In Review: Doom Patrol (S2 – E9) – Wax Patrol

Synopsis: The Doom Patrol must confront their childhood imaginary friends before they face The Candlemaker. Meanwhile, Dorothy must make a fateful choice.

The Story

This final episode of the season sees the Doom Patrol set out on a mission to rescue Chief and his daughter Dorothy from The Candlemaker, but as they arrive they each have to contend with their own psychological issues via an encounter with their imaginary friends. Little do they know that their imaginary friends are in fact various manifestations coming from The Candlemaker, who is exploiting Dorothy’s connection to them.

Elsewhere, Crazy Jane is working to establish control of her host body and has to live through one of Miranda’s traumas in order to re-enable her connection to the other Crazy Jane personalities who desperately need stable leadership.

The Acting

Diane Guerrero puts in a fantastic performance as we get to the bottom of some of Crazy Jane’s issues and get to know a little more about the Miranda personality who seems to have taken over the Crazy Jane host body. The scene at the sex party is really powerful in as far as the issues of trauma that it was dealing with as far as Miranda was concerned. It was also a great scene in as far as how it set crazy Jane to retake her own personal power and effectively serve as the protector of her other more traumatized personalities.

We also saw solid performances from April Bowlby, Matt Bomer, Brendan Fraser, and Joivan Wade as Elasti-Woman, Negative Man, Robot Man and Cyborg all have to deal with their childhood imaginary friends. Each imaginary friend encounter highlighted the vulnerabilities and the shadow aspects of each character and would make an interesting case study for anyone studying psychology.

Overall

A fantastic episode, which gives us one hell of a cliffhanger to chew on until the series returns in 2021 hopefully. How will Dorothy cope with her quest to become a woman and what will it mean for the team are all questions that will hopefully be addressed.