okay. i've already autopsied tua but a final overview may be in order. i'll do it one more time.
season one was the only good season of umbrella academy. it had issues, but those issues didn't yet compromise the story or the themes. season one had a stylized production, great cast who at that point were still playing their characters instead of themselves, strong story that mostly carried (though there was some filler), and fantastically coherent themes. the cracks in the foundation were always there. but they could have been fixed.
season two was bad, but entertaining enough to hide its flaws. it had a bigger budget, glossier production value, more action, a cool new setting, more Fun Moments, enough momentum from the source material to mostly fill up the season, and the character assassination didn't have time to reach its consequences yet so everyone acting like the fandomified version of themselves worked for the people who were just here for the fun. it also dropped in the summer of 2020, when people were desperate for escapist entertainment, and there was little superhero fare to compete with (and when the protests happening that summer had people wanting to Say Something about civil rights without actually wanting to change anything). the bar was lower, and season 2 cleared it. but season 2's story broke. look back at the actual story, and you'll see it.
season three was bad, and not entertaining enough to hide its flaws. it had some interesting ideas and good moments, but the whole thing was a slog. the pacing was terrible, the character assassination couldn't be denied anymore, and the momentum from the comics ran out and left the writers to their own devices, which revealed they had no plan, no substantive creative backbone, and no understanding of what they were making. season three could have saved the show with a hail mary of tight writing to pick up the slack, but quadrupled down on the problems and guaranteed it was past the point of no return.
season four was terrible. somehow with a reduced episode count it still dragged, every single character has no growth, the basic logic of the story is missing and the continuity is a mess. and ending the story about abuse victims trying to heal on them concluding that they should all just kill themselves makes the story both pointless and rotten. at this point it was a given. you can't recover from two bad seasons back to back. season two shot the show in the gut, season three let it bleed out instead of healing it, and season four kicked its corpse a few times for a couple klaus jokes, then confirmed that its very existence was a mistake. very meta.
so. what were the cracks in the foundation.
the lack of respect for the source material. as soon as they tried a plot that had no connection to the original comics, they were fucked. but even before season four, they were all over the place. in fact they still haven't adapted most of the comics. john perseus, calhoun, deever, dr terminal, the academy at war with each other in the 1960s, the actual purpose of hotel oblivion, the chimpanzees everywhere, the 1980s period setting, clarissa and oscar, the coming of the squid monster, carla the sparrow, grace having her own secret agenda, the actual character of jennifer? just not here. even the raygun gothic aesthetic is watered down and eventually barely even present.
the spinelessness of the creative team. as early as season 2, they were throwing character arcs and themes in the trash to beg the fans to love them. they had no plan and just wanted cheap thrills.
the lack of internal rules. the time travel mechanics don't make sense. viktor's powers just do whatever. lila's powers eventually just do whatever. the central reveal that vanya's medication had been repressing her powers, set up by klaus using drugs to do the same, is undone by season 2's climax revolving around vanya somehow using her powers despite being drugged. the 'marigold' reveal about their powers makes no sense (why does luther get his body back? we don't know.). there are no stakes with no clear world limitations.
the good victim bad victiming. as early as season 1, the show was arguing that harold jenkins is irredeemable for killing his abusive dad. that should've been your first warning that they were going to try to redeem reginald and have the academy basically kill themselves in the end.
the lack of continuity. as early as season 1, the writers forgot number five had a time travel briefcase sitting in the library, or that helen cho's body was in harold's house when he, allison and diego search it. then they forget when luther got disfigured in season 2. then they forgot how the powers work. then they forget literally everything about the story.
the racism. all the characters of color get the worst plotlines in season 1. allison loses her narrative in season 2 and gets it replaced with a civil rights plotline that concludes that 'hey, there's a black president someday!' diego and lila prance through the jim crow south without dealing with segregation as allison is hatecrimed every episode.
the sexism. look back at how all the female characters are treated. look back at how allison's mistreatment of patrick and claire is glossed over, and lila fully gets away with manipulating diego. look at how vanya's 'redemption' is all about finding maternal instincts she never had until season 2. look at how allison's assault of luther is dismissed the way it never would have been if the genders were swapped. look at how sloane is juxtaposed against allison.
the homophobia. the queer characters were either stereotyped or used as glaad award bait. the queerbait of ben and klaus's entire dynamic.
