All good things must come to an end. But they don’t have to collapse.
“The Umbrella Academy” Season 4 is gaining a reputation for being one of the worst endings to a TV show, sitting on an infamous shelf next to the likes of “Lost” and “Game of Thrones.” Is it justified, or is this another overreaction from the internet?
This season opens with a six-year time skip. After emerging into a new reality where the Umbrella and Sparrow academies don’t exist and neither do their powers, the Hargreeves siblings have once again go their separate ways.
When we meet our heroes, Diego (David Castañeda) and Lila (Ritu Arya) have been married for years with kids; Klaus (Robert Sheehan) is now a sober germaphobe living with Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) and her teenage daughter, Claire (Millie Davis). Meanwhile, Five (AIdan Gallagher) has been working for the CIA, Luther (Tom Hopper) has been living in an abandoned version of their old childhood home while working as a stripper and Viktor (Elliot Page) has been living in Canada.
They all reunite to celebrate a birthday party, as well as Ben (Justin Min) getting out of prison (he was jailed for running a cryptocurrency scam). However, they are all taken aback when a man named Sy Grossman (David Cross) kidnaps Viktor in order to coerce the Umbrellas into helping him.
Sy says his daughter has been kidnapped by an organization called the Keepers, whose members remember and collect artifacts from other realities. Apparently after the Umbrellas reset the universe last season, reality wasn’t as stable as they hoped. Sy also has a jar of marigold, which allows them to regain their powers — which all but Ben initially give a hard pass to.
Ben is in the spotlight this season, though he grows little as a character. I can certainly understand why showrunner Steve Blackman would single him out as the odd man out, given that he is the only surviving member of Sparrow Academy and is technically not a family member of the Umbrellas, but it’s like Blackman only did this so he could serve as an engine for the plot. This version of Ben is pretty one-note — contrarian to a fault — until he finds someone he gets along with (Jennifer, played by a forgettable Victoria Sawal), who just so happens to be the one person he can’t develop feelings for.
I’m not going to spoil the ending yet, even though it’s not one worth waiting for. The show builds up to an ugly CGI mess where — once again, the world is coming to an end — though there is a silver lining, as the selfish Umbrellas go out in a final act of sacrifice as a family. But, like “Lost” and “Game of Thrones,” it also makes everything we’ve watched up to this point meaningless, as it undermines the the show in its entirety.
But what is perhaps more offensive is how Blackman treated Five and Lila, which I will spoil. If you care about that, go watch the show and come back. If you don’t and haven’t watched it yet, consider this a warning.
Lila cheats on Diego with Five during another inexplicable timeskip. This occurs once Blackman introduces a sprawling multiverse connected by a subway system, where the two get lost for seven years. Blackman has defended his decision for this betrayal — which takes place in the penultimate episode, in a recent interview:
“Well, you know, I sat with the writers and we said, ‘What would happen if you spent seven years with someone and we’re starting to give up ever coming home?’ I mean, some of it speaks to the domestic problems between Lila and Diego. And part of it has to do with that, as much as Five and Lila would hate to say it, they’re very similar. They’ve been fighting so hard all the seasons, but alone, they realized they have a lot in common. They’re very similar people. So, you know, I wonder what the fans will take of that moment. But I think it’s an earned moment. But remember, it’s not a few days, we’ve been together now trying to stay alive for seven years. And I thought it was a great moment.”
This has lit the internet on fire, not only because it’s a departure from Five’s previous steadfast loyalty to his family, but because it’s also thrown in last minute in an already truncated season (Season 4 has six episodes rather than the usual 10 Seasons 1 through 3 have). It’s also not resolved at all, with the end of the world sidelining the entire thing in Episode 6.
“The Umbrella Academy” is a shell of itself in Season 4. It starts out strong, giving us more of these great characters, and this season’s villains, Gene (Nick Offerman) and Jean Thibadeau (Megan Mullally), who are the quirky leaders of the Keepers, showed promise, but they were criminally underutilized. But it completely jumps off the rails and then explodes once Ben and Jennifer meet.
It’s easy to blame Netflix for taking away four episodes from Blackman, but as the showrunner, he should have known what he could and could not accomplish with the resources he was given. Even with the shortened window, this season was given the approximate runtime of two feature films; it’s arguably Blackman could have given a satisfying conclusion in one.
It is disheartening to watch clips from Season 4 alongside previous seasons. Not only have the show’s production values decreased, its passion and ambition have seemingly evaporated — except in the case of its cast. While the lackluster direction and serious missteps on the part of Blackman cause the show to fall apart in spectacular fashion, the performances from everyone involved continue to shine; they are these characters, and I have no doubt these actors will continue to be beloved for these roles long after the show has been buried by Netflix’s algorithm to the bottom of the website.
Season 4 is a major disappointment. It wastes an excellent cast and three prior seasons of meticulous storytelling that allowed the show to carve out its own corner of the superhero genre. It would have been better if Netflix canceled it after Season 3.
“The Umbrella Academy” Season 4 gets a 5/10
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