Ultimately, Rag Doll became just another in a long line of villains who drive the plot without doing enough to stand out on their own merits. Here’s hoping that Secret Six TV series can do a better job on the Rag Doll front. That anticlimactic finish is just one more example of how this episode failed to take advantage of a very unique DC villain. I’m guessing the VFX budget had already been blown on Ralph’s Spider-Man homage.
But instead that battle wrapped up entirely off screen. The climax seemed to be setting up a major showdown of stretchy powers between Rag Doll and Elongated Man.
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Worse, the conflict never took full advantage of his metahuman status. Even the decision to treat him as a legitimate metahuman rather than just a really, really talented contortionist seemed like a pointless change. He was played in a far more earnest and straightforward manner, which really doesn’t suit a villain as weird as Rag Doll. Other than the odd moment or two, like when Rag Doll briefly admired himself in the mirror, we never really got a sense of the kooky, socially awkward oddball beneath that mask. The deranged sense of humor wasn’t really there. There was a fun nod to writer Gail Simone and artist Dale Eaglesham (who created the modern incarnation of Rag Doll back in 2005’s Villains United), but this interpretation didn’t capture enough of what makes that character such a blast. It’s a shame the writers didn’t draw more heavily from the Secret Six comics here.