Warner Bros. has released a first look at its upcoming second season of its DC Universe series, Doom Patrol, which serves as a bit of a reintroduction to the team for new viewers coming to the series on HBO Max.
The team in question is made up of Negative Man / Larry (Matt Bomer and Matthew Zuk), Elasti-Woman / Rita (April Bowlby), Jane (Diane Guerrero), Cyborg / Victor Stone (Jovian Wade), Robot Man / Cliff (Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan), along with Niles Caulder / The Chief (Timothy Dalton), all of whom have strange powers and who teamed up in the show’s first season to fight against Eric Morden, aka Mr. Nobody (Alan Tudyk).
This time around, it seems as though they’re going to be dealing with another threat: Caulder’s daughter, Dorothy (Abigail Shapiro). She has some particular powers of her own: she can physically manifest her thoughts in the real world, and could potentially “unleash hell on Earth” in the form of some imagined monsters. Along the way, there are some spaceships, broken billboards, and some other zany misadventures.
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The series originally debuted on Warner Bros. dedicated DC Universe streaming service in February 2019, along with a slate of other live-action shows exclusive to the platform: Titans, and Swamp Thing. Warner Bros. has had some mixed results with those shows: Titans has since been renewed for a third season, and while Doom Patrol is coming back for its second, Swamp Thing was canceled in its first season.
Those shows were meant to be exclusive to the DC Universe service, but that’s been breaking down a bit. Another live-action series, Star Girl, recently debuted on the platform, as well as on The CW this past month, and for its second season, Doom Patrol is debuting on both DC Universe and Warner Bros.’ latest streaming service, HBO Max.
That’ll certainly help new users find the series (hence the trailer that reintroduces the team to potential new viewers), but it raises questions about the viability of DC Universe, which collects all things DC under a single roof. It seems as though Warner Bros. isn’t willing to get rid of the platform just yet — many have pointed out that HBO Max’s DC offerings are pretty minimal, and it seems likely that the company hopes that enough people will enjoy the series that they might sign up for the other platform. Time will tell.
The upcoming season is set to debut on both HBO Max and DC Universe on June 25th.
