The Dead Boy Detectives Getting Their Own HBO Max Show

When there’s something strange in the neighborhood, who you gonna call? Not the Ghostbusters….the Ghosts. It might sound counterintuitive, but the Dead Boy Detectives have the experience to solve any supernatural mystery. After all, they’ve been there.

If you’re a watcher of Doom Patrol (and if you are, congratulations, you’re a cool person), you may remember the Dead Boy Detectives showing up in a recent episode. Describing any Doom Patrol episode is fun, so here goes: in the episode “Dead Patrol,” every member of the team except for Larry had been fried to death by a laser ray and shipped to him in wooden crates. While Larry tried to figure out what to do, Rita woke prematurely in the netherworld and tried to alert the others before they passed the point of no return. Meanwhile, the aforementioned DBD made a visit to the mansion to channel the Patrol’s spirits back into their bodies. It wasn’t a perfect job, because in the next episode they became zombies.

Variety announced today the pilot has been picked up for series, and is coming to HBO Max. If the Dead Boy Detectives show is a true Doom Patrol spinoff, then sweet — more of it is a good thing. But it might not be. Even though the catalyst for their getting an HBO Max show was their “tryout” in a DP episode, different actors have been cast as the detectives for the series. George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri are the two boys Edwin Payne and Charles Rowland respectively, while Kassius Nelson is playing Crystal Palace, the medium who can see them and keeps them tethered to our world. When these characters appeared on Doom Patrol they were played by Sebastian Croft, Ty Tennant and Madalyn Horcher.

I thought the original actors did a good job, and the reason for their being replaced is unclear. Did they decline to reprise the role, or did WB simply want someone else? Currently, the only actor reprising their role from “Dead Patrol” is Ruth Connell, who played the Night Nurse, a character in charge of seeing souls of the dead go where they’re assigned. Other confirmed characters that weren’t in the episode at all include Briana Cuoco as Jenny the Butcher (Crystal’s punk friend), Yuyu Kitamura as her neighbor Niko, and Jenn Lyon as an unidentified witch.

Eight episodes have been ordered for the first season of Dead Boy Detectives; it is unknown when they could appear.