What’s a Doomer to do when a doomsday cult succeeds in their mission despite their best efforts? Gather your supernatural abilities, form a tenuous alliance with your mortal enemy and mold the time-space continuum to cultivate the rise of a counter cult, of course. The Doom Patrol are full of great ideas, even when they don’t know they’re being built. The Decreator’s awakening won’t spell the world’s end on their watch. Sure, the end of all existence would relieve them of the individual crises pulling them apart across seam and synapse, but that’s what heroes do. Right?
Eyeful Of Ash
The cult of the Unwritten Book revels in their victory as the citizens of Cloverton get acquainted with the eye of the Decreator. People and objects begin poofing into piles of ash as Kipling rips into the team for choosing Elliott’s life over the rest of the universe. Vic is ready to fight but Kipling informs him that there isn’t a fight to have. Nothing can stop the Decreator once he is summoned.
Rita’s guilt over allowing Elliott to fall into the cult’s hands overwhelms her, leading her to leave the mansion in search of the living text. She finds him in the courtyard sans script and wrapped in blankets. Any self-loathing Rita is feeling pales in comparison to Elliott’s. He answers Rita’s absolution with his belief that he should’ve died. That won’t stand with Rita. Elliott deserved better than the life he was born into, especially when the world he wanted to save is already garbage. She promises to help Elliott live it up as the world ends, but the Decreator has other ideas. Elliott vaporizes in front of Rita’s eyes, causing her to fall apart literally and figuratively. The sense of loss is only broken when she notices Chief sneaking into the mansion.
Bitter Bedfellows
Chief’s return isn’t all as it seems. He’s definitely here to help, though Vic has some heavy reservations. Those aren’t misplaced as Chief is revealed to be working alongside his captor, Mr. Nobody, to craft a counter attack against the eye in the sky. Their plan is to craft an opposing cult, centered around the Recreator, and utilize a past form of Jane to build a congregation and faith that will summon the Recreator in the present. Stranger things have happened. At least Kipling seems on board.
Jane, Kay & The Monster
The needed form of Jane is found in 1977, years into a tumultuous stay at an asylum brimming with abusive orderlies and doctors. Fresh off beating on some skinheads at a punk show, Jane is strapped down as Dr. Bertrand threatens to cut the bad piece out of her. He brings up Kay, hinting at some past trauma. That proves to be a mistake as the words provoke another persona, Dr. Harrison, to emerge. She displays an ability to influence others while dredging up Bertrand’s own monsters. She decrees herself to be the monster now. Time freezes as Bertrand is about to stab himself in the eye and Mr. Nobody frees Harrison. He reveals his plan and Harrison begins to recruit her fellow inmates, and even some employees, into the Recreator’s service.
In the present, Jane and Cliff remain in their Kay and brain forms at the foot of Mother Archon. Kay picks up Cliff’s brain and asks to not be Kay anymore. Mother informs her that few want to be what they are before granting the request and releasing the duo back into Nurnheim’s streets. Jane reverts back to her Penny persona as Cliff realizes they’re inside a snowglobe and freaks out hard. The situation flares up even more when he asks where Jane is. Penny rips into him about her own autonomy before Hammerhead takes over and trashes Cliff’s attempt to control Jane’s inhabitants. Not taking the hint, Cliff asks about Kay. He wants to thank her for picking up his brain, but Hammerhead informs him that he’ll never talk to or about her ever again. Cliff’s briefing meeting with Kay is the closest he’ll ever get to knowing her.
Ring My Bell
Mr. Nobody and Chief’s plan succeeds with flying colors. Harrison builds a strong community that produces their own living text with more creative flair than their nihilist counterparts. Baphomet reveals the text’s location and the team rushes to find it. The text is a dog whose passage only reveals itself once a chosen bell rings. That signal comes when Marilyn, Harrison’s “chosen one”, arrives in Nurnheim and pulls Harrison back to Jane’s surface. She takes out Mother and her hoodmen by shooting her oxygen tank as Harrison rings the bell, unleashing the script from the dog’s body. Kipling reads it and summons the eye of the Recreator as the Decreator kills the rest of Harrison’s dancing followers. They are quickly restored as the recreation process begins. The two eyes lock in a staring contest as Rita runs off in search of a hopefully resurrected Elliott.
With de-existence averted, Chief knows he must return to Nobody’s tortures. He tries to say his goodbyes as Cliff and Harrison arrive home. Jane quickly usurps control and rushes to hug Chief before he stops her. The rest of the team prepares to keep Chief through force when Nobody slows time. Vic’s arm cannon overheats and destroys his arm as Nobody reclaims a weeping Chief. Cliff hits Vic’s emergency beacon despite his protest, signaling Vic’s father and triggering his cybernetic implants to rebuild his arm.
The present rolls along with Larry still tortured, Rita unable to find Elliott and Vic avoiding his father’s calls. The past, however, reveals a new wrinkle waiting to unfold in the present. Harrison is taken by Chief under the guise of transporting her for a lobotomy, but Mr. Nobody pipes in to give Harrison a something else to find after the Decreator’s defeat. Present day Jane’s painting comes to a halt when that something resurfaces: what’s the Doom Patrol?
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