting, but they also feel out of place in this episode. Most of that is because of the de facto finale nature of this episode, but also that it messed with the flow of the episode as a whole.

Almost whenever there are flashbacks in Doom Patrol, it has had something to do with the main story at hand. Here though, with Miranda’s flashbacks, it really seemed to have little to do with everything happening with Candlemaker. Yes, we get the reveal that the Miranda that came out of the well is not in fact the original Miranda, but the flashbacks as a whole felt out of place in this episode. It’s difficult to criticize them too much though as the segments are good, they just feel out of place here.

In the de facto season 2 finale of Doom Patrol the individual parts of the episode never come together to make satisfying whole.

That marks the end of Doom Patrol season 2. Did you enjoy the finale of Doom Patrol season 2? Let us know in the comments below!