Doom Patrol is coming back for a fourth season of superhero weirdness

The HBO Max series also released a new teaser for the second half of its third season as part of DC FanDome today

Doom Patrol is coming back for a fourth season of superhero weirdness
Doom Patrol Photo: Bob Mahoney/HBO Max

DC is dropping news and trailers left and right today, as part of its now-annual effort to kill online news writers via the weapon of its DC FanDome event. Among those big reveals: The fact that HBO Max’s Doom Patrol has been renewed for a fourth season of superheroic weirdness.

Doom Patrol is currently in its third season on the streaming service (after having been transplanted there from the wreckage of DC Universe), with a finale aimed at November 11. The series stars Matt Bomer, Diane Guerrero, April Bowlby, Jovian Wade, and, of course, Brendan Fraser, who continues to be one of television’s most dysfunctional robots—but in, like, a fun way.

In addition to the renewal news, Doom Patrol also got a new trailer today, showing off footage from the rest of the third season, reminding us all that this is the sort of series where, instead of a “Brotherhood of Evil,” the heroes can find themselves facing off against “The Sisterhood of Dada.” Also, there’s time travel, which always makes things more simple.

We’ve been fairly positive on Doom Patrol over the years, with our own Alex McLevy writing that this most recent season rediscovered, after a second-season dip, the show’s early sense of “black humor, serialized wackiness, and surprising heart.”

In reviewing the first half of this most season, Alex wrote,

The series’ knack for maintaining stand-alone adventures while still driving forward the larger, season-long arcs remains one of its best qualities, and without spoiling any of the gonzo twists in these episodic plots, the titles (“Vacay Patrol,” “Dead Patrol,” “Undead Patrol”) offer joyfully on-the-nose clues about the general thrust of each story. And with no one stuck endlessly brooding à la season two, they all react with the foul-mouthed bemusement that made the show so entertaining in the first place. Each new journey is a chance for another fusion of over-the-top spectacle and lacerating humor, liberally dosed with humanism. Nothing yet matches the Norman Lear-meets-John-Waters excellence of season one’s “Danny Patrol” or “Jane Patrol,” but it’s finally coming close again. And the show’s remembered that fun comes first: This might be best demonstrated when the team flees a villain, only for the antagonist to rear back, open their mouth, and unleash a torrent of horrific green goo all over them. There’s a pause as they wait for the liquid to do its worst, then Rita happily cries out, “It’s just vomit!” Everyone cheers.

 
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