Mini-review: Umbrella Academy

As of this morning, before watching the last episode of Season 3, I was hoping to be able to do an end-of-series full review of Umbrella Academy. I can't really do so. Seasons 1 and 2 end with truly catastrophic WTF cliffhangers that leave no doubt that there has to be another season. That's not quite true here: they could end the series with Season 3, but I really hope Netflix is smart enough to give it one more.

So I'll keep this review brief. The tl;dr is that it's a strong series, that I like more with each passing season. I recommend watching it, with the understanding that it really needs one more time to finish the story.

Summarizing where we are:

The Umbrella Academy is the story of seven "siblings", born of different mothers spontaneously and suddenly in 1989 and raised by the harsh genius billionaire Reginald Hargreeves. Each has a distinct superpower, ranging from Diego's impossible knife-throwing to Allison's ability to control people to Number Five's teleportation.

I'm not even going to bother summarizing the plots of the first three seasons. Suffice it to say, this story is consistently timey-wimey (there is So Much Time Travel), and each season has an overall arc of "We know that the end of the world is coming, we know when it is coming, we know it's kind of our own fault, but we don't know exactly what's going on or how to prevent it." This doesn't get as reductive or repetitive as that sounds, though, because really, this isn't primarily about the plot -- it's about the dynamics of this extremely strange and broken family, and each of them slowly growing up.

The tone is that of a family dramedy with occasional superheroish fights and special effects. It rarely goes into Deep Dark Pathos, but each of our protagonists is fairly messed up in their own way.

Season 1 (which was several years ago) has a moderate case of Netflix Disease -- its ten-episode run sagged in the middle, and felt about three episodes too long. The pacing improved markedly with Season 2 (which takes place in 1963, and has a lot more social consciousness), and Season 3 is really quite tight and bingeable IMO.

The series is based on a comic book; suffice it to say, the show is much better than the source material, both in terms of interesting characters and coherence of story. While the show is extremely weird, and nobody should go in expecting hard science fiction, it has its own internal logic, and works if you just roll with it.

Diversity note: the first-billed actor is Elliot Page, and while it's very much an ensemble show he is always a little bit first among equals. He transitioned in mid-series, and his character follows that arc: the character who begins as Vanya comes out as gay in Season 2, and transitions to Victor in Season 3. This is handled reasonably respectfully: it's not brushed off, but it isn't handled as some sort of woo-woo super-nonsense, nor does it turn into big melodrama. Victor just finally figures out who he is, comes out to the family, there's a mild amount of confusion for a little while, but broadly speaking everybody accepts that, as their lives go, this barely even begins to count as unusual, so they get past it.

Overall, it's a solidly good story so far, and one that has been improving season by season -- I started out mostly liking it, but by now I'm deeply invested and really care about these characters, fucked up though they are, which is always a sign of a good show. The only reason I have to hold back from a whole-hearted recommendation is that the tale isn't quite done yet: the end of Season 3 isn't a cliffhanger per se, but it's not a satisfying resolution either. With that caveat, I recommend checking it out, and joining me in hoping they finish it properly.