Doom Patrol Episode 10 Recap
Doom Patrol Episode 10 provides a different view of the time that Cliff spent inside of Jane’s head in the previous episode. After losing Danny the Street, the Bureau of Normalcy hires a unlikely tracker nicknamed the Beard Hunter to find Niles and bring him in for questioning. As the hunt for The Chief heats up, Mr. Nobody scours Niles’s mind for the biggest secret that Niles has hidden from the world.
The Beard Hunter
Ernest Franklin is a middle-aged man who lives in his mother’s basement. When she sends him to the grocery store, Ernest is activated by the Bureau of Normalcy to use his unique skills to find Niles. Ernest stuffs himself into his costume and grabs his gear in order to find the missing Chief.
Ernest breaks into the manor and fishes a clump of hair out of Niles’s bathroom sink. Ernest eats the ball, then passes out. When he comes to, Rita and Vic have found Ernest and question who he is and what he’s doing in the manor. Ernest explains that by consuming the essence of Niles’s beard, he can now find Niles anywhere in the world. Neither believes Ernest until he is able to get ahold of one of Vic’s beard hairs.
Vic and Rita try to keep an unbound Ernest from escaping, but Vic is not in control of his body. Ernest explains that by snorting Vic’s hair, ernest is now in control of Vic’s mind-body connection. Grid senses the intruder and locks Vic out of his cybernetics, causing him to fire into the lab where Cliff and the negative spirit are at work bringing Jane back. Vic manages to vocally override Grid and shut himself down, allowing Ernest to escape.
Vic tells Rita that since he has been rebooted, Vic feels that there is something wrong in his systems. Rita suggests that Vic ask his father for help, but Vic refuses. Whatever’s wrong, he has to fix it himself before the scene in Jane’s painting comes to fruition.
Niles’s Secret
In 1913, Niles and a man named Alastair were working for the Bureau of Oddities to find a monster in the northern Yukon territory. While Niles is an explorer, Alastair is a hunter. The two butt heads over what they’ll do if they find the creature. When a pack of wolves attacks, the two are separated. Niles runs, falling down a hill and injuring his leg. Before he passes out, Niles sees the monster coming for him.
Niles awakens in a cave. A primitive woman has tended to his leg and is helping Niles heal and regain his strength. After a time, Niles makes ready to leave, but he realizes that he abducted, not saved. He rages at the woman, saying that he is a man, not an animal. Niles digs at the frozen corpses of other lost hunters, saying that they should be buried as men, not left to rot like animals. The woman drags the corpses to a clearing in the woods, builds a pyre, frees Niles’s bonds, and has him burn the bodies. The standing stones surrounding the clearing tell the tale of a tribe that eventually died out, but somehow this immortal woman survived through each generation of the tribe and long after the resat died off. During the funeral ceremony, she summons the creature, her magical protector in the woods.
Niles decides to stay with the woman rather than leave. The two care for one another when they get sick, and make love when they are well again. She teaches Niles how to hunt and to survive. Something primal is awakened in Niles.
Years later, Alastair returns and finds Niles again. Alastair explains that times have changed. The world is at war. The Bureau of Oddities has become the Bureau of Normalcy. They still look for monsters, but to kill instead of study. Alastair knows about the primitive woman in the woods and forces Niles to take him to her. Instead, Niles leads Alastair onto an icy lake, where Alastair falls through the ice and dies.
The Chief vows to keep her a secret from the outside world. He tosses his journal in after Alastair and makes his way to the Bureau’s camp. Back in Washington D.C., Niles lies, saying that there is no monsters nor creatures in the northern Yukon. Mr. Nobody breaks into Niles’s memory and demands to know where the immortal woman with extraordinary abilities is hiding. If Niles will tell him, then Nobody will let Niles go and keep his people from being hurt. Niles killed his best friend to keep her a secret, he’s not going to give her up to Nobody, no matter what happens to Cliff, Jane, Rita, Larry, and Vic.
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