Season 2 of Doom Patrol has been confirmed. As well as returning to the DC Universe streaming platform, the comic book superhero series will also stream simultaneously on HBO Max, WarnerMedia’s streaming service set to launch early next year. Most of the show’s characters were first introduced in an episode of Titans titled after the team, and then spun off into their own series where they face the machinations of a nigh-omnipotent madman.
The Doom Patrol is a superhero team made up of several odd individuals, most of whom were cut off from humanity by freak accidents and saved by the intervention of scientific genius Dr Niles Calder. Cliff Steele is a racing driver whose brain was transplanted into a robot body after a horrific crash; Larry Trainor is a pilot left with translucent skin hidden by bandages and sharing his body with a being of negative energy after hitting a field of it; Rita Farr is a Hollywood starlet whose body was transformed into an elasticized gelatinous mound after being exposed to toxic liquid; and Crazy Jane is a woman whose psyche fragmented after a childhood trauma and developed severe dissociative identity disorder, with each of her personalities possessing a different power.
The news of Doom Patrol’s renewal and dual broadcast was shared at San Diego Comic-Con during the DC Universe panel, and it was also stated that the series would air sometime in 2020. This comes as a relief to fans of the show, who’d become concerned that its renewal seemed uncertain, given the murky circumstances surrounding the sudden cancellation of Swamp Thing and what this might mean for other shows on the DC Universe service.
A bone of contention remains in the comics industry over the group’s conceptual similarity to the X-Men (superpowered misfits shunned by society form a team lead by a wheelchair-bound genius), the debut of which Doom Patrol preceded by a few months. Despite similar origins, the Doom Patrol is a far lesser known team, often best remembered for being unceremoniously killed off in 1968 after a few years of operation when declining sales led to the series’ cancellation. The series was relaunched in 1989 following the Invasion! crossover event, with the lunatic writing of Grant Morrison utilizing secret societies; abstract surrealism; parody stories, images and characters; and bizarre villains defying the laws of reality itself.
It’s good news that Doom Patrol has finally been renewed, as DC Universe needed something to offset the dour and humorless Titans, and Doom Patrol’s fully embraced crazy is the perfect thing to do it. While no story details have been released, with season 1 having such details as a fourth-wall-breaking villain narrator commenting on the show’s shortcomings, a dimensional portal down a donkey’s throat, the half-human/half-dinosaur Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, hair-consuming psychic vigilante the Beard Hunter, a sentient street, and a climax featuring a kaiju-like rampage by a giant-sized vengeance-seeking rat and a doomsaying cockroach, we can likely expect equally weird and wonderful goings on to keep us entertained.
Next: What To Expect From Doom Patrol Season 2