the ableism. in the comics, luther has mobility aids and his disfigurement is treated like a debilitating condition, not a punchline. his eating disorder isn't mocked. vanya's in a wheelchair after she's shot and goes through months of physical therapy and is still never the same. allison is an amputee. diego has one eye and severe ptsd. everyone's mental illness is taken seriously, including and especially klaus's addiction. in the show these elements are downplayed, absent or fuel for quirky moments.
the show is full of filler. the murder mystery plot, the meritech plot, allison following leonard around, the day that was/wasn’t…. even in season 1, there wasn't enough material to make ten episodes. there was never enough for a ten episode run for any season. and yet somehow the one season with the right runtime still drags.
the spectacle. in season 2 they fully lean into it over substance. case in point: the dance sequence.
actually i'll go into that in detail because the dance sequence sums up the whole show and its downfall.
in season one, the pilot's iconic i-think-we're-alone-now dance sequence was an emotional moment that symbolized how all the characters feel isolated and disconnected from each other, but are secretly interconnected and far more in sync than they realize. the song was catchy, but "i think we're alone now" is literally a commentary on the story it's playing over: now that the academy's abuser is dead, they can finally unwind and love each other, and they can fix their problems by literally "running as fast as they can, holding onto one another's hands." -- and how does the season end? by them doing just that.
in season two, allison, klaus and vanya's salon dance is meaningless because vanya has no clue who these people are, klaus has never given a shit about vanya before (watch season one. he doesn't care.), and allison should hate her at this point in the story. it's just there for fun... but if you swapped vanya with ben it would work as a joyful reunion between these three people. the concept of the dance is fine, but the decision to make it a fanservice moment throws it off.
in season three, the dance sequence comes out of nowhere as a ~wacky random fun moment~ to call back to the first season. the footloose song has nothing to do with the story, it's just fun and catchy. there is no substance to the spectacle anymore. it's just dumb fun.
and season four ends in 'i think we're alone now' for no reason other than to ask the viewer to remember when the show was good. no fun, just dumb.
... let's look back at the themes season one sets up.
the road to recovery takes a very long time, and you will fall off it and have to climb back on.
corporations don’t have your back. they’re soulless and they want to suck the life out of you.
abuse does not make nice people. abuse does not make happy people. there are no good victims or bad victims. (except leonard, i guess.)
it’s difficult to tell where programming stops and free will starts; toxic behavior begets toxic behavior, and we have to own up to it, stop it, and resolve to be better.
redemption is possible. the bad things you did in the past don’t define your future.
you're better together than apart.
time. changes. everything. it isn’t too late to have the life and the love you wanted. it isn’t too late to realize your talents, or become a better person, or free yourself from a bad situation. it isn’t too late to get together, or to make up or to change your mind. there are no lost causes. the world is worth saving. your enemies are worth showing mercy to. your relationships and friendships and broken families can be salvaged and reshaped into something new and better.
things are fucked, but if we give it everything we have, we can save it, and it’s worth taking up that fight, because nothing is set in stone.
fuck it, be happy.
remember those?
i'm gonna get into it character by character:
luther.
his entire plotline was meant to be about realizing he was abused, disavowing his abuser and finding his confidence to become the leader he never got to be and go after the love he lost with allison and make a family with her and claire. that was his starting point.
and the fandom hated him rabidly. they said he was just as bad as his father, insisted that he had no redeemable qualities, made fun of his body and his traumas, took the situation with vanya and removed all the moral grays to call him evil over it, and insisted that he was Somehow Abusing Allison.
in season 2, luther has conveniently disowned and confronted reginald offscreen before the plot starts.
he immediately apologizes to vanya, who is an amnesiac and can't actually hold him accountable for hurting her, and the situation is never mentioned again.
his body dysmorphia is played for laughs.
his intelligence and leadership qualities are gone and he's just a bumbling idiot. remember when luther was an astronaut who effectively kept up a faulty space station for four years on his own? could you believe this dumbass was that guy?
he's a punching bag for the fans who hated him.
and season 3 seals the deal. he's still an idiot, he's still hideous.
his romance with allison is destroyed as offensively as possible to reassure the fans who hated alluther.
his romance with sloane is a clumsy attempt to keep the payoff he and allison should have had into the story as they're placating the fans who hate them.
