Doom Patrol season 1, episode 13, "Flex Patrol" has set the stage for the final battle between the super-powered patients of Dr. Niles "The Chief" Caulder and the mysterious Mr. Nobody, but there are a few questions leading into that. "Flex Patrol" also explained the origins of Flex Mentallo - a legendary lost hero, whom the team recently rescued from the Bureau of Normalcy.
The later half of Doom Patrol season 1 has seen the team trying to deal with their respective mental traumas, following the revelation that Mr. Nobody once faced a superhero team organized by Dr. Caulder several decades earlier and they tore themselves apart over their own inner turmoil. The team also began the search for Flex Mentallo - a man whom the sentient boulevard known as Danny The Street felt might be able to help fight Mr. Nobody on his own turf and win. Ironically, the team discovered and rescued Flex Mentallo almost entirely by accident, after they broke into the Bureau of Normalcy in a bid to rescue the abducted Cyborg.
With Larry Trainor having apparently made his peace with the Negative Spirit that lives in his body and Rita Farr having finally opened up about her big secret to someone, the team seem to be in as good a shape as possible to finally face Mr. Nobody. It will be interesting to see how that confrontation unfolds over the final two episodes of Doom Patrol season 1. Yet there are still some questions demanding answers in the wake of "Flex Patrol."
4. What Is Mr. Nobody's Plan?
The comic book version of Mr. Nobody was a former member of the Brotherhood of Evil, who reformed the team into a Brotherhood of Dada, determined to drive the world mad through increasingly unlikely crimes. The television version of Mr. Nobody hasn't been quite so organized. Apart from abducting Dr. Caulder so that he could torture him over some past slight, Mr. Nobody hasn't stated any real goals for himself.
What little we have seen of Mr. Nobody in action has been wholly contradictory. In "Donkey Patrol," he warned Dr. Caulder's patients away from trying to find him and his actions against Cyborg in "Cyborg Patrol" were entirely due to Victor Stone's stubborn refusal to give up on finding The Chief. He also aided a rat in seeking revenge on Cliff Steele, as Robotman began trying to lead the team in group therapy sessions, nominally so that they could get their heads together to fight Mr. Nobody. Yet in "Flex Patrol," Mr. Nobody seems honestly overjoyed when Rita Farr finally confronts her own personal issues and the episode ends with him cheering the fact that the team is finally ready to face him. So does Mr. Nobody want to fight the team or not?
The most likely answer is that Mr. Nobody is as insane as Dr. Caulder suggested and that he isn't sure what he wants anymore. It's also entirely possible that Mr. Nobody doesn't have a great plan or scheme apart from trolling Dr. Caulder and his associates and playing the villain role he has been cast in. Or he may have grown bored with his god-like powers and decided to indulge the new Doom Patrol's desire for a fight for want of anything better to do now that he's so easily won his revenge against Dr. Caulder.
3. How Can The Doom Patrol Defeat Mr. Nobody?
While the residents of Doom Manor have an impressive array of powers between them, they still don't seem to have much of a chance in a straight-up fight against Mr. Nobody. Cliff Steele may be strong as Robotman and Rita Farr may have found a greater degree of control over her shape-shifting, but their powers are relatively weak compared to the power to rewrite reality at will. The Negative Spirit has some amazing mental abilities, but Larry Trainor's control over it is limited, at best. And while Crazy Jane has 64 powers to choose from, getting the right personality to take over at the right time is easier said than done.
It seems likely that the key to the battle will be Flex Mentallo - the Hero of the Beach and Master of Muscle Mystery. Flex's ability to alter reality on a local level by posing and flexing the right muscles seem the perfect counter to Mr. Nobody's powers. There's also some degree of irony that a villain whose motto is "The mind is the limit" should be defeated by a hero whose powers are based around matter exerting control over the mind.
2. Will Cyborg Return For The Finale?
After being tricked by Mr. Nobody into nearly beating his father to death in "Cyborg Patrol", Victor Stone spends most of "Flex Patrol" in a deep funk. Once the teammate most determined to rescue Dr. Caulder, Cyborg is now second-guessing his every action and convinced that his trying to chase after Mr. Nobody was a mistake. Rita tries to persuade Victor to reinstall the Grid software that runs most of his sub-systems so that they can use the tracking device she planted on the Beard Hunter, hoping that will lead them to Mr. Nobody. Eventually he agrees, but says that he can't leave his hospitalized father alone and that the rest of the team will have to face Mr. Nobody without him.
Mr. Nobody seems certain that Victor is out of the show now, ripping his face out of a poster depicting the Doom Patrol cast in the final scene of the episode. This would leave a team made up entirely of classic Doom Patrol members facing Mr. Nobody in the final confrontation. Still, it seems a bit anti-climactic that Cyborg shouldn't get to face the villain who did so much to mess with his mind and avenge himself on some level.
1. Will Larry Survive The Season?
While in the clutches of the Bureau of Normalcy in "Cyborg Patrol," Larry Trainor was finally separated from the Negative Spirit that had been bound to his body for nearly six decades. While this seemed to be everything that both of them had wanted (the spirit described being inside Larry's body as torture) Larry seemed listless and weak during the events of "Flex Patrol," Near the end of the episode he collapsed and began coughing up blood, saying that he felt like time had finally caught up with him, as the spirit had apparently been prolonging his life. Larry encouraged the Negative Spirit to leave, saying "at least one of us should get to fly high again," but the spirit apparently valued Larry's life over its freedom and went back inside of him.
While this seemingly transitions Larry's relationship with the Negative Spirit to something closer to the comics, where it was said Larry would die if the spirit left his body for too long, it also seems to be setting up a heroic sacrifice for one or both of them. It's worth noting that in the comics an injured Larry Trainor was reborn in a new form after he and the Negative Spirit bonded with his physician, Dr. Eleanor Poole, to create a gestalt intersex entity which named itself Rebis. This could be a possible direction for Larry Trainor's character in Doom Patrol season 2.