The Umbrella Academy Season 3 Review: With Fun Plot Twists and Characters Capable Of Touching Our Hearts
Cast: Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Emmy Raver-Lampman and More
Director: Jeremy Webb
Streaming Platform: Netflix (click to watch)
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
The Umbrella Academy Season 3 Review: It’s been two years since the second season of The Umbrella Academy, but little more than a blink of an eye has passed for the odd and mismatched group of “superheroes”. The series picks up exactly where we left off, with the Hargreeves back home ready to take on a new threat. Once again, the end of the world is around the corner and borderline characters with dubious morality peek out on the screen. We must be honest, the third season is very far from the quality that characterized the previous one, especially on the narrative level. The feeling is that of being in front of two distinct yet similar products. Writing abandons some strengths to try new ones with little success. However, this does not take away from Steve Blackman’s creature all the charm of him, but the steps backward have been many.
The students of the Umbrella Academy must face the most difficult challenge of all: stopping a new Apocalypse while dealing with the hateful Sparrow Academy. Now that Netflix is fighting hard to reinvent itself after its identity crisis, it must have the support of strong pillars like that mega-successful season 4 of Stranger Things, but The Umbrella Academy is a series that is not far behind in popularity. Two years after its last episodes, season 3 of The Umbrella Academy comes to an end to resolve that brutal cliffhanger with which the previous stage left us. Now, the umbrella boys must come to terms (or not) with the mysterious Sparrow Academy… Once again, we have 10 episodes of about 50 minutes in length, in which all the original protagonists must “coexist” not only with characters inherited from previous episodes, like Lila but also with the members of this new academy, each one of them with their personality and very marked powers.
The Umbrella Academy Season 3: The Story
The third season of The Umbrella Academy leans on its paper counterpart, the third volume entitled Hotel Oblivion. The comic created by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá in 2017 stood out for its originality, a factor also maintained by the adaptation. With the necessary changes – because what works on one medium does not necessarily work for another – the series has been able to fit directly into the best of Netflix. Starring sui generis, music, and visual effects have made Steve Blackman’s hand a trademark. On June 22, the series returns to Netflix with ten new episodes, where we will see Umbrella’s counterpart, the Sparrow Academy. These are nothing more than a new lineup created by Reginald after the events of the second season. The protagonists’ actions have turned the timeline upside down, once again, and now they will have to pay the price.
Old acquaintances return, such as the eccentric and austere Reginald Hargreeves, Pogo, Grace, the Commission, and Lila Pitts. With the latter removed, now an integral part of the group, we will see the rest of the characters in a new guise. Time travel, superpowers, aliens, and mystical entities, The Umbrella Academy is all this and more. The focus of the tale remains on a dysfunctional family, broken by a difficult childhood and a toxic father. Each of the members must deal with the demons of the past, and those created over the seasons. Playing with time and space has consequences, and characters like Allison and Victor are the ones who paid the highest price. Sparrow Academy and Reginald’s variant will be just the tip of the iceberg this season, probing new narrative possibilities.
A lot of space is given to the evolution of Vanya in Victor, and it could not be otherwise to give coherence to the character after the transition of Eliot Page. The script leaves nothing to chance, to the mere suspension of disbelief. He slowly lays the foundations of the transition, alternating comic moments with other more serious ones. From this point of view, The Umbrella Academy once again demonstrates its maturity in addressing certain social issues. Unfortunately, not everything follows this logic, and the narration is lost several times in digressions and explanations that lengthen the soup, to say the least. What we feel is a certain dilation of events, alternating with an abundant dose of repetitiveness. Only the final episodes seem to break the loop, albeit through non-height choices of the series.
The Obsidian Hotel will be both the temporary home of the Umbrellas and the fulcrum of the story. A non-place, a space of intersection between space and time in which guests of all kinds are accepted: from hunters with a mustache to 80s rock stars. The Hotel is a sort of physical manifestation of the oddities of the protagonists, it indulges and punishes them like a parent. And this is where most of the events take place, causing an almost claustrophobic effect. From a certain point of view, the choice is more than apt, as the characters feel crushed by the new timeline. On the other hand, the fluidity of the story seems to be affected not a little. The third season of The Umbrella Academy is the exact opposite of the previous one, in which various locations and situations alternated. Here the various storylines cross each other, most of the time sharing the same space for action.
We are in front of a Cluedo, complete with a butler and a mysterious mansion. We are the passive players of a complex and convoluted game. Beyond this, each member of Umbrella finds his own space within the story, from Allison and Victor up to Klaus and Number 5. The eldest of the group reserves some evolution, but the characterization does not lead to anything new. Klaus also goes back on the same steps, to the same problems of the past, albeit with some new implications. Diego and Luther are ready for new and mammoth steps forward, and it will be interesting to see them in a new guise. A small note of demerit for the number 1 of the group, as from season to season he seems to become more and more a simpleton.
