While each season of HBO Max’s Doom Patrol sees its heroes on deeply personal journeys to deal with their trauma and experiences as they forge their relationships as both a chosen family and a team—all while saving the world—Season 4 of the DC inspired series is taking those journeys of healing to a new level. Each of the heroes are confronting new facets of themselves as well as their own mortality this season, but for Jane, played by Diane Guerrero, the season marks a particularly huge shift. For Jane, there’s a bit of a sexual awakening, something we see particularly in this week’s episode, “Youth Patrol.” The episode sees Jane begin to explore physical self-love for the first time, but also see her wrestle with that given the experiences that the “owner” of the body, Kay, has experienced. ComicBook.com spoke with Guerrero about the huge shift for both Jane and Kay and what it means for her journey.
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“We have Jane coming in at a time where Miranda and Kay were abused. She’s basically there to say to Kay, ‘Don’t worry there is absolutely no room in this body for any sort of sexual activity or any of that coming to the surface,’ Because she sort of comes in with a wall up and she says, ‘Don’t worry, anybody who tries to come close to this body, I will punch them or just berate them until they run home crying.’ That has been Jane’s persona, to have animosity between anyone who comes too close,” Guerrero said. “She doesn’t want to feel too much, that’s not her job. Her job is to protect Kay from any of that, from any sort of trickery that wants to come in as love or as affection. So, to see her drop that and start experimenting because Kay gave her that permission and because she’s also feeling, you learn, she does feel these things.”
“That the body does feel these things regardless of who you are and what trauma you have experienced. I find that very interesting and that shame part, that moment when she finds herself in the underground in front of all the personas, I think it’s a great portrayal of how a lot of us would feel in a moment like that that’s very intimate, where you’re not completely free to be yourself and you get put on the spot like that,” she continued. “But I love that. I love that she’s discovering herself in that way. I never thought that Jane would. It is such a big part of growing up. To allow, to acknowledge and be aware of all these feelings and all of these things that happen to the human body and to have the human spirit and something that we really can’t ignore. When we do, we’re not really fully ourselves. I just love that she’s going through that process. I didn’t want her to stage a void of that for the entire show. It’s been new for me to touch upon that subject matter as well.”
Guerrero also said that she loves that Doom Patrol takes on such important and nuanced messages that remind viewers that they’re all human with room to grow and make mistakes.
“I love its levity and I love how it shows you this different world, but it’s not so different from our real life,” she said. “I mean, wacky things happen all the time. We’ve seen this year has been full of just things that don’t really make sense and we can’t make sense out of everything. All we can do is just trust that we are human, trust that we are going to make mistakes, trust that we are just learning, and every day is an opportunity to grow.”
Doom Patrol airs new episodes Thursdays on HBO Max.
