Doom Patrol Season 3, Episode 6 recap: 1917 Patrol

The following article contains SPOILERS for Doom Patrol Season 3, Episode 6

Rita travels to 1917, Jane frees Kay, Cliff gambles, Larry plays dad, and Vic struggles to find his identity in this week’s episode of Doom Patrol Season 3.

Check out our recap of last week’s episode here!

Right from the jump of the episode, this episode picks up where Episode 5 left off, and viewers see Rita traveling through time using Laura De Mille’s time machine. As she is sitting in the contraption, she is reminded of all the pain and sorrow she has experienced throughout her rollercoaster of a life. Naturally, Rita begins to cry, and as she is crying, her memories are purged with every tear. This means when she arrives at her destination, Rita is a blank slate.

Rita arrives in Iowa in 1917 and makes quite the splash. The agents eventually question the Doom Patrol teammate from the Bureau of Normalcy, but Rita is completely unaware of who she is or why she is there. And just like that, audiences understand why Laura De Mille suffered amnesia when she first arrived in Episode 1. Once Rita’s face starts to get a little droopy, the agents have seen enough and decide to bring her in.

Spectating Rita’s arrival and eventual arrest by the authorities from afar, we see the same gorilla and the genius robot from Episode 2 who sent off Garguax the Decimator and Samuelson to search for Rita at the secluded resort. They witness the steampunk-style time travel vehicle and make a plan to reverse engineer it to have traveled through time on their own and complete their mission of world domination.

Doom Patrol Season 3, Episode 6: Family is sometimes chosen

Back in the present day and at the Doom Mansion, Larry is looking after his elderly son Paul (played by John Getz), who is murmuring nonsense phrases and words and Larry can’t do anything except watch his delirious son suffer mentally. Down in The Underground, Jane and Kay follow through with their plan to send Kay up which might be the first time the host child will be in control since she developed her personas.

Vic turns to Cliff about the inner dilemma of his life’s purpose but Robotman is no help since he hardly ever makes good choices in his life, as he is throwing money at anything that pops up on his computer. As Cliff remains playing his computer games, Laura De Mille goes to him to get some answers about the Sisterhood Dada that that retrieved on their mission. Cliff informs Laura that the Sisterhood is made up of a bunch of wackadoo metahumans who all hate her and were violent towards the Doom Patrol when they uttered Laura’s name.

Returning back to 1917, we see Rita being led around the halls of the Bureau of Normalcy to the Meta Recruitment room. After a man ahead of her is walking out with a folder that reads “Weapon” on it and who appears to be slightly cindering, Rita enters to find the Bureau’s Meta recruiter and it is the one and only Laura De Mille. After some inquiry exams, De Mille discovers Rita’s elasticity powers and categorizes her as “Not A Weapon.”

Likely because of this categorizing, Rita is now being taught how to work in the Bureau’s mailroom and uses her elasticity perfectly and without any struggles to sort mail from mail bins and pipes to mailboxes. As Rita does this, she earns some viewers who are the same metahuman from the last episode. Following a mix-up of where she is welcome within the Bureau, Rita begins getting closer to all of the other metahumans like Lloyd, Holly, Sachiko, and Shelly Byron who we saw in last week’s episode and a newbie to audiences in Malcolm.

Doom Patrol Season 3, Episode 6: Answers about the Sisterhood of Dada

Rita is led by a much less relaxed Laura De Mille and promises some answers about the Sisterhood of Dada as a strong fog surrounds them. Rita and audiences alike figure out a lot about this metahuman group and find out its origins were not that aggressive. They all celebrate their uniqueness and play party games until the long hours of the night and Rita becomes especially close to Malcolm. The morning after this party, Rita talks with Laura and Lloyd about how the Sisterhood of Dada will never be able to be anything more than a short-lived fling, even though other members might want it to change the world.

Audiences also see Cliff building his obsession with online gambling, paying for a cam girl named Ginger, and playing video games. After Ginger shows some interest in dating Cyborg, Cliff sets up an online auction for a date with Vic without thinking twice. This all leads to Robotman going on a rant recapping his tumultuous life and how it led him to this moment of euphoric bliss with his three monitors. While Vic usually would have been notified about his likeness being used on the internet like Cliff was doing, Vic was not notified since he is trying to learn who he actually is away from any distractions and turned Grid off.

After being reprimanded by Pretty Polly, Jane is keeping an eye on Kay from The Underground just like a nervous older sister would. As Kay is teaching herself how to ride a bike after seventy years trapped in The Underground, she has a brief interaction with a strange man creates some strong, but understandable, anxiety for Jane. However, the man ended up being all-in-all harmless and it is looking like this experiment of letting Kay go up is a success.

Doom Patrol Season 3, Episode 6: Larry & Vic push themselves to greatness

In Larry’s room, we see Paul is awake and gained some sort of sanity as the father and son converse. Papa Larry is apologizing to his son for getting his offspring wrapped into this, but Paul does not see it that way since he chose to join the Bureau of Normalcy after his crazy life of an absent father, clinically insane mother, dead brother, and son. Paul does not want to hear anything Larry has to say since the Doom Patrol member was never a father. This sends Larry off into the highlight of his character. Larry talks about how he does not need validation from his son to know he did the right thing by staying away given the life he had to live and lets go of the guilt he has surrounding his son.

On his hike, Victor travels to the tree where he saw his late mom in Episode 3. In his head, he hears the lessons and words spoken to him from his mom about choosing his own life and from Lloyd about finding his true self. The emotion evoked in this short but poignant scene looks to be the beginning of a new, improved, and more conscientious Cyborg and Victor Stone.

Back in 1917, Rita and the Sisterhood of Dada make a statement at the Bureau of Normalcy and stand up for them not to be treated as second-class humans. Before they feel the wrath of the Bureau’s guards, Laura De Mille steps in, disguised as a guard, and rescues them as she pledges to always stick by the group’s side no matter what.

Doom Patrol Season 3, Episode 6: Hard realizations

At the Doom Mansion in the present-day, Cliff almost comes to the conclusion that he has a gambling and intimacy problem only for the online poker algorithm to reel him back in. This also leads to Robotman agreeing to sell the blueprints of his body and brain to a person for $50K. Vic finally makes it to the doctor who specializes in synthetic skin. As he is waiting for his appointment, he fills out the questionnaire and has to answer a lot of important questions like why he is doing this and how his life will be better with the new fake skin. This whole arc about Victor Stone, which has been building all season, has taken a huge step over these last two episodes and it is being so well done.

Malcolm and Rita share some adorable time together with Rita’s time machine where Malcolm explains that even though he would understand if Rita left, he hopes she does not. The two are very vulnerable and open with the other and the scene ends with some foreshadowing as to why Malcolm was not seen in the modern-day version of the Sisterhood of Dada.

This episode ends with present-day Laura De Mille struggling to find answers about this mysterious Sisterhood only for her to hear the voices of Lloyd and Shelly Byron teasing her about how she might be receiving some answers very soon. These teases from the supposed disgruntled members of the Sisterhood of Dada are grouped with the phrase “Piffle Paffle” which has been the motto of the metahuman group which basically means “just go with it.”

Stream Doom Patrol Season 3 on HBO Max with new episodes every Thursday!