Doom Patrol Season 3 Trailer Hints At A Dark Future For Elasti-Girl

The Doom Patrol season 3 trailer includes the return of the Brotherhood of Evil, which could lead to a dark future for Rita Farr’s Elasti-Girl (Anita Bowlby). Beyond the introduction of Madame Rouge, the Brotherhood of Evil, and the Sisterhood of Dada, the trailer gave few clues as to the concrete plotlines for season 3. However, Rita Farr’s comic book history hints at the direction they might be taking the character in.

While many heroes operated as part of the team over the years, Rita Farr is a member of the original Doom Patrol from the comics. The team’s nemeses in their first run were the Brotherhood of Evil themselves, consisting of Brain, Monsieur Mallah, and Madame Rouge. Rouge began a romantic relationship with Dr. Niles Caulder/The Chief (the head of the Doom Patrol) and became an ally for a time before being pulled back into the Brotherhood of Evil. Madame Rouge ultimately turned against the Brotherhood of Evil and killed them before then causing the deaths of the original Doom Patrol by making them choose between allowing a fishing village to be destroyed or sacrificing themselves to save it.

The Doom Patrol season 3 trailer notes that the Brotherhood of Evil had previously been defeated but also shows that they have returned. The first time Brain, Monsieur Mallah, and Rita Farr are seen after their deaths in the initial run of “Doom Patrol” is in an early-1990s run of “New Titans.” Elasti-Girl is shown as a villain helping Brain and Mallah in their manipulations of Titans’ Beast Boy. Ultimately, it is revealed that none of these characters have truly returned from the grave and are instead doppelgängers created by energy beings operating under the instruction of a sentient alien computer, Technis. With the Brotherhood’s apparent return from the dead, combined with a deeper exploration of Larry Trainor/Negative Man’s (Matt Bomer) own energy being’s origins in space, it seems likely that the show could draw on this “New Titans” run to show a darker side of Rita Farr.

While a direct adaptation of the original story is unlikely, there are multiple ways that an evil Rita could enter the show. The Doom Patrol season 3 trailer shows Rita entering and operating Madame Rouge’s time machine without the rest of the team. It is possible that she is doing so with the intention of going back in time to prevent her fall from stardom or the trauma that her mother inflicted on her. Doing so could easily create a different timeline in which Rita Farr sides with the Brotherhood of Evil.

Doom Patrol could also draw on the storyline from the comics to provide a doppelgänger alongside the Brotherhood of Evil who appears to be Rita even while she is still working with the Doom Patrol. This could be supported by a shot in the Doom Patrol trailer where Rita is giving a presentation about the Brotherhood of Evil which appears to include a version of her in the members at the top of the board. In the original comics, Brain inducted Madame Rouge into the Brotherhood of Evil in part to provide them with a strong opponent to Elasti-Girl and worked to provide Rouge with similar superpowers. Without Madame Rouge at their side, a Rita Farr imposter would be able to match her strengths while also providing her with a way to fight against her own self-loathing or to put her in a position where the team thinks she has betrayed them.

There are other ways that the Brotherhood of Evil could have returned without being merely mimicked by energy beings. In later comics they are brought back alongside Elasti-Girl by comic powerhouse Superboy-Prime’s attack on the barrier to reality that sent shockwaves through the stories of several teams, the Doom Patrol included. However, even with a different story behind their return, audiences could see Rita siding with the Brotherhood in retaliation for Cyborg continually trying to shut down her heroic dreams, with her instead seeking teammates who are more willing to tell her what she wants to hear.