The original post: /r/television by /u/Bruhmangoddman on 2024-08-15 17:15:31.
So, a couple days ago I finished watching the final season of Netflix and Gerard Way’s The Umbrella Academy. And now I’m more or less ready to lay out my full thoughts on the show as a whole.
Now, the title itself may be a bit misleading. I WILL be talking about the entire series in-depth, but obviously the most in-depth chunk of it will be dedicated to Season 4, because I did NOT do a refresh marathon before it (Spoiler alert: with a series like that, this is rather optimal. So don’t be like me and rewatch if you have the time). I do however remember a lot of things from Seasons 1-3 vividly and fondly and I will be sure to mention them.
Now, beginning with Season 1, it was a very good start. I had been familiar with the inner workings of the superhero genre for quite a while, so I expected something a bit more familiar. Yet I was in for a huge surprise. That is, not entirely. The series bears a number of trademarks, all of which connect it to various storytelling properties across Western media, such as Guardians of the Galaxy, the X-Men and Doctor Who. In fact, when trying to pinpoint the key characteristics or define TUA it’d be best to describe it as a pastiche of the three franchises. But enough beating about the bush.
The series’ main asset is obviously its eponymous team/family - The Umbrella Academy: Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Five, Ben and Vanya/Viktor Hargreaves. Seven individuals infused with superpowers, or rather, a superpower-granting substance called marigold, the Hargreaveses are a bunch of misfits and freaks, each of them plagued with their own distinct issues. The most intriguing case was definitely Five - the only member without a proper name, the physically youngest yet mentally oldest family member, with capabilities and knowledge initially beyond the imagination of any of them. I was also very curious about Vanya and her allegedly world-destroying power of energy manipulation. As far as the X-Men parallels go, she was definitely the Jean Grey or Wanda Maximoff of the group. Especially with the amount of abuse the group’s… father, or shally I say manager, Reginald Hargreaves put her through. The series overall doesn’t pull any punches with his negative depiction, starting with him bribing the mothers of the future team members to sell their children to him. And then it basically only gets worse the further we go. Then there was of course the bombastic duo of Hazel and Cha-Cha. Whenever they were on screen things got either very interesting or cringe.
Now, this series revolves around apocalypses, so its main gimmick - and of course, the premise by extension - is the Hargreaveses continually battling world endings they at least partially trigger. So it’s no surprise that the ticking bomb that is Vanya eventually goes off. With a whole lot of pain and suffering along the way. So off into S2 we go!
This is where The Comission, or rather, the time police gets properly introduced. And with that bizarre, authoritarian organization Five used to work for we also got Lila, the team’s own Rogue. She was crazy in the best sense of the word, but when the show wanted to, it could use her to provide some really emotional moments. The reveal of her being able to copy any marigold-induced superpower was a pure showstopper and jawdropper of the 2nd Season. But the majority of the Season 2 was mostly past hijinks of 1958-1963. My fave storylines of that time were Allison being entangled in the Civil Rights Movement, Vanya finding genuine love and helping her combat an abusive former partner, and Five dismantling the time police singlehandedly. In the absolutely batshit finale, the series finally utilized one of the most promising of its minor premises - Ben being a dead man and only being able to communicate with Klaus, whose powers included necromancy and immortality. To put things plainly, once Vanya reaches terminal velocity (AGAIN), Klaus channels Ben to talk her out of detonating and the world is saved… until it isn’t and the apocalypse of the nuclear war happens anyways. Womp womp, I guess. On a more viscerally chilling note, I will NEVER forget being freaked the fuck out when Reginald Hargreaves turned out to be a slimy, marine-animal-based alien, shed his human skin and slaughtered some government officials in a room. Fucking cosmic horror.
In Season 3 we jump to 1989 and are introduced to an alternate Umbrella Academy: the Sparrow Academy. More or less like our heroes, but even more dickish and callous. Oh, and BEN is there as their leader. In Season 3, we deal with a more classic apocalypse - a ginormous ball of energy called the kugelblitz threatening to annihilate the entire universe. This is where the characters of Klaus and Luther reach their peak. Luther begins a genuinely heartwarming relationship with one of the Sparrows, Sloane and pays the ultimate price for his capacity to stand up to Hargreaves and speak his truth. Meanwhile Klaus through insane ordeals and tribulations masters his death-controlling power and moves past the immense trauma of constantly traversing the borders between being and not being. I also really liked Allison in the season and thought her being a callous bitch was a natural consequence of the previous narrative events. Vanya transitioned into Viktor, and Lila joined the team for good. In an absolutely insane finale the big bad Hargreaves was finally struck down only to pull a fast one and reset the timeline in which he was on top of things again whilst the team had no superpowers.
Which brings us to Season 4. It’s definitely not as good as the previous ones which I believe are consistently great, but it is good. The new cast of quirky characters did relatively well and the family… I guess too? Luther was at first one of the more promising characters, but I quickly learned that this time he was just there for fucking comic relief. It didn’t help that Hargreaves’ reset eradicated Sloane and every Sparrow except Ben, and the writers made it look like Luther gave zero shits, whilst in S3 he was one of the first Umbrellas to see the good in the counter team. Allison and Klaus were also given nothing to write home about, and Klaus was forced into even more misery, but this time his character devolved and showed nothing particularly engaging. Thankfully, Viktor, who was there to be the active character, showed genuine growth as a person, channeling his negative feelings into positive outcomes and no longer wanting to destroy, but help. And of course there was the stuff between Lila, Diego and Five. Specifically a love triangle. The incredibly icky IRL age gap aspect aside (seriously, they should’ve recast Five at that point), I thought the narrative did its best to justify the intermingling of relationships - how Diego and Lila grew apart and how the previously cold and detached Five began to long for companionship. That being said, I didn’t really like Ben, and the new super-person, Jennifer. They were actively wasted and not much was done with them other than being turned into a grotesque Doomsday BvS Cthulu monster at the end. The new apocalypse didn’t really do anything with the rest of the cast, even if I like the revelation of Ben’s death being a cover-up of a possible extinction event and Hargreaves pulling a psyop on the team to make them forget. Oh, and the fucking fat jokes about Diego. You point out him being pudgier so many times, and when he’s finally shirtless, he’s RIPPED?! Y’all never heard of a fat suit, did ye?.. Anyways, the ending feels terrible regarding how the family of abused, broken metahumans decided to kill themselves to stop the neverending apocalypse cycle, but with the world and context established by the writers, it was… I guess somewhat fitting.
Bye, TUA. You could’ve been even greater than you used to be… Alas.