'The Umbrella Academy' Season 4 review: A bonkers victory lap
The final season of Netflix's "The Umbrella Academy" is upon us and it's a wild farewell. TV review.
Over the last three wild seasons of The Umbrella Academy, we've followed the Hargreeves family through a metric fucktonne of capers. In case you forgot, these superpowered, time-travelling siblings have destroyed (and saved) the world multiple times. They've infrequently murdered and resurrected each other, started a sex cult, destroyed the moon, grieved their robot mother and chimpanzee caretaker, had a "Footloose" dance battle, fallen in love during the Vietnam War, joined the Civil Rights Movement in '60s Dallas, and were somehow involved in the JFK assassination.
Plus, they've grown closer as a family. Maybe. Not really. Wait, absolutely not.
Nevertheless, it's brutal to say goodbye to the Hargreeves, having become such wonderfully flawed characters in our TV overloaded lives, thanks to the Netflix adaptation of Gerard Way's comic series. Watching Luther (Tom Hopper), Diego (David Castañeda), Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), Ben (Justin H. Min), Viktor (Elliot Page), and honorary Hargreeves member Lila (Ritu Arya) bicker like children as they attempt to stop the world from combusting has been an unshakeable, dark delight for five years.
And with the fourth and final season, The Umbrella Academy takes just six episodes for a glorious and surreal victory lap. It's a fond and daring farewell to a truly undefinable show, with superb performances from the core cast with incredibly welcome newcomers, festive fever dream action sequences that must have been hard to pitch, and a good hard narrative look at some of the series biggest unsolved mysteries — though it leaves most behind. It's messed-up family reunion time, one last time.
What is The Umbrella Academy Season 4 about?
As far as farewells go, this is one of the most unhinged and “just go with it” goodbyes you'll see on TV this year. And thanks to Season 3, the bar is hilariously high. Last time around, the Hargreeves siblings shoved the Kugelblitz into a sentient cube called Christopher, had a wedding at the end of the world, and fought samurai made of cockroaches in the Hotel Oblivion before their alien dad Sir Reginald (Colm Feore) created a new timeline and caused everyone to lose their powers.
The series could have ended there, but Season 4 gives fans a final, six-episode hurrah. When we catch up with the Umbrella Academy this time, however, the Academy itself doesn't exist. Here, the powerless Hargreeves are struggling with human mediocrity (despite the set design team's insistence on dazzling neon hues in every scene). Reunited at a six-year-old's birthday party, things are awkward and boring and normal. Ka-blam! There's a kidnapping, a crucial missing person, a timeline cult, and a revelation that Ben could be a ticking time bomb for the end of the world. FAMILY ROAD TRIP!
In this new timeline, there's a growing threat in the form of extremist conspiracy theorist organization The Keepers. The group was established by the phenomenally cast Nick Offerman and Megan Mullaly as lovers, disgraced community college professors, and Umbrellaphiles Gene and Jean Thibedeau (yes they make “who is the dominant Gene/Jean" jokes). There's a growing suspicion of the existence of multiple timelines among the group, and Gene and Jean seem to have a plan to expose it. Here, and I have to say it, The Umbrella Academy both makes conspiracy theorists the villains and makes them right?! Sure!
At the heart of the final season is Ben, whose volatility toward his siblings only grows stronger after he lost all his Sparrow siblings last season. But he's the key to a global disaster, and his siblings need to figure out what the mysterious "Jennifer incident" means for their brother before everything goes to shit. And while all that is happening, the Hargreeves have some final confrontations and mysteries to handle, with plenty of individual moments for our beloved core siblings — including a truly unexpected enemies to lovers storyline.
A final airing of Hargrievances
One of the best elements of The Umbrella Academy has always been throwing extremely different personalities together as family. The talented cast chews through the punchy script, selling it full deadpan with either nihilism or hilarious earnestness; Raver-Lampman genuinely saying "I'm sorry you left Canada for this," in a moment of peril is perfection.
