Doom Patrol season 4, episode 11 review: Portal Patrol

“This is it! This is how we die!” Spoilers for Doom Patrol season 4, episode 11 follow.

Isabel has sent the Doom Patrol into the time stream and in order to try to get back to the present, and to get their longevity back, they must enter the portals that are present.

Once they enter though, they all encounter the one man that they thought they wouldn’t see anymore, Niles Caulder.

Portals

One would think that the time stream would be much more horrific than presented here, but rather, in pure Doom Patrol fashion, it looks like a wilder version of the tornado from The Wizard of Oz. Because of course, it does. Nobody really should’ve expected anything or than that, and those of us who did should feel ashamed (he says, staring into a mirror).

But no really, the idea of the team being lost in the time stream and being forced into portals that they don’t know where they’ll end up is always a recipe for fun. And, as always, Doom Patrol takes a simple premise and utilizes it excellently for both humor and dramatic reasons.

Niles

What this episode does best in utilizing the time stream gimmick is bringing back Niles Caulder for one last time. Could it really be the final few episodes of Doom Patrol without Niles? That answer is obviously no, so it was wonderful to see Timothy Dalton back as the horrendous, kind, horrible, empathetic version of Niles that was always present within this show. It was also nice to see Kipling back too, one last time.

But the crux of the episode with Cliff, Larry, and Jane each trying to get a piece of their longevity back very much takes a backseat to their own personal demons.

Cliff manages to get his anger and hatred for Niles out, while also affirming the good man that Cliff is deep down by not allowing Niles to die after Cliff discovers that he is responsible for Niles being paralyzed. And Larry gets assurance from the original spirit that Keeg will be fine in the future, even after Larry is gone.

Meanwhile, Laura makes her way into the Bureau and confronts Niles there. Just kidding. She knocks him out, tries to convince herself to leave the bureau and when that doesn’t work, she kicks the crap out of her past self. It was very oddly satisfying and cathartic because who doesn’t want to beat up the person you were in the past that you now hate?

But the most beautiful part of this episode was when Niles allowed Jane to reconcile with her immensely horrific trauma, which was the explanation as to why Kay developed the personalities in the first place. That trauma won’t be detailed here, but only Doom Patrol could take a piece of damaging trauma like what is presented here, and manage to use it as a point of beautiful growth and self-reconciliation. It’s a beautiful scene in a series full of them and yet it still stands out.

Doom Patrol uses its penultimate episode to allow a lot of closure for its character arcs that have been four seasons in the making, and it’s wonderful.