Some Rain Must Fall

The Umbrella Academy, season 4

starring Elliot Page, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Ritu Arya, Aidan Gallagher, David Castañeda, Robert Sheehan, Tom Hopper, Justin H. Min, Victoria Sawal, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman, David Cross, Liisa Repo-Martell and Colm Feore.

created by Steve Blackman (The Associates, Private Practice, Legion, Altered Carbon)

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IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS, WHY ARE YOU EVEN READING THIS FAR, MY GOD, STOP

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Look, there is a lot going on. And I don't even mean specifically with the show I'm ostensibly reviewing here. In fact, it could be argued that there's a lot less going on in Season Four (the final one!) than in all the previous ones. The story is not particularly convoluted in terms of plot line compared to previous arcs. In fact, by working in six episodes instead of the previous three seasons' order of 10, just in terms of volume there's 40% less going on already. The tone is also so much less self-serious than some of the earlier seasons, and it wasn't that heavy a show in the first place bar a few scattered moments of gravity. But this kind of lightness is welcome in this period of stomping, inevitable trudge toward a presidential election, an absolutely crushing heat wave here, some stupid health issues, some stupider car issues and the emotional work of integrating a new pet into the house (more on that in some other post later on). Of all those swirling things, Umbrella Academy is the only one thoughtful enough to break up the proceedings with at least one fart joke. That's the level I'm looking for in late Summer 2024.

In times of darkness, that's when you crave the light. I didn't even list the darkest dark, the premiere of season 2 of Rings of Power on Amazon Prime; I didn't want things to turn bleak. Don't worry, I'm back in the care of a professional therapist, I'm processing it all.

I didn't read any of the comic books Umbrella Academy is based on, so I can't be caught in the trap of despair and self-loathing that something like Rings of Power dooms me to. The great gift of ignorance means I only understand any of these characters (so many!) as they are presented in this context, with no preconception or expectation in place to be thwarted. Apologies to Messrs. Way and Bá, but I don't need to feel the kind of parasocial proprietorship about, like, Number 5 that I do about Celebrimbor or whomever.

So this is a nice escape! And I should complain about only six episodes of something I like when I might have expected 10, but look, I'm beginning to gain the kind of perspective in middle-middle age where, hey, I'm just grateful anything came out at all. I've developed enough empathy to imagine what it would have felt like to have been a big Batgirl fan. Just be happy it showed up at all! But you have to be careful with the gratitude mindset; for the less vigilant among us, that's a path that can lead to the unironic Live Laugh Love signs above the sectional couch.

Besides the shorter overall running time, what's new about season four? Well, they cast Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman as the heavies, which is automatically good news. It's only a stunt to cast a married couple as a married couple if one or both of them suck. Instead, these are not only two effortlessly charismatic performers, but their commitment and timing elevate everything they've been in individually and they play beautifully of one another. Their characters here aren't quite different enough to literally play off one another; they present as a unit, which works just fine for an antagonist. Just one could have done it, but in the end it's a por qué no los dos scenario. Everyone is better off for it.

For the rest of it, I really had to take a beat to match my expected speed of viewership to its trajectory, as it really skips off the simmering familial tension vibe that undergirds the whole premise of the macro-story--what if you and your siblings all had the same daddy issues and also super powers--and lands in a way more self-consciously broad comic space. This comes at the expense of some of the characters, but you were going to have to lose something when you cut episodes, and it was character that got it in the neck, like Allison in season 2, episode 8. She also lived, just in a diminished form.

Tom Hopper's Luther, Number One, he with the daddiest of the daddy issues, comes off the most changed, released from a running thread of sulking resentment to burst out into the broadest comic figure as a hirsute, space-suited stripper, complete with tin-foil banana hammock. There are way more wide smiles and laughing from Luther in these six episodes than the previous 30 combined. The earnest naïveté they had played for a few goofs in previous seasons is still there to some degree, but what could feel hacky, superficial and dismissible on its own reads as something like relief for this last run. It's a little reward for Hopper and for those of us along for the whole ride, which is the point.

Sadly, almost none of the other characters come off as well. Diego and Lila's trapped-in-suburbia subplot is forced and boring, though Ritu Arya can't help but be a force of gravity all her own as a performer in everything she's in (seriously, go back and watch season one without her, you can feel her missing). Robert Sheehan's Klaus, the previous seasons' brilliant comic relief, is left with a tedious and contrived subplot to keep himself and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) busy until the apocalypse. Elliot Page as Viktor is dragooned into being the plot-starter-offer and Justin H. Min as Ben, who never had much of an active role in previous seasons, is completely wasted as a lumbering, bitchy plot point eventually literally swallowed up by some kind of gross body-horror CGI.

All of this is to say that the plot kind of doesn't matter, and the writers agree. There's really only one goal here and that's to get seven Hargreeveses and Lila into a shiny circle of sacrificial light for the sake of the universe and make us all cry. And that's effective enough. Aside from an extended kaiju bit toward the end, any powers and effects-heavy sequences are more or less missing, which is fine since I don't think one person in the group has the same powers that were established back in the first season. They all just can kinda do whatever it takes to get us out of the predicament in the scene, which is fine. The message is clear: look, don't worry about the details, just spend some time with your pretend friends so we can all say a proper goodbye.

To be fair, the writers do try to give us one last emotional set-piece with Lila and Number Five being stranded together for years in alternate timelines and falling in love, an interesting and complicated button to put on a relationship that started years ago as literal murderous rivalry. Aidan Gallagher, by a good stretch the youngest of the cast, is given a lot to carry in both the emotional narrative and keeping up with Arya, and he acquits himself brilliantly. He's had the hardest job from the beginning, portraying an old man in a boy's body, and here even at 20 years old, he's got he chops to pull off the weariness and hurt the payoff requires.

Aside from that, it's all a bit broad, as I've said, not just comedically but plot-wise. There's a twist in the tale at the end that matters not at all. Colm Feore remains underused as he was in every season save bits of season three when he makes up half of a comedic double-act with Sheehan, but that just underscores what was left out. I get that Sir Reginald works best as a looming figure of memory and threat, but it's still frustrating to have someone so capable get so little to do.

Unlike most superhero things, it doesn't end with fighting a big beam of light in the sky nor in a last-second reprieve where all the protagonists are somehow actually OK. It cuts in the way Spiderman Far From Home tries to cut, but without the edge of future repercussions to sink the blade as deep as it might go. In the end what happens to them in the story is what happens to every character in every series studios eventually just stop making: they cease to be. The writers/creators here just chose to make it an explicit plot point. Which I liked.