Is the Umbrella Academy any good? It’s fun, certainly: bags and bags of fun. It’s wacky as all heck. But as gang return for the final time, it’s hard to shake the looming sense that this show left its best days behind it a few seasons ago.
This last outing certainly offers nothing new in the way of plot. The end of the world is looming, and as usual, it’s got everything to do with the Hargreeves kids.
They ended up hopping into an alternate timeline during the events of the season three finale. In this version of events, they have no powers (the cornily named ‘Marigold’ that grants it having been sucked from their bodies) and they’ve been forced to build lives as regular old joes.
They’ve not done a very good job. Diego (David Castañeda) is a delivery driver and father to three kids. Himbo-in-chief Luther (Tom Hopper) is a male stripper. Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) is a B-list actress famous for starring in laundry commercials. And Viktor (Elliot Page) is avoiding everybody, preferring to hide in his bolthole up in Canada.
All of them are miserable, so just as well that when the wayward Ben (Justin H Min) is released from prison things dramatically hit the fan.
Soon enough, we’re sucked into a story that involves doomsday conspiracy cults (an obvious satire of Q Anon), broken families and Ben spiking everybody with dodgy Marigold that gives them all twisted versions of their powers – including Klaus (Robert Sheehan), a recovering alcoholic, which certainly makes for dodgy optics.
Plus, there are standout performances from Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally (married in real life), who play cute-as-pie cult leaders with a penchant for line dancing and murder.
The Hargreeves’ antics are fun, but that’s not a surprise. Watching them take on a town of murderous Christmas tourists is riotously entertaining stuff – the scene where the gang face off against a murderous Santa Claus wielding machine guns reeks of Hot Fuzz.
But the antics aren’t matched by any kind of coherent story. Instead, there’s a spaghetti junction of branching timelines and alternate futures that make writing a coherent review very difficult indeed.
Top of the list of problems is Ben. Played by Min with a resentful sneer (this version of Ben was unwillingly ripped from a different timeline) his take on the character is very unlikeable. Unfortunate, because he’s also central to the season four plot.
What could be worse than watching Ben grump around and also roofie his siblings with janky power juice? Why, it’s probably the bizarre romance with Jennifer (Rubina Nath), who develops an instant connection with him on the basis of not very much at all.
As it turns out, that connection probably has something to do with Ben’s death (another Ben, from an alternate timeline – keep up), but either way, the romance is corny, and Ben’s lingering emo attitude means that it’s a struggle to invest in what the show tells us is high-stakes drama.
The show is at its best when it dives into the complicated dynamics between the Hargreeve siblings, and the trauma they endured at the hands of their father Reginald (Colm Feore). Watching them squabble and bicker their way to better understand each other remains profoundly watchable – even if the show is determined to squander that by making them set off on bizarre subquests, such as Klaus’s new career as a psychic medium.
All of which is to say: the final season doesn’t add up. But the cast give it their all, the characters are lovable and the screwball antics just about keep the show on the road as it careers over the finish line. Don’t think too hard about it – just enjoy.
