How Old Is Niles Caulder In Doom Patrol?
Dr. Niles Caulder (Timothy Dalton) is at heart a good man, but it's safe to say that his actions throughout "Doom Patrol" aren't exactly ethical. In his search for immortality, he wound up creating Elasti-Woman, Robotman, and Negative-Man and even had a hand in Cyborg's origin at S.T.A.R. Labs. And as audiences saw in both seasons of the series so far, Caulder has had an incredibly long life which has been fuelled by his hunt for immortality. He might've found various ways of prolonging the inevitable, but as of the end of "Doom Patrol" Season 2, he hadn't found a way to become truly immortal.
To be fair to Niles (or The Chief if you're friendly) his reason for seeking immortality is an understandable one. His daughter Dorothy Spinner (Abigail Shapiro) can conjure up her terrifying imaginary friends into reality, and one of them is destined to cause the end of the world when she grows up. Since she inherited a decreased aging rate from her mother, Dorothy has been stuck as an 11-year old girl for decades. Niles was worried that if he died, his daughter wouldn't be able to control her grief and would accidentally unleash the devastating entity known as the Candlemaker.
On his quest to save the world by helping his daughter, Niles found a trinket that kept him from getting older. The Longevity Talisman (which looks an awful lot like a rabbit's foot) kept The Chief from aging for an extra 72 years. Unfortunately, he was forced to trade it with Willoughby Kipling to restore the team back to their normal size after the finale of "Doom Patrol" Season 1.
Niles was born in the 1800s
Niles Caulder's life began in a completely different century to the "Doom Patrol" story, as he was born in London in 1881 – but fast forward 30 years and the scientist was helping to run the Bureau of Oddities (which later renamed itself the Bureau of Normalcy) ahead of World War I. After discovering his daughter living in a circus in 1927, Niles set out to keep her safe while protecting the world from the threat of the Candlemaker. It wasn't until the 1940s that he actually discovered a way of prolonging his own life.
Niles' search took him to Paraguay in 1943 where he crossed paths with Heinrich Von Fuchs. A former Nazi, Von Fuchs was experimenting on transforming regular human beings into metahumans with extraordinary abilities. When Caulder found him, he was working on turning Eric Morden into something greater in exchange for the Longevity Talisman. Of course, Morden wound up becoming an omniscient entity called Mr. Nobody who could warp reality on a whim. But Niles still managed to shoot Von Fuchs and steal the talisman for himself.
At 139 years old, Niles has led an interesting life. But now that he's without the talisman and he hasn't found another source of immortality, it's not clear whether the series will kill him off in the next season. We'll just have to wait for "Doom Patrol" Season 3 to find out.