It’s time for one last adventure for the Hargreeves siblings. One final timeline, one more chance to set things right. But are they up for the task? Welcome to the fourth and final season of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. Having moved past the comic’s storylines, the show finds itself in uncharted waters, tasked with bringing this chaotic adventure to a satisfying conclusion. And, for its first five episodes, that’s exactly what it does. But everything gets a bit messier as the series reaches its climax, and The Umbrella Academy’s final season ends up veering closer to the likes of How I Met Your Mother and Dexter‘s final seasons rather than any fondly remembered ones.
Disclaimer: While this review features no specific spoilers for The Umbrella Academy’s final season, there are hints about the show’s final episode and, as such, there may be mind spoilers ahead.
The Beginning of the End
After the events at the Hotel Oblivion resulted in a complete reset of their timeline and the loss of their powers, the Hargreeves siblings have gone their separate ways. But when a clandestine organization obsessed with the idea of a timeline-fixing cataclysm threatens the fragile lives they’ve built, the Umbrella Academy reforms for one final adventure. However, this might be one threat they can’t hope to overcome. It’s the beginning of the end, and answers lie just around the corner. But can the Hargreeves siblings come together one final time, or is this one apocalypse they can’t thwart? For its first five episodes, season four of The Umbrella Academy sets up an explosive, emotional final chapter for everyone’s favorite dysfunctional superhero family. These episodes begin the work of tying together the series’ dangling threads, answering questions that have been left unanswered for years.
Showrunner Steve Blackman and the rest of the writers do an excellent job of paying off those unanswered questions – as well as years of character development for the Hargreeves siblings. Most of all, though, these first five episodes just deliver a healthy helping of Umbrella Academy delight. You’ve got plenty of action, plenty of mind-bending mystique, a new world-ending threat to defeat, and plenty of trademark Hargreeves family dysfunction. Put simply. everyone gets a chance to shine, a chance to show exactly how far they’ve grown. It’s exactly what you’d expect from The Umbrella Academy‘s final season. And so, there’s a real joy to most of the final season. A feeling that if this is where the show has to end, then that’s okay because it’s an ending worthy of the Hargreeves family.
A Narratively Coherent but Emotionally Unearned Finale
It all falls apart, however, in the show’s final episode. Without venturing too far into spoilers, let’s just say that while Blackman and the rest of the writers do an excellent job of narratively foreshadowing the show’s ultimate conclusion, they do a terrible job of earning that ending on an emotional level. It’s the kind of ending that makes you question why you’ve spent four seasons caring about these characters. The kind of ending that undercuts everything that came before it. Ultimately, The Umbrella Academy‘s final episode leaves a brutally sour taste in the mouth. No matter how good the previous five episodes are, and they are excellent, The Umbrella Academy‘s finale undoes all of that goodwill in sixty minutes or less, guaranteed. It’s a narratively coherent finale, sure. But that ending is wholly unearned emotionally and feels like a slap in the face to longtime fans.
On some level, it’s hard to imagine the show ending any differently given the sheer number of aborted timelines all fighting for dominance. But this final season is unable to overcome its needlessly tasteless ending for its characters, regardless of how well the narrative sets things up. And the worst part is that it didn’t have to be this way. Moving past any specific subjective disappointments, one need only look at Way’s original comics to see that The Umbrella Academy could have wholly avoided this path had it just faithfully adapted its source material. The further the show veered from the comics, the further trapped in that inescapable corner it found itself. And sure, Way has yet to bring the comics to a close himself but given how differently the comics have played out compared to the show, it’s hard to imagine him ending the series like this.
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot about The Umbrella Academy‘s final season to like. Elliot Page, Ritu Arya, Justin H. Min, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Aidan Gallagher, and David Castañeda all deliver series-best performances, the writers answer some of the show’s biggest questions in genuinely satisfying ways, and there’s a real sense of joy to be found in seeing how all of these characters have grown and changed over the years. Even the season’s central mystery itself is initially well-explored, though the season’s break-neck pacing never slows down enough to properly dig into it.
But at the end of the day, a final season is only as good as its final episode. So, while the first five episodes of The Umbrella Academy‘s final season set things up for a bombastic, emotionally satisfying conclusion that pays off years’ worth of character and plot development, the show’s final episode torpedoes all of that goodwill at the last minute. Even in that final hour, there’s a lot that works. But it’s hard to move past just how bad a taste that final episode leaves in the mouth and how emotionally unearned the ending feels. As such, The Umbrella Academy‘s final season goes out with more of a whimper than a bang.
Season four of The Umbrella Academy is available now exclusively on Netflix.
For its first five episodes, the final season of The Umbrella Academy delivers an action-packed, emotionally satisfying conclusion to the Hargreaves siblings' adventures. But in its final episode, the show veers off the rails in a way that's sure to leave a sour taste in fans' mouths.
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GVN Rating 6
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User Ratings (1 Votes)
6