Despite having the worst possible ending, The Umbrella Academy (2019) will be remembered fondly in a decade or two for its fun characters and attempt to show life after a superhero’s golden years are past. Immediately after the fourth (and final) season, dropped on Netflix, fans took to the internet to share their frustrations. Some even wished that the show had been cancelled instead! At first, I disregarded the angry fans. I thought they were mad only because the show didn’t cater to what they wanted — until I watched it for myself. Although the quality of season three was inferior to the ones before it, the fourth was far worse.
Spoilers ahead…
All seasons of the show follow a basic formula. The seven dysfunctional, super-powered Hargreeves siblings discover that the world will end, and they try their best to stop it. In their attempts, they discover just how difficult it is to work as a team. They are weighed down by personal baggage, which usually has something to do with their father, who didn’t even care to name them. Despite this, watching the siblings fight each other and everyone else to save the world was satisfying every time.
The final season tries to follow the same pattern but ends up taking too long to set it up and ends too quickly. This season, the internal conflicts of the siblings, which made the show so captivating, have become boring and feel like filler. The superpowers that the show utilized to tell a personal story ended up feeling like accessories forgotten until the plot demands them.
Dr. Jene and Dr. Gene, the primary antagonists of the fourth season, have potential. They are not competent assassins, but charming professors who use their wits to realize that something is wrong with their world, starting a murderous organization to fix it (played by the real-life acting legends Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman). But just when the audience starts to really understand the rivals of the story, the credits roll.
The show made quirkiness make sense; from two time-travelling assassins killing everyone in over-the-top animal masks, a pre-teen girl doing gymnastics while her adoptive mother shoots a machine gun in her direction, or a hallucinogen-induced dance battle. The Umbrella Academy executed concepts without alienating their audience, but these actually get you invested. A lot of writers come up with fun ideas, but when it comes down to translating it to the screen, it falls flat and all that’s left is wasted potential. Something this show almost seemed to have mastery over until recently.
A big reason for this is Netflix’s tendency to pump out new media, tossing out shows viewers have become invested in. Inside Job (2021), Warrior Nun (2020), and I Am Not Okay With This (2020) are some of the best cases of shows with a strong fan base that were cancelled after one or two seasons. All preceding seasons of The Umbrella Academy consisted of 10 episodes. Yet the final season had only a measly six, and ultimately, cutting it down hurt the season. Which is still not a good enough excuse for the sloppy mess that was the final season of a beloved show.
The one good thing about the final season was the acting. Everyone brought out their best, and if you turn your brain off and squint your eyes hard enough, you can almost be moved by it. Tom Hopper as Luthor and Ritu Arya as Lila are the ones that deserve a shout-out. Luthor goes from being the punching bag and pathetically funny to just funny — he had very little respect as a leader, often ignored or mocked, and no appreciation as the only one who holds them all together, until now. Lila, on the other hand, takes on a much more serious tone; getting a giant family after the death of her old one, she is terrified for their safety and loses her identity in the process. Her struggles with morality and what her loved ones want her to do tears her apart and it is shown so beautifully on her face.
Now that The Umbrella Academy has concluded — and no matter how much we wish it was different — we can group it in with the likes of Game of Thrones (2011), Gossip Girl (2007), and How I Met Your Mother (2005) as some of the worst endings anyone could write. Even though the actors tried their hardest to make the best of what they had, there is only so much you can do with lazy writing.