and in season 4, he's... a stripper. he never finds a way to love his body, he just conveniently doesn't have it anymore, and he's still treated like a joke for it.
he never meaningfully takes command of the academy, he just stops trying to.
the wife season 3 insists he loves so much is gone and he doesn't give a shit.
he never even confronts allison for assaulting him, or reconciles with her and has a significant relationship with claire.
he decides to just die.
his entire character trajectory was aborted after only one season. he spent 75% of the runtime with nothing to do, because the fandom hated him and the writers were too cowardly to follow through with his character.
diego.
his entire plotline was meant to be about letting go of his aggression issues by finding his place in the family, reforming his rivalry with luther into a deep friendship based on mutual support and unpacking his 30 year history with vanya in order to finally be happy and in love with her after facilitating her redemption.
and his character's arc is dependent on others....
so in season 2 when luther's arc was canned, so was diego's journey towards letting go of his ego and finding a way to support luther after spending his whole life being pitting against him.
in season 2, when allison's arc was canned, diego ended up with the commission / jfk assassination plot that was never meant to be his. his entire dynamic with number five was hers.
in season 2, because klaus took his vietnam plot in season 1, diego doesn't have one anymore, so there's no way to meaningfully unpack how he feels like his only purpose is violence. instead, his anger issues are totally ignored.
and in season 2, when vanya was split into elliot-page-playing-himself and lila, the romance went out the window too. yes, diego falls in love with lila, but he barely knows her, and all she's done is manipulate, drug, kidnap and hurt him and the academy... yet all that bad behavior is totally ignored in the Show About Abuse And Trauma, because they have chemistry. there's no deep, complex history between them that could have anchored the relationship. the redemption arc itself is rushed and undeserved.
oh, also, he doesn't feel upset about eudora anymore. never mentions how he got her killed, or that he loved her.
then in season 3, diego has nowhere to go but deeper into his romance arc. he has no tension with luther to resolve (and with the show assassinating alluther, there's no 'we both love our girlfriends and want to make it home to tell them that, so let's get over our bullshit and help each other get there' revelation like in the comics). his relationship with lila gets even weirder, with her... deciding to babytrap him, getting a kid killed in the process, and it being framed as quirky and hot. and no eudora again.
and in season 4, diego is a family man who doesn't give a shit when his kids are wiped from existence, whose marriage is about to implode. who decides to just die.
there's just... nothing. he's just himbo #2.
allison.
her entire plotline was meant to be about realizing how culpable she is in the abuse of her family, unlearning those manipulative tendencies and figuring out how to exist authentically, making amends with the people she hurt-- especially vanya and her ex-husband and daughter-- and restarting her life with someone she can love: luther.
allison isn't formally character assassinated until season 3, but she was wrong from the start.
because in season 1, they had her be already past all those things in the pilot episode because they're too sexist to let women be messy. allison is conveniently totally in control of her behavior and has already decided not to use her rumor anymore. she already accepts responsibility for hurting her ex and daughter.
and the writers refused to let her and vanya be angry at each other because ~we don't believe in girl hate~. leading to allison forgiving her for slitting her throat and leaving her to die.
in season 2, the writers wouldn't give her the commission plotline from the comics. allison was the protagonist of the dallas arc, who had a complex story about being willing to alienate her loved ones in order to save them, being ruthless enough to belong at the commission, making deals with the devil to get her powers back and save her the academy.... and unknowingly creating a paradox where she is responsible for the traumatizing incident of watching someone be killed when she was a girl.
instead, allison is saddled with a c-plot about how you have to be nice when you protest, and how fighting back violently against the racist who tried to literally hatecrime you yesterday makes you just as bad as him. rewatch that scene. look at how it’s framed. that’s the takeaway.
and throughout allison's time in dallas, none of the academy check in with her on how she's doing. no one cares. even when she was attacked at a protest they all know she was at, no one asks her if she's okay.
instead of showcasing allison's ruthlessness and dedication to her family, we meet her having conveniently moved on after her daughter was killed, happily settled into dallas with a new relationship, and having given up on ever finding a way home.
instead of showing allison learn to adapt to life without her rumor, we meet her having already figured out how to get a job, make friends, and have a relationship without it. she doesn’t even have to find the courage to join the activists because she did already.
