DC Universe’s Doom Patrol brought to live some of comics oddest and most misfit heroes during its first season, but while Robotman, Crazy Jane, Negative Man, Elasti-Girl, and Cyborg along would have been on the crazy side given their powers, backstories, and personal issues, Doom Patrol went much further. The series leaned in hard to some of the wackiest elements of the team’s comic book history — Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, anyone? — with solid success. And, according to series showrunner Jeremy Carver, he was able to pull off some of that crazy thanks to lessons he learned from Supernatural.
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Before Carver was bringing Doom Patrol to life, he served as a showrunner on The CW’s long-running Supernatural for several years. The role introduced him to Mark Sheppard who played Crowley on that series and also appeared on Doom Patrol as Willoughby Kipling, an alcoholic occultist attempting to prevent the Cult of the Unwritten Book from destroying existence itself. It was when Carver was asked about casting Sheppard as Kipling, he explained that he had learned from Supernatural that as long as a show’s characters remain true to themselves, there’s a lot of crazy you can pull on a show.
“Speaking specifically to a person like Mark Sheppard, I learned to know when you have a winner,” Carver told Entertainment Weekly. “I wasn’t particularly worried about Mark being known as Crowley, because he’s a fantastic actor, so why wouldn’t I have availed myself of his talents? That was one thing I learned right there. But there’s a multitude of things. You can go anywhere you want to go with the show in terms of craziness, even into a person’s brain, and as long as your characters stay true to themselves, it will work. That was a lesson very much learned on Supernatural and the places we went there, that I took and applied to Doom Patrol.”
And Doom Patrol‘s Season 1 certainly took viewers to some crazy places, but it sounds like should the show get a Season 2, there are even more crazy places left to go.
“We’ve introduced something of a major new character with the Chief’s daughter, and we have still simmering resentments between the team and the Chief that will have to be resolved one way or another,” Carver said. “We have over 60 years of current and Silver Age and Bronze Age Doom Patrol comics, which really have been a lifesaver and an absolute repository of some of the most wonderfully bizarre and crazy ideas, but also beautiful character moments and depictions. We went full steam into season 1 with a ‘smoke ’em if you got ’em’ attitude, and we intend to fully continue that in any potential season 2 to come. There’s a lot more where that came from.”
Doom Patrol Season 1 is now streaming on DC Universe.
