Even though I don’t usually ask for spin-offs right after a show ends, The Umbrella Academy season 4 needs one badly. It’s not because the series ending was so great that I want more; it’s the opposite. Even though this is the last season of the show, I’m still trying to figure out answers to questions that have been bothering me for a while. It’s a bummer, but The Umbrella Academy’s last season is just okay. It might even be worse than Season 3, but it’s still in the running for the worst season of the show.
The world was reset at the end of Season 3, and our Umbrella Academy didn’t have any skills. After six years, Season 4 starts, and we see how each character is handling life without chaos (for now). The Umbrella Academy season 4 wouldn’t be The Umbrella Academy without the fear of the end of the world. The Keepers are a new secret group that is keeping a close eye on The Umbrella Academy because they think they are going to end their world. The Umbrella Academy needs to get back together as a family one last time to stop the end of the world.
Allison (Emmy Raver-Lammas), who is trying to become an actress by going to a lot of interviews, is living with Allison and helping her take care of her daughter Claire. Klaus (Robert Sheehan), who has become sober and afraid of germs, is also living with Allison and helping her. Ben, played by Justin H. Min, just got out of jail, and Five, played by Aidan Gallagher, is working for the CIA as a double agent to find out what The Keepers are up to.
It wasn’t all bad, though. This season was nice because all of the kids got to spend more time together. To Klaus’s dismay, I liked seeing him use his medium skills a bit more. And Klaus’s general tendency to crack jokes when things are literally or figuratively going wrong has always made me laugh. I liked the short time when a crazy Elise Bauman showed up. In a small part at the CIA as Derek, trans actor Zack Binder was fun to watch. I liked one of Viktor’s scenes too, but I’ll say more about that in a moment.
Also, meeting Drs. Jean and Gene Thibedeau might have been my favorite part of this season. There are so many places you can’t predict where married comedy team Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman will show up. They’ve been doing this for a long time, and I love it every time. As the couple, they are sure they are in the wrong timeline and have gathered a group of fanatics who are determined to get back to the right one. They act like crazy conspiracy theorists with too many guns, but in Thibedeau’s case, they are right.
Before I talk about Viktor, I want to talk about some things about this season that I didn’t like or get. The first thing was what happened with Five. Before making him date his brother’s adult wife, I don’t think they told him enough about how he was no longer 13 years old. I know that they shaved him during the video to show that he was getting older, but I still didn’t like it. Also, Five’s whole backstory is that he spent too much time alone in the apocalypse and fought hard to get back to his time and his brothers. And you think he was ready to stay in a two-person apocalypse forever just because he finally got laid? I don’t believe that. It was only cute when The Magicians did the whole “unlikely love in a hopeless pocket of time” thing.
There were other things I didn’t understand or enjoy that I can’t even put into words. For example, what was going on with the huge squid? Why was Jennifer found inside that squid? I don’t think we learned enough about it. When Diego didn’t have his powers, why were there so many jokes about him being fat? And when his powers came back, why was he magically slim again? Also, why was Christmas playing in the background sometimes?
In all honesty, I don’t think I’ll ever know the answers to those questions, so let’s move on to Viktor.
At the start of the season, all of the brothers are living their own lives without any control. Viktor is working at a bar in Nova Scotia. A woman comes in quickly to find him and tells him to call her when he “grows up.” She then leaves quickly. A man in the bar makes a joke that Viktor has “blown through” all the women in town. What is my question? There was only one relationship we saw Viktor in, and that was with Sissy. He broke up with her to be with his brothers in the right time period. Viktor has daddy problems, as Klaus says later, but we weren’t given enough information about how that shows up in his relationships with the women of Nova Scotia for us to fully understand what was going on. Why make Viktor seem like a bit of a womanizer and then never bring it up again? Did she do it just so he would have a reason to call his brothers back when they called? He’s…out of women to date. For some reason, it seemed like an odd detail that wasn’t followed up on at all. From what Viktor said to his father later, I think it would have made more sense for us to see him break up with someone while saying things like, “I can’t be what you need; you deserve better.”
That part of the scene where he talks to his dad is great. Due to timeline problems, the Hargreeves he’s yelling at isn’t actually the man who raised and beat him, but Viktor needed to let out all of his anger that had been building up for a long time. He tells him that Hargreeves broke him his whole life and that he didn’t deserve that. Hargreeves finally admits that he was wrong and that Viktor deserves to wear the Umbrella Academy season 4 uniform just as much as his brothers do, if not more.
While I’m glad that scene was included in this crazy last half-season, I do wish Viktor and Allison had talked to each other more. Their relationship has always been one of the more interesting ones between the siblings, but it wasn’t really explored this season. There was a short chat about how, even though they made up at the end of season three, they didn’t talk at all while they were apart. It was great how the show dealt with Viktor’s friendship with Sissy in season two and his coming out as trans in season three. I love that his being transgender wasn’t the only thing that changed about him or his life. Being able to see a trans actor in a lead part is great, and it’s even better when a show changes to reflect that. I thought Viktor should have been in season four, but he wasn’t. He was meant to have a power strong enough to end the world. Also, you have ELLIOT PAGE, who is up for an Academy Award!! Make use of him!!
To talk about the ending, I have no idea where to start. Everything they had been working toward the whole series went against it. Though I didn’t read the comics, I think they might have had a different finish. I think they could have made a better, more satisfying choice for the series. Overall, the season felt like it was supposed to have ten episodes like the others, but was cut down to six at the last minute. The series end of the show felt rushed and disorganized, but not in a fun way. I wanted more from it.
Still, I’ve been loving the sneak peeks that Buzzfeed has been sending our way for the Puppy Interview that the cast is doing. It’s been a while since I saw Elliot Page smile that much in an interview, so I’ll enjoy that and pretend that the show finished with the Hargreeves siblings playing with puppies together. In the end, I think this show is a net win for LGBTQ+ coverage. These days, I’ll take any win I can get.
Also Read: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 2 Release Date: Everything We Know