Probably the standout of the season is Hopper as leading himbo Luther, who bulldozes awkwardness with unhinged optimism. Watching Hopper losing his shit over antique sconces and stress eating cupcakes is a delight, and he's wonderfully teamed up with a hilarious Castañeda this season, moving Luther and Diego from sibling rivals to buddy cops.
But honorary Hargreeve sibling Lila really gets the most impressive arc, with Arya delivering the most nuanced performance of the season, pushing our favourite assassin to moments of relatable reflection and heartbreaking vulnerability. And Gallagher finds a softness to Five we haven't seen before, hidden among all that teen bravado.
Meanwhile, Raver-Lampman's Alison gets the redemption she deserves after they did that to her character last round — Alison's "ballbuster" scene is worthy of The Boys. Not the hedonistic, immortal Klaus of seasons gone, Sheehan navigates a sober, paranoid Klaus this season, playing between extreme vulnerability and the character’s signature theatricality.
Page is characteristically flawless as Viktor, whose daddy issues find their moment in the blazing sun, while Min gets to find Ben's true heart (he has one!) amid a True Romance-style on-the-run adventure. Plus, we get a welcome new addition to the cast with Victoria Sawal, bringing a brilliant energy to a character integral to the fate of the Hargreeves but who we can't talk about without spoiling anything.
So we'll move on to the biggest casting treat of all: Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman.
Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally are the ultimate dastardly duo
Whomever managed to cast real-life loves Offerman and Mullally in this season of The Umbrella Academy deserves a raise. A dastardly duo of Fargo-like villains cruising around in their '80s Chrysler LeBaron Town and Country, wearing matching aviator spectacles, alpaca wool coats, and fanny packs in every scene, and stealing the whole damn season with a Cher-based dance sequence, Gene and Jean are the true highlight of Season 4.
They're conspiracy theorists kicked out of academia for their claims, and they have a grudge to bear, setting up an apocalypse cult HQ in the middle of an American fast food chain restaurant. Somehow, Mullally and Offerman make you want to hang out with these weirdos and join their cause. Watching Jean and Gene flirt will forever be my twisted happy place, as Offerman and Mullally lend a physical comedy and earnest, cheeky delivery that plays to both of their strengths.
The damned dream team are offset by another delightful addition to the cast, David Cross, who channels his signature comedy style to earnest dry cleaner Sy Grossman. And they're all perfectly lit by a strange narrative set element: the whole thing's set at Christmas.
Season 4 is a festive fever dream
The final season of The Umbrella Academy seems bedecked with yuletide cheer, from a festive small town with a secret to the tinselled halls of the CIA. Visually, The Umbrella Academy has always been one of the best shows on TV, with bizarro action sequences aplenty lit with every neon gel around, but this season it’s completely decorated with Christmas accoutrements. Season 4, for some reason, is set during the holidays, meaning every scene is lit with twinkly lights and whimsy even when the bullets and blood are flying. Somehow, it makes the whole season feel like a six-episode Christmas special we deserve, a festive fever dream to unite and farewell the Hargreeves in the weirdest way possible.
And of course, this is The Umbrella Academy, so you know there's going to be plenty of needle drops during fight scenes — including a slew of Christmas carols and the ultimate song to end the series on. The season's insistence on using the pretty outdated "Baby Shark" song feels overdone, mind you, but I'll forgive them seeing as it scores a whole scene of projectile vomiting.
It's scenes like this disgusting, glorious, slow-motion moment that make me realise how much I'll miss The Umbrella Academy. After four seasons of genuinely unpredictable twists and turns with a magnetic cast, sublime set and costume design, and enough needle drops to start out our own Amoeba Music, The Umbrella Academy has felt like strange TV family to fans like myself. Season 4, a brief but bonkers last ride, makes for a magnificent send-off.
Finally, with no more episodes of The Umbrella Academy ahead, I think we're alone now.
The Umbrella Academy Season 4 is streaming on Netflix from Aug. 8.