“I made that decision for you once before, and look where that got us.” Spoilers for Doom Patrol season 4, episode 10 follow.
Reeling from the fallout from Immortimas, Vic begins to truly feel like he’s ready to become who he was always meant to be and who the Doom Patrol always knew he was.
While he does that though, Isabel begins her ascent to stardom and invites the Doom Patrol to participate in helping her on her way to the top.
Who am I?
After an entire season of Vic questioning whether or not he wants to be Cyborg again, and what that means for him, this might be the last time where he ponders that question. How often Vic has posed this question, or someone has annoyed him into thinking about whether or not he should be Cyborg, has been a minor point of annoyance over the season as it just felt repetitive at a certain point, but it pays off well here.
This is the natural endpoint of that arc for the season, and, sadly, there wasn’t as much of a focus as there could have been. Everything about the were-butts in this episode (and really this season minus the future episode) has not been needed and it actually detracted from this episode having it here as it took away time from Vic.
Nevertheless, the scenes that we do get between Vic and Silas are very good and truly feel like the culmination of their interactions across the series. They finally feel like a father and son rather than just a Doctor and his patient. Even having Vic joke that Silas got the game system that Vic used to play wrong made that connection feel more real and wholesome, as did Silas’ trepidation in helping Vic become Cyborg again. In the end though, to the surprise of no one, Vic becomes Cyborg again, booyah and all.
I’m not Disney
After her song at the end of the last episode, you’d think it’d be more fire and fury the next time the Doom Patrol and Isabel saw each other, but no it’s not. Isabel invites the Doom Patrol to her new one-woman show after apologizing for trying to force the whole world to love her, “just like Disney,” which is probably the funniest joke in the entire series. This writer literally had to pause the episode because he was laughing so hard after Isabel said that line. Charity Cervantes just delivers it absolutely perfectly.
After she bombs though, Laura tries to talk to Isabel, helping her understand the struggles, but it does the opposite, it pushes her to truly become a supervillain. That was inevitable, but the fact that Isabel then tried to recruit Laura to be her sidekick in crime was pretty adorable. For an immortal being of evil, she is just truly naive and jealous of her surroundings. Almost makes one want to let them give her a tiny bit of world domination, just a tiny bit.
Aging
While Laura is at the show though, the Doom Patrol continue to age and are truly beginning to deal with the reality of that, with both the dark realities and the humorous realities being present. And by dark, literally very dark. Larry starts the episode by digging his own grave. Cliff and Jane begin to drive down to Florida but don’t make it far as their bodies and minds fail with Cliff’s Parkinson’s and Jane’s oncoming dementia.
But this leads to the best scene of the episode, and one of the best of the season, as the four sit around a fireplace and reminisce. It truly feels like a scene where you are sitting around with old friends as you are beginning to move on from this specific life that you’ve led, and are able to smile at whatever eventuality happens. This scene hinges entirely on Rita being able to sell the acceptance that she, and the others, feel and April Bowlby is incredible once again. She has always been a perfect Rita and that is no exception here. There has always been a beauty in this series in the way that the characters interact with the world around them, and the fireplace scene exudes that sentiment once again.
Doom Patrol brings back one of its principal characters in a satisfying way, while also not forgetting everyone else in the meantime, leading to some fantastic character work.