The Umbrella Academy Review

David Lynch meets the X-Men

Netflix Description

Reunited by their father’s death, estranged siblings with extraordinary powers uncover shocking family secrets — and a looming threat to humanity.

Nerd Description

Six dysfunctional siblings return home to The Umbrella Academy, their childhood home and a school for superheroes, following the death of their abusive adoptive father. Along the way they reunite with their robot mom and talking chimpanzee uncle. The fifth sibling, a de-aged time traveler, has also returned from the future to stop the apocalypse, but only if the super-powered siblings can learn to work together once again.

Strengths

When most of the superhero media today is heavy on action and light on plot and character depth, The Umbrella Academy is the exception. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the series is actually what it has to say about abuse and the way that each sibling carried their own childhood abuse into adulthood.

Luther, known as Number One and the leader of the group, has spent his entire life carrying out his father’s orders up until the day of his father’s death. It’s clear he lives for his father’s approval right up until the end and is seemingly lost without a mission to carry out.

Diego, despite leaving home like the other four siblings, also remains a crime fighter but he is now a loner vigilante with a sometimes friendly, sometimes contentious relationship with the police. Although he separated himself from the academy, like Luther, he doesn’t know any other way of life.

Their sister Allison, now a movie-star, fled to Hollywood for a successful acting career. But over time we see how her family fell apart after her husband found her using her powers on their daughter, carrying on the cycle of abuse.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, it’s the seemingly ordinary Vanya (played by the wonderful Ellen Page) that seems to be the most well-adjusted when she reunites with her siblings. She has a relatively normal life and even recommends a therapist that’s she’s been seeing, signaling that she has done work to overcome her trauma, to one of her brothers. Unfortunately, everything falls apart for Vanya once she comes back into contact with her family and falls victim to an emotionally abusive boyfriend, Leonard Peabody. Anyone who has experienced that type of abuse will find Peabody’s manipulation of Vanya unsettlingly realistic.

The siblings are compelling individually but especially when they get to play off of each other, particularly Klaus and Number Five. The character development of all six is balanced nicely with the action over all ten episodes. For those who are unfamiliar with the original comics (like myself) and were expecting the usual Avengers or X-Men type supers, the reveal of each of the siblings powers is genuinely interesting and new.

The apocalypse plot line is relatively generic but the time travel aspect keeps things interesting and doesn’t get bogged down between the ensemble cast and the secrets of the father who seemed to know the apocalypse was imminent.

Weaknesses

The least interesting aspect of the show to me was the side-plot with the Tarantino-esque assassins Hazel and Cha-Cha who have been tasked with killing Number Five and making sure the apocalypse happens as planned. Cha-Cha is played by a competent Mary J. Blige but the show doesn’t really give her enough to play with as an actress, while Hazel gets a tiresome crisis of conscious and a romantic story line that bogs down the apocalypse through-line.

Some plot points were confusing and seemingly pointless, but the final episode sets up a second season so time will tell if they are plot holes or not. The show definitely has a very clear aesthetic in the vein of Twin Peaks or Riverdale which may not be to everyone’s taste.

If you like Jessica Jones you might like The Umbrella Academy

The Umbrella Academy is as dark as the 2017 film Logan or the Netflix Original Jessica Jones, and shares some similar psychological elements. It is definitely not recommended for kids but will be enjoyable to those who are drawn towards more gritty superhero movies/series or those who enjoy more character driven action/sci-fi.

Rating: Scale of 1–5

Four out of Five Umbrellas — Overall The Umbrella Academy has some unique elements and interesting characters, but it loses one umbrella for an excess of side characters that sometimes slow down the action.