Doom Patrol season 4 episode 11 recap & review: Portal Patrol

In episode 11 of Doom Patrol, the team is stuck in the timestream as they search for a way to get back and defeat Immortus. The episode is streaming on Max.

Recap

The Doom Patrol are floating through the timestream, all holding onto Cliff as they wonder what might become of them. Victor uses one of his new upgrades to form a protective chamber around them.

Keeg flies out into the stream and then into Victor to relay the information. He reveals different portals leading to different points in time where they can get their hands on longevity.

He tells them that they have an hour to get what they need before he pulls them back. Meanwhile, he tries to send out a distress beacon hoping that someone might hear him.

Laura is thrown into the Ant Farm in 1949, where she finds Niles Caulder’s office. Larry and Jane end up at Doom Manor in 1996, and Cliff arrives in Paraguay in 1948, moments after Niles first gets his hand on the piece of Immortus.

Cliff confronts Niles and tells him that he created Cliff and ruined his life and the lives of several people. He also says that he needs a piece of the necklace that he just stole so that he can save the world.

Kipling returns from the washroom and uses his magic to deanimate Cliff just as he grabs on Niles. Keeg flies out of Larry and flies out to the greenhouse where he comes across the negative entity who embodied him before Keeg.

Jane goes down to Niles’ office and goes through his stuff before he enters the room and she has to reveal who she is. Laura turns into a mouse and sneaks into Niles’ office at the Ant Farm.

She knocks him out and is about to grab the necklace when she is interrupted by someone knocking on the door. The person turns out to be her past self, and Laura shapeshifts into Niles to keep her cover.

Jane tells Niles that her personas have all disappeared and that she wants to have one last interview with him because she has a lot of questions. When Kipling finds out that Cliff is from the future, he tells him to keep his mouth shut because future knowledge is poison.

Derek is teaching a class with their robot Mr. Invincible on the table. Victor’s message gets through and Derek is initially confused by what he’s hearing.

The past Laura tries to convince Niles that she’s a good prospect for the Immortus Project, but present Laura tells her that she doesn’t have the right motivations and will never be suitable.

Just as she manages to get her past self to leave, Niles regains consciousness and sounds the alarm. Laura turns into a mouse and sneaks out, where she is captured by her past self.

Larry talks to the negative entity that has possessed his past self so that he can speak. Through Keeg, he shares what happens in the future and the entity tells him that he’s not dying, he’s making a new start.

Jane talks to Niles and has an emotional breakthrough as she finally admits that she was raped by her father, which pushed Kay to create the personas. That solves the puzzles in her brain and she is reunited with Kay and the other personas.

Cliff tells Niles that he’s a horrible person who may have good intentions but went about them in the worst way. Some goons of Heinrich Von Fuchs break into the bar to get the to Niles but Cliff helps fight them off.

However, while trying to save Niles from an electrical blast, he throws across the room onto the bar against his spine, which breaks Niles’ back. Cliff ends up being the reason that Niles is in a wheelchair, and he isn’t able to get the longevity necklace because Niles needs it.

The negative entity tells Larry that it is his fear that is affecting Keeg, and not the other way around. He shares some harsh bit true words that Larry is hurt by.

Laura comes face to face with her past self and tells her that she’s an evil person who changed far too late in her life, and Laura takes out all of her frustration on herself as she beats her up.

Victor realizes that he is talking to Deric in the future, and with the help of his students, he finds a portal leading back to the point where they came from.

He recalls the others back to the protective chamber, even though none of them managed to get the longevity. Jane says that they don’t need it to save the world, and Victor is also confident that they can still accomplish what is required.

Review

• This episode aims to tie several loose ends and provide some form of closure to some of the main characters before the series finale, and it barely manages to do that.
• Jane’s admission that she was raped is incredibly significant, but one cannot help but feel that it is undercut by everything else that is going on and the fact that the series has lost a lot of it’s sheen.
• Once again, the complete ignorance of Dorothy and Casey is confounding. It is a certainty that they will show up in the finale at a convenient moment but that is just lazy writing.

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Also Read: Doom Patrol season 4 episode 10 recap & review: Tomb Patrol