The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Review – A messy, hollow ending

Season 1	Season 2	Season 3
Season 4

Episode Guide

Episode 1 – | Review Score – 3.5/5
Episode 2 – | Review Score – 3/5
Episode 3 – | Review Score – 3/5
Episode 4 – |  Review Score – 3/5
Episode 5 – | Review Score – 2.5/5
Episode 6 – | Review Score – 2/5

 

When The Umbrella Academy dropped back in 2019, it did so right in the heart of the superhero boom. Adapting the Dark Horse comic series sporting the same name, The Umbrella Academy had good characterisation, and balanced that with a cleverly woven story and light touches of humour.

Season 2 did well to keep that momentum going, although it did lose some of the charm season 1 had, but season 3 felt like a big step down. Characters weren’t developed well, the narrative felt rushed and there were other issues starting to  creep into the story.

When season 4 was announced as the final chapter in this turbulent story, the “soft reset” at the end of season 3 paved way for a righting-of-the-wrongs so to speak; a way to bow out with a roar rather than a whimper. And boy, does Umbrella Academy disappoint.

Season 4’s story picks up six years after the events of season 3. With six episodes to play with, the tale blends tired tropes like amnesia, the human McGuffin aka. The girl-who’s-the-key-to-everything and an apocalyptic-world ending threat which is par the course for this superhero series so that at least gets a bit of a pass. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with any of these tropes if the writing is solid, but The Umbrella Academy loses the one thing that always set it apart from its competitors – good characterisation.

I’m going to be careful here and not divulge too many spoilers but to be honest, there’s so much fluff and padding in this series that what I will say isn’t really going to spoil too much for you. The first episode is fine, and sets the scene for the season to come, even if it does skew a little too heavily into the silly humour at times. It also teases a threat called The Cleanse and introduces Jean and Gene, who look like they could be big trouble.

It soon becomes apparent that this Cleanse revolves around a missing girl called Jennifer, and she may or may not be connected to Reginald Hargreeves and the Umbrella children. She’s apparently super powerful and could be an apocalyptic threat. Hm, I wonder where we’ve seen this before?

As the season progresses, we learn more about her significance to the plot and to be fair, this is tied nicely in with season 1. There’s definitely an attempt to hark back to previous plots, like that of the Sparrows and Five’s time jumping, but everything around that – especially for the rest of the family – leaves a lot to be desired.

Luther and Diego’s plots are poor and revolve around them acting like fools, getting their clothes off regularly for some reason or reinforcing their low intelligence. By contrast, we have Allison who isn’t objectified but does absolutely nothing noteworthy from episode 3 onwards except embarking on a side-quest with Klaus. And boy, has Klaus been done the dirty here.

One of the coolest characters in the show, Klaus’ wild child attitude is completely nerfed for the first half as he’s a germophobe and afraid of everything, only to then find himself side-lined from the group away from the main conflict for large swathes of the run-time. It’s actually super frustrating because one of the key plot points in season 4 stems from questions around Klaus’ morality and finding purpose in life.

There are nice little symbolic nods to things like yin and yang, which represents balance, and the equilibrium of our reality balancing out the natural order of life and death. Instead, his character’s journey (or lack thereof) is really forgettable.

Meanwhile, we get a love triangle between Diego, Five and Lila which just does not work. It involves characters acting out of sorts, and the conclusion in episode 6 is not given a particularly memorable send off either. In fact, I could easily sit here and tell you all the reasons this doesn’t work and how it breaks all three characters, but honestly suffice to say that every part of this trio’s interactions after episode 3 is so poor that it drags down the rest of the season.

In fact, out of all the characters here the only ones that actually get a consistent arc are Viktor, Hargreeves and Ben. Viktor finally gets to confront Hargreeves over his concerns about not being good enough, while Ben at least maintains his “I hate my family” arc that’s been going for seasons long. However, the savvy among you could point out that he too has been butchered. He could have had a redemptive arc where he finally embraced the family and decided to end a hero but beyond one moment with Viktor, he doesn’t do a whole lot. Although at least his character isn’t ruined, so there is that.

Unfortunately, the writing bleeds over to the tone of The Umbrella Academy, which is all over the place. This really does feel like someone watched Taika Waititi’s disastrous Thor: Love and Thunder and thought that humour would be a good way to go in season 4. It’s not only not funny, it also undercuts the dramatic tension too. There’s a moment in the finale where Diego is spilling his heart out to Lila and he mis-spells a word when he’s sounding it out in front of kids, only to have those same kids correct his spelling. Haha, it’s funny right? Because he’s stupid? But this is a prime example of the humour here – and it doesn’t work.

When it comes to the ending, The Umbrella Academy feels like a bit of a cop-out but it could have worked with better writing. We’ve seen other Netflix shows take a similar approach, with Travelers one such example that springs to mind. However, that show had really solid writing – something this, unfortunately, does not.

As one consolation, at least The Umbrella Academy wasn’t cancelled before it got a proper ending. But then that’s like saying “hey, at least we got served our sandwich from the diner, even though it was cold, burnt and missing some of the previous toppings.” This feels like hollow victory in what’s otherwise a disappointing finale for a show that started so well.

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