Warning: Contains spoilers for Doom Patrol season 3, episode 5.
For Doom Patrol season 3 Michelle Gomez was announced to be playing Madame Rouge (real name Laura De Mille), but it may be possible that she’s really playing Rita Farr. The theory might sound farfetched but has a lot of supporting evidence within the show — and based on how time travel has been shown to work so far, it might actually be the only explanation.
Michelle Gomez’s Laura De Mille appears at the start of Doom Patrol season 3 by erupting from the ground in a time machine — and is then shown to be able to shapeshift. The same time machine is not seen again until episode 3, when someone looking like Rita Farr (April Bowlby) arrives at the Codsville Mountain Resort and prevents Rita from escaping death. Laura De Mille then appears in Doom Manor and learns of her identity from an old recording from 1917, which (appears) to show Laura as well as Rita Farr.
Theoretically, it is possible that the Laura De Mille who appears in the current day of Doom Patrol season 3 is actually Rita Farr in disguise, having mastered her shapeshifting ability. That would mean that Michelle Gomez is really playing a second iteration of Rita Farr and only appears as Laura De Mille/Madame Rouge in the old recording. Here’s how this theory could work, and why it would make the most sense.
In the comics, Laura De Mille is given powers that are very similar to Rita Farr’s own. These powers enable her to disguise herself as other people by molding the shape of her body to look like someone else’s, and she is also able to mimic their voice and mannerisms through her acting background. In one storyline she is seen using this skill to appear as Rita to lure Cliff Steele into a trap.
These powers have been shown in Doom Patrol season 3 as, when Michelle Gomez’s character arrives outside the theater in the present day, she seems to accidentally shift into the actress from Doom Patrol season 2, Isabel Feathers. As Gomez’s character is suffering from memory loss and does not remember her own powers, it is possible that one of these accidental shifts happened and she assumed that her appearance as Laura De Mille was her true form. When she sees Laura De Mille in the film she adopts the name, but there is no guarantee that that is really who she is. All Doom Patrol would need is to provide Rita Farr a way to learn to harness her powers in a similar way, and Michelle Gomez’s character could be Rita in an unconscious disguise the whole time.
The 1917 film shown in Doom Patrol season 3, episodes 4 and 5 proves that Rita Farr went back in time and worked with the Sisterhood of Dada, as she can be seen in a reflection to be operating the camera. While Rita might be expected to hesitate about working with the Sisterhood of Dada, episode 5 showed them to be charismatic and capable of winning people like Jane over; combined with the fact that Rita already knows she works with them at some point and knows someone she believes to be Laura De Mille, she would likely still coordinate with them. As the Laura De Mille in the film clearly has a full grasp of her powers, she would be able to impart her knowledge to Rita and enable her to learn to shapeshift to greater degrees.
All of this is made possible by Doom Patrol applying some time travel magic. Because Rita is visible in the 1917 film before she gets into the time machine for the first time, the audience knows that the timeline being shown has already been affected by whatever time travel might take place. This means that she can go back in time, come back to the future looking like Laura De Mille and provide herself with the means to go back in time in the first place. This also allows for it to be an iteration of Rita, and not Laura De Mille in disguise, who keeps Rita from escaping the Codsville Mountain Resort.
Doom Patrol provides several clues to the fact that Rita Farr and the Laura De Mille in the present day are actually the same person. They both seem to feel like they have an uncanny knowledge of each other. Rita swears that she knows De Mille while, in Doom Patrol episode 4, De Mille claims that despite knowing Rita for only 48 hours she can already tell that her dreams are bigger than her reality.
As well as exhibiting this apparent knowledge of each other, Rita Farr and Laura De Mille share several traits. Throughout their appearance in Doom Patrol season 3 the pair act and move in similar ways and share some styles of expressing themselves. Importantly, they both express concerns about their identity and whether they can be the person that they want to be. Laura De Mille states concerns about being pulled sometimes to the good and sometimes to the bad, which is a quintessential indicator of Madame Rouge, who in the comics had two personas: one good and one evil. However, the show has set up a similar theme for Rita Farr, with her concern that she will fall into selfish habits that link to her past trauma, but also wanting to do some good in the world and appealing to Cyborg for help with being a superhero.
While Laura De Mille’s amnesia might seem like a plot device to allow Doom Patrol to leave her motives obscured and keep information on the Sisterhood of Dada secret, it could be so much more than that. If Rita Farr went back in time and became Laura De Mille herself, it raises several important questions that the show can use as large reveals later in the season. What happened to the original Laura De Mille? Will De Mille shift back into Rita Farr? And as Niles Caulder remains consistently important to the Doom Patrol’s arcs, which version of Laura De Mille did Niles hold such venom for?
Doom Patrol releases new episodes Thursdays on HBO Max.
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October 08, 2021 at 02:45AM
