Umbrella Academy is based off of a comic by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba. The main premise of the show and comics are a family of super powered young adults who grew up in The Umbrella Academy. A weird household where their adoptive father trained them into a group of super heroes. But things didn’t go well for long. In season 1, their father has passed away and Vanya is starting to remember what her powers were, meanwhile, Five, one of the siblings, figured out how to time travel and eventually finds out that the apocalypse is about to happen. They have to find a way to put their differences aside so that they can stop the apocalypse. It’s a really fun season and they don’t do that well at stopping the apocalypse. In fact, Five has to jump everyone into the past and they get separated along the way. They find themselves in Dallas in the 1960’s with a number of them landing right around 1963, and Five, of course, finds out that because of something they’re going to do, the apocalypse is going to happen again, just way sooner. They have to figure out how to come together again so that they can stop the apocalypse yet again, and for some reason, their father is in Dallas as well.

Overall, I think that this season is stronger than the first season. The first season starts off quite rough with introducing all of the characters and not much happens for a few episodes. However, I think that the first season maybe had a few more highlight moments. This one tells a great story, but has less that stands out as being quite as fun as a some scenes and characters in the first season. Another way to put it is that while season two is more consistently good across the board, I don’t think there’s really anything bad about it, season one had some higher highs but a bunch of lower lows as well. I do miss Hazel and Cha-Cha though, they were a real highlight from Season One for me.

They did a good job of keeping the characters true to who they were in the first season. I don’t think that anyone has changed massively, though some of them who have been there longer in the past do adjust slightly. I think that Five who is kind of a wild card in season one still maintains that which makes him very lovable and such a good character. I think that Klaus actually takes a little bit of a step back in this one, he was the standout character from season one, and in this one, I think that he’s given less of a role in order to let some of the other characters shine, one in particular, but that’d be a major spoiler. I also think that they gave Diego and Luther more to work with this season, so while Klaus took a step back, you had everyone else maintain or take a step forward.

Final thing I do want to talk about quick is the music. There are some shows that get the music spot on, and this is one of those shows. Everything worked so well in season two, and you get some montages with music that you just don’t expect. And that makes it stand out even more. There are again some spoiler moments that just so work incredibly well. It makes sense that the music is good since the comics were created by Gerard Way, but I’m not sure how much he’s involved in the show. But I’m glad they kept a strong musical influence on the show and I think that they just nail it for this season.

So, is this worth checking out? You need to see season one first, and that can be a bit of a slog, especially early on. I think that if you can get through two episodes of season one it does become more consistent, and I’d say that it’s worth it. But without watching that, season two won’t make that much sense, so just be aware of that. I really enjoy the show and I think that season two is one of the better seasons of a Netflix original show, they go deep with it while still having fun. So, yes, I’d say that it’s worth checking out, just be aware that the show as a whole is a bit goofy, so while it can be serious, it tends to be more goofy than serious.

Did you like season 2 of the Umbrella Academy?

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Umbrella Academy was originally a comic book series that ran from September 2007 to 2013, and since then has come back in October of 2018. The series is written by Gerard Way, whom you might know as the lead singer for My Chemical Romance. So it isn’t a series created by your typical writers of super hero comics.

Umbrella Academy focuses around a family of adopted children. They were seven of forty-three children born to mothers who weren’t expecting until the day and moment that they gave birth to these children. Reginald Hargreeves, an eccentric entrepreneur adopts seven of these children, Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Ben, Vanya, and Number Five – Hargreeves referred to the children by number versus by a name. It was a tough life, but it turned out that most of the kids that he adopted had powers. Luther was extremely strong, Diego could control knives, Allison could plant suggestions in peoples heads, Klaus could see dead people, Ben could summon tentacles from another dimension or his chest, and Number Five could teleport. As children, Hargreeves honed their abilities and turned them into a rag tag team of super heroes who were loved and could stop crimes. But as they grew older, they all left and went their separate ways. Number Five disappeared, and something happened to Ben. It wasn’t until much later when Hargreeves passed away that the five remaining children that he’d adopted came back together to lay him to rest but there are suspicions that his death wasn’t naturally caused.

The story focuses both on the larger plot of what happened to Hargreeves, but in many ways it’s more about what happens when a dysfunctional family comes back together. Can they work together, or have they become so separated and jaded from their horrible childhood that they can’t work together? It’s very much a character piece focused show where at times you really delve into one characters background and them overcoming a demon or figuring out why they are the way they are, and in another episode it’s another character. I think that they give Allison, Klaus, and Luther good room to grow that way. Diego and Vanya are given less room, though some of that with Vanya is that Ellen Page doesn’t do a great job portraying her, and isn’t given the best writing to work with.

I will also say that I think the show is at times rocky with it’s acting. The actor who plays Klaus steals the show, and the actor who plays Number Five when they were kids does a very good job. I’d also put that a fair amount on the writing that the acting is rocky, because there are times where the writing is a little bit hacked together. Not really cliche or trope filled, but it just lacks the polish that you kind of expect to get in the show. This takes what could have been a great show and moves it down to a good show. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some trope heavy parts of the show. There are a couple of tropes that it relies too heavily on, mainly the abusive father and it makes some parts of a pretty complex and interesting story seem a little bit lazy. It takes a story that has a bunch of depth and makes it a bit simplistic.

With that said, I do think there are enough strong characters in it, and while the first episode itself focuses on the death of Hargreeves and the characters coming back together and it is a bit slow, the rest of the series runs at a much better pace. I would say by the time you’re done with episode three, you’re most likely going to be pretty invested in the show. And if you aren’t invested in the show at that point, and the characters in the show, it’s probably going to be a case that the show isn’t for you. If I were to compare to to other shows, I would say it reminds me of a blend of Watchmen (a movie), Dark, and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. It really tries to lean into that slower moving plot like Dark does, but it just doesn’t jump into it quite quickly enough, so the story struggles to gain traction. I do really appreciate a good show that has that slower build like it is going for though.

Now, it seems like I’m knocking it a fair amount, and I have been a bit harsh with it. I did watch it through, and towards the end, it was hard to stop and not just binge it. So it does develop into that sort of show that keeps you guessing and wanting more. It also really does make you care about at least some of the characters a lot in the show. And again, I can’t get into too much because of spoilers with what I consider stronger. It is a show that you’ll need to give a few episodes too first before it will really get going, but once it does, it’s worth it. I’d recommend checking it out on Netflix, and hopefully if enough people enjoy it, it’ll get a second season as there is more to explore in the world.

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