The Doom Patrol Season 3 is upon us; and if you have no clue what I’m talking about, now is the time to catch up on this HBO Go DC comic-book series. In terms of weirdness, lunacy, and surreal mayhem, this is the series that leaves all the others looking like Sesame Street or Dora the Explorer. Umbrella Academy is child’s play, when you stack the characters of the show up against the Patrol protagonists.
While the Saturn, Harvey, and Critics Choice Super Awards have nominated the series as Best Superhero or Comic book series, it still seems that outside of their niche and cult followings, the rest of the world is still playing to catch up. The Emmys finally took notice and nominated Thom Williams for his Stunt Coordination; but to my mind, it’s the narrative and complex superhero characters that have really driven this series to the acclaim it enjoys by those who do watch it.
April Bowlby, who we’ve seen in comedy series such as Two and a Half Men and Drop Dead Diva, first portrayed Rita Farr in Titans, then reprised the role for The Doom Patrol. As part of the promoting of the September 23 drop of the 3rd season, April/Rita joined a contingent of Asian writers for a Zoom session - and she was engaging and charming.
April has loved playing this role of Rita Farr - Elasti-Girl, as it’s an incredibly layered character, plus a superhero dream come true for her. In her previous series, the roles were rich with comedy and they were all-girl. She enjoyed those, but Rita Farr was something very different - someone, who’s had a hard life, and punished herself a lot.
As April enthused, “With Rita, there was a depth of character that became the challenge for me. Looking back, I like how it’s been a nice evolution of work in my career. For inspiration, as I took on the role if you can believe it, I looked back to Katherine Hepburn and Bette Davis. Especially with Bette Davis, there’s a film she came out in called The Star, where she’s a very narcissistic but broken star - and that resonated, as in there’s Rita.”
What April also was excited about was how in Season 3, Rita takes her destiny into her own hands, time-travels, and… at this point, April held back, not wanting to give us too many spoilers. So she segued into how it was so different shooting the 6 months of Season 3 while the pandemic was going on.
“The protocols were all in place, and testing was constantly done. I have to admit it really changed the energy on the set though. You can’t hug people after difficult or emotional takes, and you just had to be so conscious about keeping the set a safe place to ‘play’. What we just did instead was channeled the energy into the times we’d be in character. It’s a great Season 3, with so many unexpected things happening, and it introduces Madame Rouge - watch out for her!”
The Doom Patrol is simply one of the better series inspired by DC comic books that you’ll find on the streaming services. It dares to be really different, with complex psychological portraits - a band of misfits, superheroes that possess great power but have even greater mental health issues and conflicts. That you have so much power in unbalanced personalities is part of the magic that’s created episode after episode.
It’s on HBO Go, and shouldn’t be missed if you’re a comic book/superhero fan.