Doom Patrol Why Rita Can Control Her Powers Better In 1917

Doom Patrol: Why Rita Can Control Her Powers Better In 1917

By time traveling to 1917 Rita Farr has lost her trauma along with her memory – and control of her powers now comes more easily to her.

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Doom Patrol Why Rita Can Control Her Powers Better In 1917

Warning: Contains spoilers for Doom Patrol season 3 episode 6.

Doom Patrol’s Rita Farr (April Bowlby) has travelled back to 1917 where she can control her powers better than she could in the present time, and the reason why she has such better control makes a lot of sense. The season 3 episode 6 of Doom Patrol, “1917 Patrol”, features the ramifications of Rita Farr commandeering Laura De Mille’s time machine. In a drunken pique, Rita travels back to 1917 under the mistaken belief that time travel can fix her problems. There, Rita gets a job sorting mail with the Bureau of Normalcy, and displays a calm control stretching her limbs like she was never able to achieve (though often tried) in the present. There is a good reason for this sudden jump in Rita’s powers.

The characters on Doom Patrol are not known for emotional stability. As a spin-off from Titans, itself a show only linked with the Arrowverse only through the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover and otherwise completely different in tone and message, Doom Patrol has enjoyed something of a cult following through its three seasons. The following is cult because the show is strange. The characters of Doom Patrol are not particularly heroic, not overly brave, and on the whole seem more concerned with their own emotional problems. Even including the expanded cast of Doom Patrol season 3, the show has focused on characters that are eccentric, wonderfully weird, and emotionally damaged. Exploring serious emotions acts as a counterpoint to the ludicrously strange events of the show. Among the zany escapades of the Doom Patrol in this season alone has been zombies, aliens, monsters made of bottoms, and time travel.

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As established in the first episode of season 3, “Possibilities Patrol”, time travel wipes the traveller’s memory. The episode introduced Laura De Mille (Michelle Gomez) as an amnesiac time traveller, and through season 3 she has become something of an adjunct member and de facto leader of the Doom Patrol in the absence of Niles Caulder. While Laura De Mille may not be who she seems, the fact that travelling through time erases the person who travel’s memory has been proven true by Rita Farr’s jaunt to 1917. Rita’s reasons for going are complex, but can generally boil down to; having something to prove about her worth, finding purpose, and alcohol. Stranded in 1917 without her memory, Rita shows tremendous control over her powers for the first time in all of Doom Patrol, using them without effort and without strain. It is not the loss of her memory that allows her this mastery, specifically, but the loss of all the trauma she was so focused on (and that drove so much of her motivation).

The characters in Doom Patrol are each stuck in their own depressing loop, obsessing over past events for decades, something to which even the new the Sisterhood of Dada does not appear to be immune. Without her memory – and so without trauma – Rita has found herself able, while working in 1917 for the Bureau of Normalcy as a mail-sorter, to fully control her stretching powers. This is a very different Rita than the one whose powers wouldn’t let her reach for the ringing paranormal emergency phone only episodes before. This confirms that Rita’s issues with her powers, and struggle to control them, has always come down to her trauma, not her competence.

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Laura De Mille has not regained her memories from time travel after 6 episodes, so it could be that Rita is now living a life free from the traumas of her past. However, it is much more likely that both Laura De Mille and Rita Farr will regain their memories, likely by the same process. Doom Patrol has previously suggested Rita has some secret history at play in the narrative that will no doubt contribute. Rita would then have to go forward knowing how much more capable she was without her memory. For featuring characters that stagnate emotionally and obsess over their past selves, Doom Patrol has a remarkable track record of character growth, so even if Rita regains her memories, viewers can still expect her to be changed in the process.

Next: Doom Patrol: What Shelley Byron’s Offer Could Mean For Jane

Doom Patrol releases new episodes Thursdays on HBO Max.

James Kerr is a freelance writer, table-top RPG publisher, radio broadcaster, and arcade champ. He has written for innumerable trade and lifestyle magazines and websites. James has a particular interest in radio drama, comics, pixel video games, and kung fu movies. Someday he will finish reading all the science-fiction books on his shelf.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/doom-patrol-rita-powers-no-memories-trauma/

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