instead of allison learning how to live without a physical voice, she can just talk again. her power's just... back.
instead of allison being rightfully furious at vanya for disabling her, depowering her, stranding her alone in the jim crow south for years, and killing her child... she instantly forgives her. dance party! no girl hate here!
her romance with luther is intact, but the writers know you hate it, so they're trying to please you by giving her a romance with a man who she doesn't trust with any information about her, who doesn't trust her, and who allison doesn't hesitate to abandon five days after luther shows up. but hey they have chemistry, so they were Truly In Love, apparently. no seriously, the raymond romance is bad.
season 3 tries to do the heavy lifting with the messier aspects of allison, but this happens too late, and it mostly functions as a way to assassinate her character to turn her into an angry black woman stereotype so they can kill her romance with luther as meanly as possible, and set sloane up to take her place.
she suddenly cares that her daughter is dead and that viktor technically killed her after an entire season of not caring. and her decision to alienate the academy to save her rings false because she spent two years not caring. why now.
her romance with luther implodes when the writers decide to just do what the fandom wants and make it Toxic All Along, after two seasons of framing it in the most positive light possible. and allison sits front row at his wedding to a woman he barely knows, smiling through it like that wasn't supposed to be her, or like she didn't just assault him.
because viktor and allison have had such an artificially nice relationship, there's no payoff to them learning to love each other again, like viktor encouraging the group to sympathize with allison afterher betrayal.
the effect of this is that at the end of season 3, allison has regressed into the person she was before season 1, but do you even want to see her get better or get along with the academy after she tried to assault luther, killed viktor's stepson, and sold everyone down the river to live in a fantasy world?
good news! all that doesn't matter in season 4! luther and viktor never confront allison for doing that to them. the whole family's over her betraying them. raymond? oh, he's just gone. yeah, he left between seasons. we won't even unpack the implications, or that allison's right back to being a divorcee whose husband abandoned her after learning what she did with her rumor, trying to live without that power. oh and don't worry, she isn't dependent on her power anymore. yeah, we just solved that offscreen again.
claire's here, but is there even a point.
allison and klaus's relationship is intact, but because the show won't seriously examine klaus's addiction, we can't discuss how they enable each other, or how allison's manipulative tendencies or klaus's flightiness and addiction might be affecting claire. no more intergenerational trauma discussion here.
allison has nothing to do because slowly learning how to admit how much harm she inflicted on her loved ones, live without her power, and earn vanya/viktor's trust back was her arc and it's... all over the fucking place.
then, she decides to just die.
klaus.
his entire plotline was meant to be about realizing how much damage his addiction has done to himself and his family, getting clean and conquering the crippling fear of his power that made him an addict in the first place.
then in season 2, he's clean offscreen. no exploration of klaus trying to stay on the wagon for the first time in decades. we're just three years into him being totally fine sober. no complications.
and his relapse is played for laughs instead of treated like a devastating moment.
in season 2, his grief over dave is glossed over. yes, we see dave for five minutes, which is more than the three minutes he got in season 1, but klaus is Moved On Already. no discussion of what this relationship meant to him (... or how ben was affected, being the third wheel). no rumination. just a quick 'here's dave to shut the fans up' and on we go.
in season 2, klaus's excitement about exploring his powers' potential is gone already. yeah, he figured them out offscreen.
his cult plotline replaces his comics story of being a clubkeeper in vietnam and becoming a father (yes, klaus has a baby in vietnam), and the entire plotline is a mean-spirited metanarrative about how dumb the writers think his fangirls are. like. fucking look at the narrative. they're making fun of you.
and yet there are no serious consequences to the implications of klaus immediately turning into his dad the second he gets a little power. he isolated a bunch of people from the outside world, derailed their lives, tattooed them, got them hooked on the idea that The End Is Nigh and Only He Can Save Them, got them to have sex with him, and only stopped manipulating them because he was bored. not even because he realized it was wrong.
his relationship with ben is queerbaited to hell, and has no resolution.
he spends the entire season deliberately keeping ben isolated from the rest of the academy, and this is never meaningfully examined. klaus is an absolute bastard in season 2, and the writers don't acknowledge it.
by season 3, he's just a joke machine and a flamboyant stereotype. he never has a substantive interaction with sparrow ben, or struggles with his sobriety or his addiction in a way that takes it seriously. even his meeting with his mother feels empty.
and in season 4, the mothers of agony plotline from the comics is so disjointed that it's meaningless. in the comics, this is his lowest low, that ben helps him come back from.
any depth to the implications of his immortality is gone. it's just funny that he's a germophobe.
