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tiredthespian · 2 months

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I don’t normally post negativity about things that I like because honestly it can be exhausting (and I barely post at all as-is lol), but I just need to get my thoughts about TUA off my chest after that finale…

I honestly just don’t know what to think about season 4… watching it after rewatching 1-3 was an Experience for sure. My grounding thought through my rewatch was how strong the theme of “we are better for having loved, even if it all ends” was—even throughout some of the things I didn’t like about season 3, that theme was always there. It’s always the Hargreeves family. It’s all love. So when I saw the trailer for season 4, I got really emotional because to me it seemed like finally confronting the truth and grief of Ben’s death was going to be the key to everything, but honestly having finished season 4 I feel like his story got kind of brushed over even if it was the whole cause of the apocalypse this time…. Like I feel like they didn’t really give him a proper ending even after all that, and Jennifer just felt like a plot device even though I really wanted to love her. She just felt like a generic MacGuffin.

I don’t know what ending I would have preferred, and I understand that after everything just giving all the characters what they wanted wouldn’t necessarily be any better writing than what we got, but idk SOMETHING could have been different. Ray and Sloane were just brushed over completely, and Dave and Sissy weren’t even mentioned, even though they were all such vital characters to the growth of Allison, Luther, Klaus, and Viktor, respectively. And no, I wasn’t expecting everyone to be together in the end. Part of the bittersweetness of their stories is that their time together was only temporary—that’s a facet of TUA’s storytelling. But another facet of the previous seasons is that those losses are FELT. Dave’s loss drove Klaus in season 2, Ray and Claire’s loss drove Allison in season 3, Sissy’s loss and finding Harlan again drove Viktor in season 3. So why didn’t Sloane’s completely unexplained disappearance seem to have much effect on Luther in season 4??? Why don’t we know why Ray left???

Also playing “I Think We’re Alone Now” over the final scene was so uncalled for. It could have been the perfect song for the final scene if the final scene wasn’t that. Now, a song we associate with the Hargreeves siblings being free is associated with them being gone. Free from the endless apocalypses, sure, but also literally never having existed, never having loved or been loved, which again, is the Whole Point of the show in my opinion. At least Hazel and Agnes get to still be in love ffs.

Also self-sacrificing moves that don’t feel consistent with character growth just don’t jive with me. I’m getting Magicians flashbacks.

Anyway, I’m just tired now. I was vibing with the first couple episodes even though they felt different than previous seasons, but then it all sort of fell off. I wish they’d done more with the subway and the Five diner, given the siblings stronger individual arcs, and had more of those classic TUA fight scenes to fun music.

On the bright side, I can always just rewatch seasons 1-2 lol.

#tua spoilers #tua s4 spoilers #the umbrella academy #the umbrella academy spoilers #please fandom just start making gif sets of the good moments lol #also the costumes were great so there’s always that #and I do enjoy nick offerman and megan mulally being silly but I wish we’d seen more of them #gene and jean should have been on par with the swedes even if not as iconic as hazel and cha cha

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daisythornes · 1 month

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initial thoughts on tua s4 (after watching it once, a week ago) PART 1

first of all, i liked a lot of it. not all of it by any means! but i had a better time than i did with s2 and s3. i'm very aware that's a controversial take, so:

why did i (kinda) like it?

i felt like it started off strong! when i watch stuff, i prioritize story, character, tone, and dialogue above pretty much all else.

like, are meaningful things happening at a satisfying pace? how much do i care about what happens next? does it feel like the characters are being written consistently, but also being led toward realistic changes? is every decision in harmony with the established tone? is the dialogue shit, or is it good? and straight up, the beginning of s4 was hitting all these marks for me.

STORY: pacing-wise, it wasn't a slog like s3, and i was super invested in a lot of elements of it. the umbrella effect conspiracy, the brellies getting their powers back after dealing with still feeling Wrong in their more 'perfect' lives, the creepy fake christmas town (!!). even some weird detours that didn't really go anywhere, (eg. the diego and luther at the fbi/cia/whatever scene) were fun to me just because they did interesting things for the...

CHARACTERS!: at first, i was super on board with so much of what they were doing with everyone.

luther got to experience extreme body confidence and being perceived as sexy for... really the first time in the series, only to have it taken away from him all over again. he was functional and happy, but he was living in the gutted bones of the academy, and that hurt little child in him was still asking diego if he's a bad leader. beautiful stuff. he needed to make peace with his body and confront reginald (but not played for laughs this time) and learn to love every part of himself, even the failures and imperfections. it really seemed like he was being set up to do this over the course of the season, but... alas.

diego... well. i actually wish they'd done way more with diego, but i do think his and lila's relationship was never as compelling or right for these characters as i wanted it to be. them realizing it's just not working, and coming out the other side as friends who still love each other would've slayed. it could've been some kind of parallel to diego and patch, but this time diego's mature enough to handle it really well. i think him being a dad (and one of his kids being named grace) is incredible. there was a LOT there to explore, but. i guess i didn't notice how uninterested the show seemed to be in actually doing that until after watching it. still, i guess i appreciate the basic ideas they had here. AND his much-needed bonding with luther.

allison trying and failing miserably to succeed and match up to her old rumored-perfect life?? literally so sexy and agonizing and fitting for her. like, can't you imagine her wondering if she really did need her rumor to be happy? if allison on her own was in fact, never good enough? and then, yknow... overcoming this, after confronting all of her worst fears head-on? i loved watching her be a damn mess, and i think the choices to have Ray walk out on her, and Claire not always get along with her, and Klaus call her out for her toxicity were GOLD. just... wish they would've given her some kind of... yknow, resolution to all this.

