The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Review – A Messy Family Affair

I’ve been writing many reviews lately, if you haven’t noticed, and when I do, I always come out wondering if I expressed myself well enough to explain why I felt like I did about these shows and movies. I LOVED Deadpool & Wolverine and House of the Dragon Season 2. I liked Batman Caped Crusader as well! Each had its high points and low points, but I enjoyed them. Then, going back a little further, my recent reviews of Doctor Who had a bigger swing of scores. As I write this The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Review, I’m reminded of how I felt during a few of those Doctor Who episodes…but I’m both a bit sad…and annoyed at what I just watched.

A brief recap to start, shall we? At the end of Season 3, Reginald Hargreeves used the machine at Hotel Oblivion to recreate the world in his image and to his liking. That included getting his wife Abigail back in full health. The Hargreeves children, however, were depowered, and they split up to see what they could do in this new world.

I honestly was very high on this season early on because of its early episodes. As we find out, the Hargreeves children have done their best to try and live their own lives without powers or their father’s influence. Some of them have done well, some have done “well enough,” and others have found it…hard to keep going, but they’re still going.

So, when a seemingly innocuous birthday party brings everyone together, only to set them on not one but TWO rescue missions to try and find a family member and a mysterious “daughter,” things pick up in a hurry. And, as you likely already know, it NEEDED to hurry, as it only had six episodes compared to the previous ten for seasons 1-3.

At times, that was okay, as it led to one thing leading to another, including one storyline opening up another, and then the next after that. However, by the time we get to the end, the rushing led to some odd choices and moments…but more on that later.

Easily, the best part of the show (most of the time) was, unsurprisingly, the Hargreeves clan! At one point in the season, I literally said aloud, “This is the most realistic family in fiction,” and this is a story about superpowered siblings! The actors and their chemistry make every interaction feel real and honest. Even when it meant fighting and cursing each other out, or showing how excited they were to go on “one last mission” in a rickety old van just because they wanted some “spice” in their lives. Who can’t relate to that?

Seeing characters like Diego and Lila struggle with doing the ‘daily grind’ was understandable, especially given what they were before they fell for one another. It was understandable that Diego kept pushing Five to try and get him into the CIA, and Lila was lying about “Book Club” just to get out of the house and have something “that was hers.” I have a family member who had to do something like that (minus the lying part, of course, lol) recently, and I could sympathize with her.

I also dug how Ben was the one who spiked everyone’s drinks to force the superpowers back onto them, and then Klaus ditched it because he liked being sober, not just because he was happy, but he made his niece Claire happy by being sober. That was meaningful, as was the reaction by Claire and Allison when things went south for him and Allison refused to give up on him.

Oh, and I want to give props to Elliot Page for taking Viktor on a very emotional journey with their “father,” as some much-needed venting was let out, and I totally approve. Vanya/Viktor has been the anchor to the show since Season 1, and I’m glad the character never got stale, and that the show literally transitioned with them.

The idea of “The Cleanse” was interesting, too, at first. Hearing about how people (like Jean and Gene) were having “flashes” of the other timelines (due to the world not being made perfectly because of Allison’s meddling at the end of last season) and wanting to get to the “pure and true timeline” was clever. These weren’t superpowered people, these were just regular citizens who knew something wasn’t right, and they wanted it fixed. That leading to the reveal of “The Jennifer Incident” and what REALLY happened with Ben was shocking, to say the least.

Plus, as you would expect, there were some fun action scenes, loads of comedy, and an overall sense of weirdness that can’t be denied or hated. This show is weird, and it never ignores that fact! That’s what helped make it special!

…that being said…

…as my The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Review must explain, there were many other elements to this season that brought the show down many levels. First, because of its six-episode nature, there were a lot of rushed explanations, and it was hard to keep up with them all, including the betrayal by Abigail at the end and why the Marigold (that gave the Hargreeves their powers) needed to be “removed from the world” for it to continue.

Then, there was Five and Lila. Finding the “time train” and moving between the timelines was interesting at first…but then they apparently spent seven years together just “wandering the rails” and…of course…falling in love with one another…only to eventually wind up back home. That led to, of course, the reveal of what happened between them, which ticked off Diego to no end, and that led to so much unnecessary drama. Why? Because that reveal happened in the literal series finale! There were other things to deal with, and they were more focused on that at times. There was truly a “lost the plot” moment when most of the family is relaxing and then they go, “Oh, yeah, weren’t we supposed to find Ben and Jennifer?” and I’m like, “Really?”

Plus, I also felt that some characters were “left in the dust” because of the shortened episode count. In this case, it was Luther and Ben who were given no real in-depth storyline. We find out that Luther is a “Professional Dancer” (I don’t want to know how he got that job) and is literally slumming it, and…he doesn’t really get elevated beyond that…outside of a literal elevator fight (which we don’t even see.) As for Ben, while he is the catalyst for this version of the “end of the world,” he’s not given any depth beyond being a jerk most of the time. I wanted to see him bond with Jennifer on an emotional level and bring more out of him…and instead…they just literally bonded together to help end the world. Not the same thing.

And that…brings me to the final nail in the coffin of The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Review: the ending. As in, the LITERAL ending of the show. This is why I was having flashbacks to Doctor Who episodes like “73 Yards,” because the ending of the show…made everything that came before it…meaningless.

As we learn, the only way for the world and timeline to be “fixed” is by all the Hargreeves children to sacrifice themselves. They do it, of course, but that’s not the point. We see the “original timeline” that they saved, with other people from the show’s past now living in it…but they’re gone. They never existed, and that “saved everything.”

…but that’s a terrible way to end things! That meant all the journeys and struggles and growth they went through were truly meaningless. All they got was a post-credits sequence showing some flowers blooming to represent them. Oh, and if the logic of this “original timeline” is true, then that means Reginald Hargreeves is alive in it…and that’s not fair.

That’s still not all. There were serious issues with continuity that made me scratch my head about how THIS was the only way to fix things, including about the Marigold itself, the original timeline that “fractured,” and more.

The reason I loved The Umbrella Academy was because, as Viktor wisely said, this family is nuts…but they’re always there for one another when it matters most. Yet, in the end, they’re all dead, so that wonderfully chaotic, crazy, and beautiful family isn’t around to enjoy anymore…so why would I ever binge this series again knowing their fates? It’s very much like what happened with Game of Thrones, and based on what I’m seeing reaction-wise to this season, I’m not the only fan who feels betrayed by this ending.

So while the show may not want to remember the Hargreeves, I will, for whatever it’s worth.

The Umbrella Academy Season 4 is currently available to watch on Netflix.