'Doom Patrol' Season 2: Dorothy Spinner is the most tragic character on a show full of tragedies
Spoilers for 'Doom Patrol' Season 2 Episode 1 'Fun Size Patrol'
A brand new season of DC Universe's 'Doom Patrol' is here with a lot more madness than ever before. This time around, things are weirder than ever before but there's also more tragedy than we could have anticipated. Season 2 Episode 1 'Fun Size Patrol' provides some insight into Dorothy Spinner (Abigail Shapiro), the daughter of Niles Caulder / The Chief (Timothy Dalton). The show has introduced some changes to Dorothy's backstory from the comics and the effect is absolutely heartbreaking.
Born with apelike features, Dorothy in the comics was constantly bullied and locked away. But on the show, she was taken in by a circus and displayed as a freak, forced to summon her imaginary friends to do tricks for the amusement of the crowd.
Eventually, she would manage to free herself by summoning the Candlemaker for the first time, causing the vicious monster to brutally murder everyone at the show except for Dorothy and Chief. After that, Caulder basically shut her away from humanity for decades to stop her powers from causing any more harm while he set out on his experiments in the hope that he can help her.
And after all that tragedy in her past, you'd hope that Dorothy could be happy now but that's hardly the case. Though she tries really hard to befriend Cliff Steele (Riley Shanahan and Brendan Fraser) and Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero), both of them reject her. In their defense, Cliff and Jane are both extremely angry at the Chief for causing their respective conditions. But turning that anger on his innocent young daughter? That is a step too far.
Eventually, we're sure they'll all come around and help Dorothy but that will have to be sooner rather than later. In Episode 1, Caulder makes a deal with Willoughby Kipling (Mark Sheppard) to give his life in exchange for Willoughby transforming them all to their appropriate sizes. It's not as if he's going to drop dead any second, but the Chief is dying and that might just be one blow too many for Dorothy's already fragile psyche to bear.
New episodes of 'Doom Patrol' Season 2 drop every Thursday on DC Universe and HBO Max.