(... immortality? how'd he get killed in the first season apocalypse timeline then. no answer? okay.)
any potential in his relationship with allison and claire is gone.
like luther, his crucial development is skipped over and he spends half the season wandering in circles making jokes.
and he decides to just die.
five.
his entire plotline was meant to be about learning to trust the academy and work within them as a team member rather than running off and doing his own thing. and about slowly learning to be a person instead of a vehicle for the mission.
in season 2, he inexplicably lets the commission go and trusts they're Good Now thanks to new management, after making it clear in season 1 that he can't ever trust them.
in season 2, his antipathy with vanya is transferred to lila. he never accepts responsibility for his role in leading to her isolation.
in season 2, instead of trying to get the family together, he's still working on his own.
in season 3, instead of riding hard for viktor and sympathizing with him, he calmly tells him he'll put him down if he ever steps out of line again and ignores him the rest of the time.
for three straight seasons, he's the plot driver. but three seasons in with no other characters having a coherent arc, the plot driver became all he was. he couldn't slow down or have an emotional moment because he's the only thing moving things forward and all the people who can bring out those emotions are so ooc that it won't work.
then in season 4... oh boy.
he's not the plot driver anymore because there's no plot.
five slowly trying to embrace domesticity could have been interesting... but boy does it fall flat.
five created the commission! no, we won't discuss the nature of him being responsible for his own abuse, or perpetuating the cycle that led to the apocalypse and the academy's misery.
five falls in love... with his brother's wife, who he hates, who hates him because he hog-tied and tortured her parents to death in front of her when she was a little girl. okay.
then he decides to just die.
ben
his entire presence in the story was building to a reveal that he's only staying with klaus because he's in love with him.
in season 2 they queerbait that connection for ten episodes by framing him as a literally possessive boyfriend, give him a 'love interest' in jill that makes no sense, kill him off in a scene that makes no sense because that's not how their powers work, and have the vaguest 'by the way he was in love with you' reveal via vanya that feels like an afterthought.
klaus keeps ben from talking to anyone in the academy for the whole season for no reason. he never mentions why, ben never gets mad at him. there are no emotional consequences. ben spent an entire season able to talk to the academy and inform the world and nothing ever comes of this.
in season 3, ben's a totally different character. none of the umbrella academy have emotional reactions to seeing him alive.
not even klaus.
and he feels nothing for them.
he also feels nothing for the sparrows, who drop like flies around him without him giving a shit.
in season 4 he's a completely different character again.
no interest in reuniting with his sparrow academy mates, or the umbrella academy.
he's a crypto bro for some reason.
the south korea subway ending stinger? idk where that went.
the show does use the comics' likely endgame of ben being the portal through which the final antagonist arrives. but they do it in such a strange, meaningless way.
the romance with jennifer comes out of nowhere and makes no sense. it's unclear why he'd want to become a blob with her. there's no emotion anchoring this plot.
also, jennifer was a large, dark-skinned black woman in the comics and... isn't here. (it's also unclear if jennifer was romantically involved with ben in the comics, or if she might have been one of the kid's mothers. so uh. we'll see how that ends up.)
his tentacles come out of his back sometimes. huh?
the reveal that he was killed by their father and they were all brainwashed makes no sense. especially given that allison has brainwashing powers that are never used to cover this up.
there's never a meaningful payoff for ben as a character.
and vanya/viktor…
to start, seasons 1-2 will call her vanya because that's how the character was written, performed and received. seasons 3-4 will refer to him as viktor. that's why the name/pronouns switch back and forth in this post. those are two different characters.
alright i'm gonna say it: the show basically killed off vanya at the start of s2 and split her into two characters: lila, who's the white violin from the comics-- and has vanya's style, punk musicianship, romance with diego, mutual hate with five, alliance with the commission, status as the most powerful character, and role as the antagonist who needs a redemption arc that rejoins her with the family-- …. and the character that would become viktor, who's just elliot page playing a flattened version of himself for token queer points.
