Plot: The Hargreeves siblings have scattered after the climactic showdown at the Hotel Oblivion, which completely reset their timeline. Stripped of their powers, each is left to fend for themselves and find a new normal — with wildly varying degrees of success. Yet the trappings of their uncanny new world prove too hard to ignore for very long. Their father, Reginald, alive and well, has stepped out of the shadows and into the public eye, overseeing a powerful and nefarious business empire. A mysterious association known as The Keepers holds clandestine meetings believing the reality they’re living in is a lie and a great reckoning is coming. As these strange new forces conspire around them, the Umbrella Academy must come together one last time — and risk upsetting the shaky peace they’ve all endured so much to secure — to finally set things right.
Review: The Netflix comic book series The Umbrella Academy is ending after five years and four seasons of superhero shenanigans. Based on the comic book series of the same name created by My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way, The Umbrella Academy has blended elements of comic book lore with a tongue-in-cheek attitude, making it a fun and unique take on the superhero genre. While the comic book series is still awaiting its fourth volume, the plot elements of everything published to date have been adapted for Steve Blackmon’s live-action series. After three seasons of the dysfunctional family squabbling and coming together to hold off the apocalypse, the Hargreeves siblings are back to do it one more time. With two fewer episodes than in the seasons before, The Umbrella Academy goes out with a fast and furiously entertaining final season with several solid things going for it, but not enough to live up to the seasons that came before it.
Each season of The Umbrella Academy has been chock full of dark humor, brilliantly off-kilter musical sequences, and a send-up of comic book tropes that have highlighted the talent of everyone in the main cast. While the first season stuck pretty close to the comic book, seasons two and three began to deviate from the source material and incorporated as yet unpublished material. We all know how well that worked out for Game of Thrones, but The Umbrella Academy has always entertained a niche audience. For the final season, The Umbrella Academy goes up against Jean and Gene (Megan Mullaly and Nick Offerman), a married couple who sense the Mandella Effect impact of the Hargreaves clan resetting the timeline in season three. With the clan stripped of their powers by Sir Reginald and the reveal that he is an alien, the siblings move on with their lives, which sets up this season to pick up five years after the events of the season three finale.
Like the seasons that came before it, this season opens with the siblings divided: Viktor (Eliot Page) runs a bar in Canada, Luther (Tom Hopper) is a professional dancer, Diego (David Castaneda) is a delivery driver raising children with his wife Lila (Ritu Arya), Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) is an actress again living with now agoraphobic and sober Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Five (Aidan Gallagher) works for the CIA, and Ben (Justin H. Min) is just getting out of prison. The reasons for their various paths are explained early when a man (David Cross) enlists their help, which leads the clan to uncover an event known as The Cleanse. To stop what is coming, the protagonists split up again into different pairings to investigate what will happen in their final stand against a world-ending foe. It is not the most original way to wrap up a series that has used the same conceit three times previously, but it does result in the partnering of several characters who have not shared the screen in this way ever before.
This is where the truncated episode count comes back to haunt The Umbrella Academy. All prior seasons comprised ten episodes each, allotted time for the characters to investigate clues and unravel a mystery that culminated in them finding a way to join forces and save the day. Netflix series has been known to feature one or two filler episodes each season, but The Umbrella Academy has never fallen prey to that conceit. Because this season is four episodes shorter, the writers were unwilling to streamline the plot development with unresolved open threads leading into the series’ final hour. As I watched the first five episodes, I was confused about why new characters and elements were added to the story, including a romantic subplot in the penultimate episode that never gets to breathe and impact the characters the way it should have. With just half of the series finale remaining, I was still unsure how Steve Blackman and his writers would satisfactorily wrap up this ambitious final storyline. The answer is, unfortunately, that they do not.
Steve Blackman boasts credits on the first and final episodes of the season alongside returning scribes Jesse McKeown, Robert Askins, Aeryn Michelle Williams, Elizabeth Padden, and Lauren Otero, with new writers Thomas Page McBee, Andrew Raab, Christopher High, and Molly Nussbaum. After directing entries to season one, Director Jeremy Webb helmed the first two episodes, with Neville Kidd directing the fifth episode. Paco Cabezas directs episodes three and four and the series finale after directing two episodes of the third season. All three directors manage to evoke the same look and feel the series has had since it premiered, which blends elements of Barry Sonnenfeld and Tim Burton in a dark yet stylishly pulpy tone. The special effects work this season is solid, but the episodes lack a standout sequence, such as the dance scene from the first season and the epic opening of the second season premiere. The writers and directors give Eliot Page and Justin H. Min some excellent showcase moments and a great focus on Aidan Gallagher and Ritu Arya, with the rest of the cast feeling like they are just along for the ride.
This final season has the distinct air of Netflix granting the cast and crew the chance to wrap up the series but was unwilling to budget for a full season. Had they been given even two more episodes, I think there would have been enough space to wrap up this story without rushing. Instead, many dangling threads are resolved unceremoniously. In contrast, others remain unanswered entirely, but the series does conclude with a coda that is meant to instill a sense of hope in the face of so much despair. I was left finishing The Umbrella Academy feeling underwhelmed and shocked that the writers chose the path that they did. Is it a fitting end for the series? In some ways, yes, but it still ends up ringing hollow and failing to capture the energy and whimsy that made the first season garner successive volumes. The Umbrella Academy goes out on its own terms but does not live up to what it should have delivered.
The Umbrella Academy Season 4 premieres on August 8th on Netflix.