The Umbrella Academy Season 3 Review And Analysis
What is never lacking in the series is a soundtrack always on the piece and the characteristic musical scenes, which here cross the road with the musical. Another note of demerit goes to the Sparrow, simple specks, pedestrians ready to be sacrificed. Even the new Ben doesn’t seem to convince us and makes us regret the alternate ghost version of him. In our opinion, the second season remains a small masterpiece, charged as it was with adrenaline, comedy, and drama. The third tries to follow in its footsteps, but you end up going on another path, which is a real shame because the expectations this time were very high. Perhaps this is precisely why the disappointment is greater because we really would have expected more from Steve Blackman.
One thing is certain, The Umbrella Academy is still a great product, with fun plot twists and characters capable of capturing our hearts. The series is Netflix’s answer to Marvel’s superhero standard. Steve Blackman offers us another face of the heroes, a bit like DC’s Doom Patrol. In the same way, the series does not seem to bear the comparison with The Boys of the Prime house, although we are talking about diametrically opposite stories; Eric Kripke’s series is an explicit and violent social criticism. Summing up, the third season of The Umbrella Academy travels in the middle, does not reach the heights of the second but still manages to involve us in some scenes in which we can recognize the trademark of its creators. Should they confirm Season 4, we expect something new, fresh, and crazy like only Blackman can do.
There are the strangest characters (even… an energy cube?), but this Netflix series manages to give them the right spotlight without sacrificing the moments of glory of the protagonists. And this is achieved, to a large extent, by concentrating most of the action in one place, the Obsidian Hotel, where the heroes stay to go unnoticed. This is not only a resource to organize the story, but the hotel itself is, almost, almost, one more character with its history and secrets. This is possibly the season with the most fantastic and yes, apocalyptic elements of the entire series. A new form of world crisis appears here, and this time it has a bit to do with time paradoxes.
This leads to all the characters having to be on their guard for most of the season, which brings us to one of the successes of the season: this time, we do not have an action-packed start and several “filler” episodes with character context, something that weighed heavily on season 2. Now, we are presented with dosed moments of action throughout the entire series, but also subplots about the mysteries of the hotel or new characters that we better not reveal here, so that you can discover yourselves. In any case, you can use a refresher from the previous season to connect some dots. Although we are much more satisfied with the rhythm of this season, sometimes it indeed falls into certain subplots (mainly love) that, honestly, end up contributing little to the events.
In case you were wondering yes, Elliot Page’s statement as a transgender person “permeates” into the series so that his character (now called Viktor) has a certain echo of reality. And the truth is that he does it in a very beautiful and elegant way. Perhaps a little hasty so as not to steal too much time, but I’m sure the trans community will appreciate this representativeness. The truth is that all the members of the Umbrella Academy have a good weight in this season, although it shows that they have not known very well what to do with others, such as Pogo (who was much more interesting in the previous two seasons) or Grace.
Instead, the mysterious Sir Reginald is a more interesting character and with more presence than ever, something that shows for good in the individual interest of each episode. But yes, don’t doubt it: Aidan Gallagher’s Cinco is still the coolest of all. Surprisingly, this actor is barely 18 years old. The audiovisual section continues to be another of the strengths of The Umbrella Academy, with a great soundtrack, perhaps a little more topical. The visual effects are at a very good level, and we are going to see more moving powers than ever, mixed with some slow shots that deserve to be seen on a big TV. Still, some chroma key effects “sing” a bit when things get more intense, but the whole thing will catch your eyes.
In short, season 3 of The Umbrella Academy is a marked improvement over the second thanks to a very good set of characters and a much more balanced mix of action, mystery, drama, and humor (great Klaus, once again). Some key data will seem excessively convoluted to certain viewers, who still need to repeat some sections to find out everything, but nothing prevents us from taking a briefcase to travel with pleasure to the adventures of the Hargreeves. Will there be an of The Umbrella Academy Season 4? Of course, we wouldn’t mind. But we don’t know what to think with that ending. That ending…
The Umbrella Academy Season 3 Review: The Last Words
This two-year break has allowed the series to gain strength and propose a much more attractive and fun rhythm. It has a bump, but of course season 3 is much more balanced than the second. The greatest variety of powers and action scenes. How it makes us spin our heads with the “scientific” part. Some subplots go nowhere and perhaps a certain redundancy in the apocalyptic approach.