the show literally got rid of its main character one season in, sped past all the conflict with the academy to the part where they're all besties again, and gave all the interesting shit to an oc. and they did it because they cared more about profiting off of elliot page's queerness than trusting him to do his job as a professional actor, and supporting that performance in the face of a fandom that only saw him for his sexuality/gender identity.
season 2 skips over vanya learning to use her power and lose her fear of it. she's just good at it now. also, the character will never use the violin to channel her powers again, and will never again acknowledge her love of music, because elliot page didn't like playing the violin. like, sir. what are you doing playing a character called 'the white violin' then.
season 2 skips over her rage and hatred of the academy. instead of being afraid of them, avoiding them, and being hostile whenever they interact, she's instantly cool with them, dismisses their years of mistreatment and dismissal, and is part of the family with no friction despite trying to kill them, blowing up the world, and killing their niece.
season 2 totally resets her personality. amnesia! she's nice again! we know you hated her when she was angry, so don't worry about that!
season 2 gives her a romance with someone who she has chemistry with, but who fundamentally doesn't understand her. the entire relationship is just fanservice. remember the lesbian vanya truthers who thought elliot page could only play characters who were lesbians because he identified as a lesbian at the time? remember their "give vanya a girlfriend" whining? this entire plotline was for them.
season 2 hands the moment where the academy understands vanya and empathizes with her in a moment of superpower meltdown.... to harlan.
in season 3, diet elliot page just becomes overt. it's great that page's transition was incorporated into the show at his request, and at this point the damage to the character's so massive that at least they're being honest about the character just being a different entity from vanya entirely. like, fuck it. you already gave all of vanya's character to the oc. might as well.
though it's great that the transition is quickly incorporated into the story, it happens so quickly that a very easy plotline for viktor in s3 is just rushed past. he has so little to do, the transition is such an obvious fix, and they just... don't do it.
because viktor magically has full control of his powers, there's no more growth from him. and at this point his powers just do whatever. who even knows what his abilities are. the show sure doesn't.
viktor is a beloved member of the academy with no friction whatsoever, even though they're trapped in an alternate dimension because of him
allison's anger at him is demonized instead of deconstructed.
the harlan plotline certainly exists. very funny that the show casually reveals that vissy ruined sissy's life and never goes into the emotional consequences of this.
in season 4... yeah this character has nothing to do. he never expresses anger at allison over killing his stepson. his powers are even more vague. he's in canada for some reason, just to complete the transformation into elliot page.
then he decides to just die.
the main character of the story was essentially killed off one season in. the whole thing became adrift because without vanya, there's no main character anymore. no central antagonist with history with the academy, no emotional weight to their connection, no payoff to a slow redemption arc that unfolds over multiple seasons. just shenanigans.
lila
took over the vanya storyline in season 2.
lila is vanya from the comics.
vanya's hatred of the umbrella academy and antagonism towards them? it's now lila's.
vanya's alliance with the commission to destroy the world? nope. lila's the commission's ally now.
vanya's status as the most powerful character? now it's lila.
vanya and five's mutual hate? now belongs to lila and five. even the fiveya vibe rubberbanded into That in season 4.
vanya's slow redemption from a hateful villain of the academy into one of its most crucial members is handed to lila. who barely knows these people, has only ever hurt them, and yet is treated with more empathy with them after three days than vanya received in thirty years.
vanya being set up as the character who'll save the umbrellas from the sparrows? nope, that's lila now.
vanya's romance with diego? that's lila's now. no, it doesn't make sense but they have chemistry.
then in season 3... oh god. instead of unpacking lila's severe mommy issues from being abused by the handler, she's just over them now.
the academy immediately trust and embrace her even though all she's ever done is hurt them.
and for some reason, this character who's shown no maternal instincts randomly decides she wants to be a mom because her one night stand with diego, who she knew for a few days, got her pregnant.
and she tries to convince him a little white boy is their kid to test if he'll be a good father and doesn't give a shit when that child turns to dust. what are we doing here.
then in season 4, their romance doesn't even mean anything. neither does their family. they're already on the verge of a divorce. which... yeah, follows, given what their romance actually consisted of.
then she hooks up with number five, who killed her family in front of her when she was a girl. what.
