Doom Patrol Season 3 - What We Know So Far
Contains spoilers for Doom Patrol through season 2
All good things must come to an end, and Doom Patrol season 2 is no exception. The season, which aired concurrently on DC Universe and HBO Max, ended with the mother of all cliffhangers: Niles Caulder's (Timothy Dalton) daughter Dorothy (Abigail Shapiro) prepared to battle the Candlemaker (voiced by Lex Lang), who had sealed the rest of the team in wax. Jane (Diane Guerrero) also had problems of her own, seeing as her current primary personality Miranda (Samantha Ware) turned out to be the predator personality Daddy (David MacDonald).
The season wasn't supposed to end quite like that. Executive producer Jeremy Carver noted that the coronavirus pandemic affected the plot, as everyone rushed to bring the show to an early conclusion. that would still be satisfying "We knew we were facing a potential shutdown [while working on episode 9]," he told TV Line. "So we were able to do a bit of a pivot and make sure that episode 9 would be just as satisfying of a conclusion to the season as if we had moved on to episode 10. There were probably a few more loose ends than there would have been if we'd gone all the way through Episode 10, but we were very happy with how we were able to structure it to give us a satisfying end to the season."
The one-episode-short season is indeed amazing — and it left us wondering what will happen to Cliff (Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan), Rita (April Bowlby), Larry (Matt Bomer and Matthew Zuk), Cyborg (Joivan Wade) and the rest of the gang moving forward. Neither DC Universe nor HBO Max have confirmed a third season of Doom Patrol as of this writing (August 11, 2020), but there are some details out there that clue us into what a new batch of episodes could look like.
Here's what we know so far about Doom Patrol season 3.
What's the release date for Doom Patrol season 3?
Well, we expected to get some good news at DC FanDome, and although the first weekend of the virtual con didn't yield any concrete developments on the renewal front, the second weekend, which ran September 12, provided the best possible news: Doom Patrol has indeed been renewed for season 3. As confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter, the third outing for this off-beat romp through DC's B-sides is set to air exclusively on WarnerMedia's nascent streaming platform, HBO Max.
The first episode of Doom Patrol season 1 was released on February 15, 2019, and the second season premiered on June 25, 2020. This helps us estimate that a new season takes roughly a year and a half to make. So, assuming that the show can jump into production in a timely fashion, fans may be able to expect Doom Patrol season 3 sometime in the fall of 2021 or spring of 2022. It's a long wait, we know, but it's certainly going to be worth it.
Who's in the cast of Doom Patrol season 3?
Should Doom Patrol receive a richly deserved renewal for season 3, it's pretty certain that the entire main cast of Brendan Fraser, Diane Guerrero, April Bowlby, Matt Bomer, Joivan Wade, and Timothy Dalton will reprise their roles as Cliff, Jane, Rita, Larry, Cyborg and Niles Caulder. Since season 2 ended with a cliffhanger, we'll likely see the return of Abigail Shapiro as Dorothy, as well as Lex Lang as the monstrous Candlemaker's voice. The storyline inside Jane's head is also still without conclusion, so Samantha Ware will quite likely return as the Miranda personality. Since Miranda is actually a front for the terrifying, destructive Daddy, there's a chance that David MacDonald (who plays that personality, as well as Jane's real father) makes an appearance.
Many characters in Doom Patrol's vast supporting cast are liable to pop up during season 3 as well. Danny the Street/Brick/Tire and his people are still very much out there, and some of the most prominent "Dannyzens," such as Devan Chandler Long's Flex Mentallo, could always return when we least expect them. Given the fact that he revealed during season 2 that there's a dangerous, cataclysmic event on the horizon, Mark Sheppard's scruffy chaos magician Willoughby Kipling is borderline guaranteed to show up.
There's also one interesting Doom Patrol character who's alive but spent the entirety of season 2 trapped in a painting. We're talking, of course, about Alan Tudyk's Mr. Nobody, the reality-bending, fourth-wall-breaking supervillain with narration powers. Should the writers (and Tudyk) want to revisit the many-faceted Nobody on a possible season 3, the source material provides ample opportunities to do so. And hey, maybe he'll bring Tommy Snider's Beard Hunter back with him.
What's the plot of Doom Patrol season 3?
So far, Doom Patrol has adapted most of its major plot points from Grant Morrison's run with the DC comics, so after a potential season 3 resolves the Dorothy/Candlemaker storyline, chances are that the show decides to return to the source-material well. Fortunately, the comics still have plenty of things fans want to see in Doom Patrol.
If the show brings back Mr. Nobody for season 3, it could also introduce one of his supervillain teams. The first one is the Brotherhood of Evil, which featured Monsiour Mallah (a talking French gorilla), the Brain (a brain in a jar), and Madame Rouge (an actress with a split personality and shapeshifting powers, making her a suitable foil for both Jane and Rita). The second one is the Brotherhood of Dada, a surrealist group of strange-looking individuals with dangerous, incredibly quirky powers. One of the Dada storylines also happens to involve a large apocalyptic event of the sort that Willoughby Kipling was warning the Doom Patrol about: The release of the Fifth Horseman, Extinction, who races through several levels of a magical painting, gaining power as it proceeds.
Alternately, the show could go cataclysmic with the introduction of Orqwith, the philosophical thought experiment that became a lethal bone city trying to overtake the real world. This would also give us the chilling Scissormen, Orqwith's mindless agents who speak random nonsense and cut people off from reality with their giant scissor hands.
So, yeah, there are many options for a season 3 plot. The show could even decide to just go for the jugular and give us all of the above, with some whipped cream and a cherry on top. After all, Doom Patrol is all about inspired storylines and absurd, unexpected events — and frankly, we wouldn't have it any other way.