The Disappointing Ending Of The Umbrella Academy
The Umbrella Academy’s final season was something I was greatly looking forward to. I had rewatched the previous seasons as a comfort show here in Japan, and since I knew the final season was coming soon I thought it would be a fun way to gear up for the end. The final season could have gone any number of ways, and in the end, I think they picked the worst one.
Endings are notoriously difficult to get right at the best of times, and in the age of streaming, it’s not uncommon for shows to get canceled unceremoniously, or to even be unaware that a season might be their last. Shows like Final Space or Shadow and Bone ended with their stories unfinished and unresolved. Or shows like Sex Education, which wasn’t told season 4 would be the last until after the script was complete.
In the case of The Umbrella Academy, they did know it would be the last season in advance, and I assume they were able to write the script with that in mind. What seems to be a huge detriment to the show though, is the episode count. The final season of The Umbrella Academy consists of only 6 episodes, every other season had 10 episodes to work with.
The speculated, and plausible reason for this seems to be production costs. There are a number of high profile actors on the show, and their salaries surely only increased over the seasons as the show became a hit. There’s also the “bigger and better” push that happens, the sets and the action have to top the previous seasons, which can’t be cheap.
So, they crammed what was probably written with 10 episodes in mind, or at least 8, and crammed them into 6 episodes, and it shows. The first couple episodes felt a little shaky, but I was on board. Characters I liked were back in action, the family drama and dynamics were still fun, and it was entertaining. Around the 3rd episode I started to get worried.
I couldn’t quite tell where they were going with the story. The main plot was simple enough, sure, but the character arcs were all over the place. It felt like nothing really had room to breathe, and some of the characters seemingly had nothing to really do in the season. That’s when I saw the episode count, and I knew things weren’t looking good.
I could see now we were rushing towards something, but I didn’t have any sense of what that something was, and I wasn’t sure the show did either. I always thought The Umbrella Academy did a good job of balancing individual character stories that eventually met up with the bigger plot. The first season has a great character arc for Victor that directly intersects with the main plot, it makes it more personal for the viewer than “bad guy has evil powers”.
To keep things vague, this season should ostensibly be about Ben and his character. If he really has an arc this season, it’s covered so quickly that I must have missed it. He is angry, does a bad thing, meets a new character, and becomes a plot device. He doesn’t really change or develop, and frankly, most of the characters this season don’t.
You can see plenty of gestures to character arcs or development, even unexpected romances, but they’re never given the time they need to develop into something tangible. To its credit, the show does try to tell its stories efficiently, but a romance told to you through montage was never going to allow you to get invested.
So, the characters don’t quite hit, the pace is pretty rough, how about the action? Well, it’s okay. Episode 2 probably had the best action of this season, but overall it just feels inconsistent with the rest of the show. This season seems to change both the visual language of the cast's powers, and also changes them for reasons I couldn’t understand. Characters have new abilities seemingly at random, and their old powers are now shown differently, making them feel unfamiliar.
I’ve talked about as generally about the show as I can, so it’s time to dive into some specific gripes. There will be spoilers ahead, so read at your own risk. I’d say to go watch the show and come back, but I really won’t recommend it.
Spoilers Ahead!
Why wouldn’t I recommend it? That’s because it doesn’t matter. None of the events we’ve spent the past 4 seasons watching matter, because they never even happened. After trying to save the world countless times, it’s decided that the best thing to do is make sure The Umbrella Academy never existed in the first place.
Quite frankly, these are the types of endings that I hate the most. If the state of the world or the characters at the end of the show is almost identical to the state of the world at the beginning, then you haven’t told me a story. I do like looping stories, but the point of those stories is either a commentary on the loop itself, or about finding a way to break the loop.
The conclusion The Umbrella Academy comes to is, “everything we’ve done is pointless, we never should have existed, we’re the problem”. Okay, but what are you? Superheroes? Saviors? Bad people? They were akin to superheroes, sure, but they’re more a gang of misfits learning to coexist and deal with trauma. It wasn’t even their own actions that caused the main issue, it was their father, and his punishment is that his wife gets to say I told you so?
A big twist is that this world ending event was orchestrated by Sir Reginald Hargreeves wife, Abigail Hargreeves. This season is her first appearance outside of flashbacks, and her screentime is extremely limited. Reginald has been motivated throughout this series to save his wife, so her betrayal should be a big moment. However, it plays out so quickly that it feels as though it doesn’t have any weight to it.
By this time, there’s already a big CGI blob ending the world, and I’d largely given up on finding any saving graces for this show anyways. Five realizes that they will always end the world, and so they should simply accept their fates, and erase their existence entirely, restoring the timelines and saving the world.
We get a somewhat hollow goodbye, and then brief scenes of side characters spending a happy day at the park. The thing is, this series was never about any of these characters, and it feels like more of an easter egg than any real resolution. The handler likes to jog in the park if she hadn’t become an incredibly fun villain. Thanks, I hate it.
It’s one of those endings that just makes me like the series less as a whole. If this is what we were building toward, what did any of it matter? Who cares if Victor was ever able to accept his powers if he doesn’t get to exist at all? This was never a story about futility and accepting your fate, so this ending has no payoffs.
It was one of those endings that truly left me in a fugue state. I paced around, wondering how a show with such a strong start came to an end this bad, and told in such a poor way. It’s hard not to feel like the media you love will eventually just turn to shit, and that’s a really depressing thought. A bad season is one thing, a season so bad I no longer like the show? Feels bad man.
