Doom Patrol finale review: Romance and do-goodery are in the air
Doom Patrol – “Ezekiel Patrol”. Photo Credit: Annette Brown / 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Tackling trauma and grief
Doom Patrol transforms toying with our emotions into an art form. This becomes especially apparent in “Ezekiel Patrol,” as the writers have finetuned their methods for mental health discussions and conjuring our tearful reactions.
Just after we basked in Rita and Larry’s roommate situation and their realization that normal lives are boring at best, the episode swiftly transitions into tragedy by building the framework of how the team individually copes with their trauma.
Recognizing your father-figure and mentor was a villain who caused you to become a disabled-coded metahuman is a traumatic experience and takes time to adjust to. For the Doom Patrol, it makes them split up.
They were a family, and more importantly Niles’ family, but we don’t blame them for breaking up. The residual traumas from remembering a man who instills a lot of residual trauma into their lives is a lot for anyone to handle. The key is how different each disassembled hero copes their grief.
Seeing Rita and Larry establish a roommate arrangement is wholesome, especially coupled with Rita’s insight and her trying to get Larry to stop hiding from society and from himself. However, a life of “normalcy” isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, as Rita finds out herself. But trying to live life is apart of coping.
While Jane’s visual drug use can be uncomfortable and even impossible to stomach, her relapse is a critical inclusion in the finale. Every part of her has a divergence take on grief and trauma, and coping with trauma doesn’t stop after any mental health milestone. It’s ongoing, and Doom Patrol understands this. Thankfully, with Jane’s relapse in her recovery, she supports herself like she’s always done.
Forgetting and repressing self isn’t healing. It’s just hiding from trauma but the trauma is still there. Allowing Jane to recover and showing her relapse as an equally powerful and natural part of recovery is such an important message in the series.