Based on the comics by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way and created for television by Steve Blackman, The Umbrella Academy balances established actors with emerging talent and has performed well both in streaming numbers and critical reception, earning six Emmy nominations.
The show revolves around billionaire Reginald Hargreaves (Colm Feore), who adopts seven children, all born on the same day in 1989, to women who at the start of that day were not pregnant. These seven, all gifted with superpowers, are raised and trained by Hargreaves and sent on missions as The Umbrella Academy. Suffice to say, they do not have a great childhood and by the events of the first series, all but one have left the Academy or died. They are brought back together by Hargreaves’ death, with a mission that dwarfs the previous ones – to save the world.
After saving the world twice in season two, the team return to an alternative timeline of the present day where Hargreaves is still alive and adopted a different set of babies instead of them. The Sparrow Academy has replaced The Umbrella Academy. This is the bombshell at the end of series two and starts season three.
The third series is enjoyable to watch and if you have enjoyed the first two then you will no doubt be satisfied with this one. The relationship between Diego (David Castaneda) and Lila (Ritu Arya) gets built on and we get a number of interesting characters in The Sparrow Academy. This includes an alternative Ben (Justin H. Min) whose difference in character from the Ben of series one and two demonstrates a great performance by Min. In general, the plot is good with the team having to traverse their rivalry with the sparrows in order to save the world – again. This time from a Kugelblitz, which probably sounds made up unless you’re a physics nerd.
Between the last season and the most recent, actor Elliot Page came out as a trans man. One of the praises received for season three was how the plot reflected Page’s transition through presenting his character as Viktor Hargreaves in the alternative timeline of the new season.
One issue was that there were too many unanswered questions. Although there is going to be a fourth series, so of course a cliff-hanger was to be expected but things that were teased in the second series, like Hargreaves’ alien-ness, could have been delved into more instead of leaving them hanging with more teasers but no explanation.
Though perhaps weaker than the first two series, this one was fun to watch, funny, and still gave us a lot in the way of explaining characters backstories and such. It moved forward the plot and generated excitement for the next series.
3.5/5
Image Credits – The MovieDB