Doom Patrol episode 3 saw the titular group starting to develop into something approaching a superhero team. Granted, they still aren't a competent superhero team. In fact, Cyborg is the first to say that they are "not the best people for the job" of locating the missing Dr. Niles Caulder. Yet an effort was made that pushed this strange collective of metahuman goose-eggs one step closer to becoming The World's Strangest Heroes.
Left without a clear direction or plan of attack after the events of episode 2, "Donkey Patrol", the residents of Caulder Manor and Cyborg dig through The Chief's lab in search of anything that might help them find the mysterious Mr. Nobody. This leads them to a photograph of the albino donkey that ate Cloverton, taken in Paraguay in 1948. Unfortunately, with Cyborg cut off from his usual resources at STAR Labs by his controlling father (who disapproves of Vic getting involved in the search for Dr. Caulder), this leaves the team with no way of getting to Paraguay except by bus.
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Thus begins the mother of all nightmare road trips, during which all of the Doom Patrol's repressed annoyance with one another becomes much less repressed. Matters aren't helped by the Negative Spirit that lives inside of Larry Trainor's body becoming more unruly, eventually causing the bus to short out somewhere far from Paraguay. Crazy Jane's personality Flit gets sick of the whole thing and teleports herself, Larry and Cliff "Robotman" Steel to Paraguay.
It is here that they find the theme-park known as Fuchtopia - a magic land where your dreams can become reality for a price. Assuming, of course, that your dreams involve the descendants of a Nazi mad scientist giving you superpowers by tampering with unspeakable forces humanity was not meant to know. Yet with as many questions as this raises, there are even stranger things to come and more questions to be asked. Here are some of the questions fans are asking in the wake of Doom Patrol episode 3, "Puppet Patrol."
9. Who Is Grid?
Early on in Doom Patrol episode 3, Cyborg is scanning the Internet through his HUD display, searching for information on The Chief and Mr. Nobody. As he is searching, he speaks to someone he calls Grid. In the current DC Comics universe, Grid is the name that Victor Stone gave to the artificial intelligence software that powers his artificial limbs and passively searches for information while Victor's conscious mind is otherwise occupied.
Grid would literally take on a life of its own during the Forever Evil storyline, where Grid was transformed into a sentient computer virus by the Crime Syndicate of America member Atomica. Given a body of his own based on Cyborg's hardware, Grid became Victor Stone's evil counterpart on the team of supervillains from Earth-3 - a world where all of Earth's greatest heroes had become Earth's most powerful tyrants. It remains to be seen if the DC Universe version of Grid might achieve a similar malevolent state over the course of Doom Patrol season 1.
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8. Who Are The Brotherhood of Evil?
During his briefing of the rest of the team on what they've learned, Cyborg reveals that Mr. Nobody's real name is Eric Morden and that he used to be part of a supervillain team from the 1930s that was known as the Brotherhood of Evil. Comic book fans will instantly recognize this name as that of the supervillain group who were the arch-enemies of the classic Doom Patrol. They would later go on to be reoccurring enemies of the New Teen Titans as well.
The first incarnation of the Brotherhood of Evil consisted of The Brain (a mad-scientist, whose brain was kept alive inside a robot body), the super-intelligent gorilla Monsieur Mallah and the shape-shifting Madame Rouge. Over the years, the Brotherhood of Evil would join forces with other Doom Patrol villains such as General Immortus and the galactic conqueror Garguax, who had their own grudges against Dr. Niles Caulder and his patients. It is all but certain that we'll be seeing the Brotherhood of Evil in action at some point during Doom Patrol season 1, but it cannot yet be said what villains will be part of the team's lineup.
7. What Did The Chief Steal From Von Fuchs?
The orientation at the Fuchtopia theme-park is delivered through a puppet show. The marionettes would be disturbing enough, even if they weren't being used to tell the life's story of a Nazi mad scientist over the course of several hours. Things take a disturbing yet informative turn, however, when the show reaches the moment where Von Fuchs' transformed Eric Morden into Mr. Nobody.
It's revealed Dr. Niles Caulder shot Von Fuchs, apparently killing him, in order to steal "something of great value". The puppet show goes on to say that Dr. Caulder also attempted to disrupt the process that empowered Eric Morden but ultimately failed. This begs the question - just what was it that The Chief stole from Von Fuchs?
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6. How is Crazy Jane's Background In The Show Different From The Comics?
In the original Doom Patrol comics, the woman who became Crazy Jane suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her father when she was only five years old. She repressed these memories, developing another personality called Miranda, who was destroyed after she was assaulted in a church on Easter Sunday. The young woman's psyche fractured into 64 different personas, each of whom developed their own individual superpower after the Invasion! crossover event.