klaus' storyline had me worried from the previews ngl – i was so scared they'd sort of cartoonify and make fun of health anxiety/ocd through it – you know what i mean. but idk... it felt a lot more natural for his character + grounded in reality than i expected it to. he just traded out one addiction for another. he knows the afterlife is miserable, and he'd do anything to avoid it. makes all the sense in the world. i loved how deeply caring he was, but i also love that he got to be angry and complicated and unpalatable this season! he was the furthest thing from flanderized, and he felt fully like himself in a way that he hasn't since season 1 imo.

i always did kinda want them to do the klaus + his powers being exploited storyline from the comics, buuuut.. idk. as much as i'm glad they went there without pulling any punches, it felt super late in the series to have him deal with it now. and i was waiting desperately for him to save himself, as claire said he could, by yknow... his powers evolving to the point where he could raise an army of the dead and have them do his bidding. everyone else got their powers to s2 intro level but him. it felt SO much like that was where they were going for klaus too, and i'm MAD about it.

i do think this storyline as a whole ended up feeling like a retread of his s1 arc in a lot of ways, but... again, at least klaus felt like klaus all the way through. and i'd rather have a dark arc that knows it's dark than whatever klaus' s2 was.

five... hmm. i do think five would find something to be weirdly intense about after living his life the way he has, but yeah, i don't know that he'd do it by working for any government. he's too antagonistic toward authority, right? i can, however. see him getting into double-crossing and/or conspiracy shit, which they do play with a little in s4! and that was probably my favorite five solo plot stuff of the season ngl. i wish we could've seen more of it. also i fully believe five's condescending ass would make sure he gets treated like the world-weary old man that he is while he looks like a babyfaced intern, 100%.

i did find it super fun to see him as an adult, simply because we've never really known what a 'normal' five would be like until now. and the answer is pretty solid in several ways, i think. 'normal' five is still wildly ambitious, constantly looking for ways to stoke a little chaos in his life because he really doesn't know how to function without it, and like?? also kinda just a nice brother and uncle? him solemnly nodding and saying "good effort" to diego's kid when she fails to hit a piñata was a stroke of genius.

elephant in the room time: i loved the idea of a five/lila romance. idk if i loved how it happened, but yeah! i think lila needs someone that will constantly challenge her meanness, and five's nothing if not a challenge to lila. five having a romantic storyline as one of his last character beats makes sense, guys. we don't have to be weird about it. let the man grow up, just like s1 implied he would eventually do. five's literally been an old-fashioned romantic from the beginning (re: delores). diego and lila were all chemistry, no warmth. five and lila had both. so... kudos to tua for taking the risk and exploring something fun here!

ben's storyline... i didn't care for. this was a maaajor weak link, and maybe the worst possible character plot to pin the overarching story to. i really dislike the instalove trope, and ben and jennifer went from being kinda cute with a bit of chemistry to being ride or die devoted to each other in like what... two days? bullshit. i think literally everything about the durango existing and having a nuclear reaction to the marigold, and ben being killed by reginald because of it was a whole load of stupid. i always just kinda. thought ben must've died because his powers eventually ripped him apart, or because someone fucked up on a mission and he got killed by a villain or something. no need for... any of the desperate nonsense they actually came up with.

ngl, i also straight up never agreed with them killing off umbrella ben in s2 like. it was WAY too early for that. i didn't want to see sparrow ben resolve his issues and go through an arc or whatever, i wanted to see umbrella ben through to the end. all that said, i actually thought it was smart and quite sweet to have viktor be the last person to give up on a world-ending ben, because yeah, it should always have been the case that any hargreeves is capable of doing that. the apocalypse is a metaphor for them unleashing the pain of their childhood on the world around them, etc. viktor actually succeeding in saving ben and saving the world would've been gorgeously full-circle. so... there was probably a good idea buried in here somewhere. sucks that it remained buried!

viktor! oogh, viktor. so, i was a little charmed by the initial introduction that sees viktor as kind of a shitty guy that's 'gone through every woman in town.' like, again, we're playing with opposites. the brellies getting their dream lives, but still not finding fulfillment in them, because they have yet to actually complete all the difficult work of healing. viktor is now a confident player that owns a cool bar with his name on it. i get what they were going for (and i liked it!), but i wish they would've actually gone somewhere with it.

i did really like viktor's dynamic with reginald in this season, purely for the fact that it actually acknowledged all the pain he caused viktor for the first time since season 1. it felt kinda weird and last minute for sure, but i chalk that up to how long of a time this has been coming, and yknow, better late than never. it felt soo good to see the depths of viktor's fury again, and this time fully directed at the man who incited it. fuck. yeah.

i loved reg growing a conscience and showing a completely unnecessary moment of kindness to viktor. shocking, i know. but the way the show didn't use this to try and redeem reg, or to guilt viktor into offering him forgiveness really landed right with me. like how tragic is that? at the very end, reginald learned something of humanity. but the damage had already been done. much like in the construction of tua as a tv series. :')

uhm. apparently posts have a text limit, so tbc in part 2! ;)

#tldr the season being cut in half was an absolutely critical error bc everyone only got half a character arc w no conclusion #i liked so much of what they set up at first #but it's insane how much none of it mattered in the end or got resolved in any way #and there were some bad and dumb ideas but. also a lot of promise #tua #the umbrella academy #tua season 4 #tua negativity #tua critical #netflix.... shake my hand and pay me a lot of money and i'll fix literally everything for you dont even worry about it

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