Review: Doom Patrol Season 2 Episode 9, “Wax Patrol”

If there’s anything we can take from the season 2 finale of Doom Patrol, it’s that things can always get weirder. In fact, “Wax Patrol” may be the weirdest episode yet.

The team comes together to save Niles and Dorothy from the CandleMaker. But when they arrive at the fairgrounds, they’re almost entirely covered in wax. It’s the best-looking set for the season and looking at the people encased within is unnerving.

The team splits up after a dying Kipling tells them how the CandleMaker will use their own imaginations against them. This leads to some hilarious encounters with some old imaginary friends. Vic has a heart to heart with a cowboy version of his father, Rita talks to an imaginary acting coach who makes her practice her tap dancing, and Cliff fights Jesus.

Of course, the Candelmaker is behind all of this, and ends up turning Vic and Rita to wax. Larry, on the other hand, just falls over and instantly becomes wax, which kinda makes the whole imaginary friend tactic seem unnecessary.

Cliff’s fight against Jesus is the highlight of this section. Jesus is angry that Cliff stopped imagining him as a friend, and it’s as absurd and delightful as it sounds.

Ever since becoming Robotman, Cliff’s life has become a parade of bad luck and poor choices. Somehow it’s fitting that he must fight a bro version of Jesus for his life. When Cliff explains why he stopped imagining Jesus as his friend, Jesus forgives him, and they hug it out. It’s a great ending to a satisfying character arc, second only to Vic’s.

While all this fighting is going on, we flashback to the mistake that caused Miranda to jump into the well. It involves a very uncomfortable sex party her boyfriend at the time forced her into, and her trauma leads to the creation of Jane. Like many of the personas, she arrives at her greatest time of need and saves everyone from a situation they did not want to be in. We then see Jane still swimming at the bottom of the well and discovering the true body of Miranda, and get the honestly surprising twist that the persona claiming to be Miranda is an imposter. It’s a twist I am kicking myself for not seeing coming, but it leaves us with many questions and is a great place to start next season.

Niles and Dorothy are absent for most of the episode, but we see glimpses of Dorothy struggling to stop the escape of the CandleMaker until we see Niles dragging himself around the fair to find her. Dorothy is then faced with the choice to fulfill her purpose for her mother’s people or help her father save the world. It’s surprising when she suddenly materializes a cartoonish looking weapon in her hands and the CandleMaker appears from a bonfire and takes her down into the flames. Niles is left yelling for his daughter as the season ends.

This is the first episode of the season to feel out of place and rushed. After everything Larry went through leading up to the finale, he’s almost instantly disposed of; his pain and emotional distress amounted to very little. The same goes for both Vic and Rita, who for the most part developed into deep, complex individuals. The lack of a payoff for that development left me feeling a little deflated, but I get the impression their story is still not over.

A lot of loose ends remain, but they left it off with everyone stuck in a painting last season, so I guess wax isn’t that different. But I wish the final conflicts had been more reflective of the personal growth Vic, Larry and Rita went through. They nailed it with Cliff and Jane but missed with the other three. Dorothy and Niles fought a fight they knew they couldn’t win and lost in the end, although there’s still some fighting left to do.

Episode Grade: B+

Overall, Doom Patrol remains the best DC Universe original, and its second season was no sophomore slump. From the performances to the writing to to the character development and sets, it succeeds again in taking an underdeveloped DC team and revealing them to be a deep, dark, complex group of individuals who genuinely feel like real people, even with the radioactive skin and robotic bodies.

Season Grade: A-

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