Warning! SPOILERS for Doom Patrol season 3 episode 10
The Doom Patrol season 3 finale shows Rita Farr toying with becoming evil in a way that might set her up as the villain for Doom Patrol season 4. Throughout season 3, Rita traveled back in time, fell in love, and spent 30 years with Malcolm and the Sisterhood of Dada before they were betrayed by Laura De Mille. While most of the Sisterhood of Dada were only imprisoned, Malcolm was killed and Rita has been on a quest for revenge ever since.
Having returned to the future and unleashed the Eternal Flagellation with the Sisterhood of Dada, Rita Farr (April Bowlby) is unhappy with the results and seeks to crush the unrepentant Laura De Mille herself. The Doom Patrol season 3 finale sees her finding the Brain in what remains of Robotman’s body, where she declares that she is ready to try being evil before pouring boiling water over his exposed brain. When she tracks Laura De Mille (Michelle Gomez) down, she almost kills her before abandoning the attempt and stopping the rampaging Robotman instead. The season ends with the Doom Patrol, now including Laura De Mille, heading off to fight new threats as a superteam.
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Throughout Doom Patrol season 3, Rita has toyed with villainy as a sort of extension of her previous self-involved focus. Her actions against the effectively helpless Brain, who is presumably killed as a result, would traditionally be viewed as an act that someone can’t come back from. However, the season ends on a note that suggests that Rita will not be a villain, as Laura De Mille convinces her not to kill her, suggesting that she isn’t worth it — with “it” referring to the dark path involved in killing Laura. Despite her actions against the Brain, she seems to be redeemed at the end of the season. The fact that both Laura De Mille and Rita Farr will take a dark turn but ultimately come back to work with the Doom Patrol is foreshadowed by Shelley Byron’s (Wynn Everett) assessment of them to Rita: “I know that she isn’t completely lost. And neither are you.”
However, while Rita might be accepted by the team for the moment, her actions are likely to come back to haunt her, and the show could still see her being cast as a villain in Doom Patrol season 4. No one on Doom Patrol knows that she killed the Brain. It is likely that Robotman will want to get into a smaller body again at some point in the future and reclaiming his old one may reveal the plans that the Brain bought. This or Monsieur Mallah’s (Jonathan Lipow) return could easily lead to the discovery of the fact that the Brain is dead. If Rita is discovered to be responsible, her actions might have consequences. The fact that she concealed the truth would only compound the results.
All of this becomes a little hard to parse as one of the things that makes Doom Patrol successful is its nuance and its refusal to draw a strong line between hero and villain, good and evil. The villains are often sheltered in shades of gray, with even figures like Mr. Nobody eventually working to help them and seeming to have some redeeming qualities. While it seems likely that Rita’s actions will be a point of contention and adversity in Doom Patrol season 4, it is unlikely that she will become the main villain of Doom Patrol season 4. If she does, she will have to still be seen as redeemable, as so much of the Doom Patrol message, particularly throughout season 3, is about no one being too far gone to come back, if they’re willing to put in the work to reject such simplistic labels as good and evil.
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