With The Decreator appearing in the sky over Cloverton and literally blinking things out of existence, the pressure is on the Doom Patrol to figure out how to save the world. However, while stopping the Apocalypse is the focus of “Paw Patrol”, the episode also gave fans a look at how Jane — and all of her 64 personalities — got their superpowers.
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Spoilers for this week’s Doom Patrol, “Paw Patrol” below.
When it becomes clear that it’s going to take a crazy plan to stop the Decreator from undoing the world, there’s only one person “crazy” enough to make it happen: Jane. As with the other characters on Doom Patrol, viewers were given insight into Jane’s origin this week but we’re not talking so much about how Jane became Jane. While we do see more of young Kay Challis in Nurnheim and a childhood of abuse is hinted at, what “Paw Patrol” really shows fans is how Jane’s personalities get their powers — and it’s a bit of a departure from comics.
In comics, Kay/Jane is committed to a mental institution where she resides when the alien Dominators’ “gene bomb” detonates. Fans of The CW’s Arrowverse will remember this “gene bomb” concept from the 2016 crossover event “Invasion” which itself was inspired by a 1988-1989 comic book limited series. That gene bomb impacts Jane and all of her personalities, bestowing each one with its own power.
On Doom Patrol, Jane is still in a mental hospital when she gets her powers. However, the process is a lot more brutal and horrifying. In the episode, Jane gets her powers from what appears to be a “treatment” at the mental hospital. While restrained, she is injected with a substance that triggers a reaction similar to the powers of Flaming Katy, presumably transforming the personalities into superpowered beings in the process.
Giving Jane her powers in the context of her mental health “treatment” is a heartbreaking thing to watch, but it also gives the show an opportunity to further explore difficult issues, such as mental health, something that Diane Guerrero who plays Jane on Doom Patrol told ComicBook.com that she loves being able to work with.
“But I think that we’re looking to sort of like enter a world like this that makes us think a little bit,” she continued. “I love the characters because everyone is sort of grappling with a deep rooted issue that has nothing to do with one another and has nothing to do with their present status, it has to do with something they haven’t dealt with that has occurred to them in their past and I like dissecting the human brain, I think that’s the most challenging and I think that mental health is something we don’t talk enough about anywhere around the world, and in this country and I think that the show is just a big therapy session for all the characters and so the mind is beautiful, the mind is scary, I love that we get to dissect it on the show.”
Doom Patrol airs on DC Universe with new episodes dropping every Friday.
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