.... and then we die.
the whole thing came apart in season 2. you just didn't notice yet.
and here's where i get cunty and set aside my belief that writers have an inherent responsibility to never kowtow to their fans no matter what, because the fandom is a big part of how things went wrong, and someone has to talk about it.
the umbrella academy begun as a complex metaphor for recovering from abuse, using superheroes in a gothic-adjacent setting. every single character's power is allegorical of an attribute one may take on from living in an abusive home. (and part of the missed potential in lila is the failure to fit her into that metaphor too). and the metaphor is literally in the name: the umbrella academy.
it's an academy. not a family. the characters are only adoptive siblings because reginald needed a legal way to bind them to him. they grew up in a twisted boarding school, which they explain again and again, and call each other siblings out of habit, which they also explain. and they are choosing as adults to overcome the trauma that pitted them against each other to become a found family.
... i'm gonna say it. the pseudoincest is a vital part of the story, the same way it is in the comics. that was how they were going to love each other. their ability to love each other was the sign that the brainwashing failed, and the found family was, like actual found families, going to involve some of those people pairing off romantically. allison and luther. ben and klaus. vanya and diego-or-five. that was the story.
the umbrella academy is both a giant metaphor for healing from a dysfunctional family, and for finding a queer found family (... it's the umbrella academy. that's the part of the allegory that's still unfulfilled. everyone in this story is queercoded, not just klaus and vanya/viktor. the show massively dropped the ball in not exploring this deeper.) and the fandom screamed, whined and harassed their way into having it scribbled out of the story, and the writers were cowardly enough to do it for you. if you're wondering why they kept trying to sneak alluther in through the back in season 2, still had a harcest couple get married in season 3, and pivoted to shipping lila so hard, that's why. it's the most important thing about the story, and you hated it. is it any shock that the story ends with all their relationships stunted, and no love between them.
remember all those themes from season 1? remember how you guys hated them? remember how you concluded that luther is an irredeemable monster, and klaus is an innocent little baby, and vanya is somehow both and neither? remember how you were completely uninterested in watching everyone redeem themselves, and wanted to skip to the Fun Sibling Moments? remember how you immediately dismissed half the characters as lost causes, and directly demanded that the writers not let the characters love each other? congrats, the writers were listening!
the umbrella academy comic is meant for adults. the show was made for a wider audience and the writers were totally unprepared for the fandom of antifan teens they got. and they overhauled the show to make it what that fandom wanted. more fun, less substance. making luther a bumbling idiot and sidestepping his entire arc. making diego a himbo. skipping allison's complexities until it's time to demonize her for them. making klaus into the cartoon version of himself. making vanya into diet elliot page and handing all her storylines to a new character. dismantling the show's core tone to make it a fanservice carnival. creating vissy, allmond and dielila in the first place, and coining the ship names before the fandom even chose them. making alluther toxic all along, and swapping her out with a white-passing replacement. it was all for you.
then when they ended the show, they flipped off the fandom on the way out. of course it was going to end like that. you spent five years playing oppression olympics, making bigotry self-righteous, and declaring you didn't want a transformative ending for these characters. the writers gave the fandom the hopeless, nihilistic, meandering, substanceless, nonsensical ending it was demanding all along.
so. where do we go from here.
first of all, to ao3, for those of you who haven't moved on.
next, to the comics. assuming way ever wants to finish them, now that he's received an overwhelming message that the audience for his story hates it and prefers the bastardized versions of his characters. i get the sense he'll probably leave it unfinished. i don't blame him.
then... the umbrella academy was a massive success. it's going to get a reboot someday. in 10-15 years, we're gonna get it back. my hope is that
whoever has that responsibility has a clear vision and the talent to pull it off, the backbone to stick with it, and more loyalty to the source material. no subverting expectations for the hell of it. no kowtowing to antifandom. make a plan and stick to it and have confidence in it. hopefully, the next showrunner won't be a terrible person.
the next version of tua will be mature. so the adults who will watch will hopefully be old enough to understand what they're seeing. this truly isn't a show for kids. the fandom has proven that. let's not do it again.
that it'll be animated. the incredible visual aesthetic of the show and its edgier elements could never have been captured in live-action. and now that adult animation's starting to arrive, including on netflix, maybe in a decade or two we'll finally get the umbrella academy fully realized.
anyway. that's my piece.
61 notes
·
View notes