Doom Patrol episode 3 changes this background significantly. Crazy Jane discusses her origins with Von Fuchs, who guesses that Jane is not the core personality and that the young woman's metagene was triggered by some incident in her past that also caused her to develop the multiple personalities that would protect the innocent young girl she had been. Jane confirms the trauma, but says the girl was the test-subject of a group of unethical scientists much like Von Fuchs. She also reveals that the girl was saved from these scientists by a man who disagreed with their belief that the pursuit of science is worth any cost - Dr. Niles Caulder.
5. Is Von Fuchs Really Dead?
Von Fuchs' ultimately reveals himself as a twisted opposite of Crazy Jane - one mind controlling the bodies of his "descendants" who run Fuchtopia. Silver Tongue eventually ends the Nazi mad scientist's life, throwing three carefully chosen words into his chest. This seems to kill all of Von Fuchs' other bodies as well, as the descendants who were running the puppet show and powering the machine keeping Von Fuchs' body alive are seen to slump over. Still, there is a possibility that one of them is playing dead and that Von Fuchs was able to transfer his mind into one still-healthy body.
Page 2 of 2: More Questions From Doom Patrol Episode 3
4. Which of Jane's Personas Do We See In Action This Week?
No new Crazy Jane personalities are introduced in Doom Patrol episode 3 but the hour does still feature several of them in action. In addition to Hammerhead's altercation with the people of Cloverton while putting up posters asking if anyone has seen The Chief, the series finally shows Flit (previously seen on an old video) as she teleports herself, Larry and Cliff to Paraguay. Flit emerges again in the fight with Von Fuchs, along with the sharp-word throwing Silver Tongue. There's also Sun Daddy, the sun-headed giant briefly seen in episode 1, throwing fireballs to destroy Von Fuchs' lab.
Related: Every One of Crazy Jane's 64 Personalities We've Seen So Far
3. What Happened To Larry While He Was In The Machine?
While wandering around Fuchtopia, Larry finds the inter-dimensional chamber that Von Fuchs used to turn Eric Morden into Mr. Nobody. Thinking the effects of the chamber sound similar to the incident that turned him into Negative Man, Larry enters into the chamber hoping it can restore him to normal or at least give him some semblance of control over the Negative Spirit. Once the machine activates, Larry sees himself as he was before the accident and is seemingly separated from the Negative Spirit. Unfortunately, the Spirit continues to hound Larry and won't let him leave the machine.
When Larry loses his temper and accuses the Negative Spirit of ruining his life, Larry is suddenly joined by a vision of his lover - the one person who didn't abandon him after his accident. A flashback later in the episode reveals that an embittered Larry sent his lover away, presumably thinking he didn't deserve such loyalty after how he had dismissed his lover earlier. It is unclear just how much of this takes place in Larry's head or if the inter-dimensional chamber actually allowed Larry and the Negative Spirit to communicate more directly. Either way, the question remains - how have things changed between Larry and the Negative Spirit and where do they stand with each other now?
2. Has Cliff Given Up On Meeting His Daughter?
While going through The Chief's files near the start of Doom Patrol episode 3, Cliff Steele finds a phone number for his daughter on a Post-It note. He takes it with him and almost calls his daughter while he and the rest of the team are on the road. At the end of the episode, on the flight back to the United States, Cliff regards the note and crumples it up, throwing it to the floor, apparently having decided - after his violent rampage fighting Von Fuchs - that his daughter is better off without him in her life.
Despite this, it remains doubtful that this will be the end of Cliff's search for his daughter. The fact that Cliff's daughter is alive and that The Chief lied to Cliff about this fact was set-up as the major subplot for Cliff's character in the Doom Patrol pilot. It would be too big of a shaggy-dog story for this storyline to be abandoned after three episodes with such a low-key resolution.
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1. Who Is The Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man?
When they arrive in Fuchtopoia, Crazy Jane, Larry and Cliff are joined by Steve - a tourist and Von Fuchs fanboy who has come to have his dreams of metahuman glory made a reality. Steve mysteriously disappears from the episode after the orientation puppet show. His fate is revealed in the final scene; he was in one of the chambers in Von Fuchs lab when Crazy Jane set it on fire. Somehow, Steve survived, but is now a gestalt creature with a second dinosaur head, a bunch of celery for a right hand and a geode running down the left side of his body.
Fans of Doom Patrol will recognize Steve's appearance as a tribute to the first appearance of the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man. First appearing in Doom Patrol #89, the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man was originally Dr. Sven Larsen - a student of Niles Caulder, who had a falling out with his mentor after he accused The Chief of stealing his work. He later fell into a vat of amino acids, which gave him the power to reshape his body into any animal, vegetable or mineral. Apart from the Brotherhood of Evil, the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man was the Doom Patrol's most persistent enemy in the comics and it seems likely that Steve has been set-up to harry the team in the same way.