Umbrella Academy Season 4 Falls Short

The Umbrella Academy season 4 received a rotten tomatoes rating of 58%, the lowest of any of its seasons.

  Netflix’s Umbrella Academy recently released its fourth and final season of the show which premiered August 8th. The show diverged from its original ten episodes per season to only six, which each span about an hour long. 

  The primary plotline of the show followed yet another overdone and bland multiverse. Last season had already done a rendition of this, in which we met a different version of the Umbrella Academy. This season faced a lot of criticism from longtime fans due to a specific plot line regarding two characters, Five and Lila. These characters were given a romantic plot line despite one of the characters being married and having three children, Lila. The other character, Five, is played by 19-year-old Aidan Gallagher who the writers felt was time for his character to have a love story despite the characters’ established inability to form stable relationships. 

   Many complaints have arisen from the show’s character growth, which was essentially nonexistent. The Umbrella Academy family which consists of seven siblings have grown as characters over the past three seasons. The characters this season felt as though they had been dumbed down just for the purpose of comedy. Luther and Diego were both changed from complicated, flawed individuals, by stripping them of their intelligence and reducing them to their appearances. Another fan-favorite character, Klaus, has been battling with addiction for the past three seasons and had gotten sober during the last one. Showrunners decided to abandon this growth and resort to a relapse just to further an unnecessary side plot. 

   This season fell victim to some misogynistic stereotypes in film. Both female characters Allison and Lila were villainized. Allison was berated for having a savior complex despite every character having some variation of the same complex. Lila cheated on her husband, Diego, with his own brother. Her character was twisted into a type of vixen instead of the compelling and independent character she was prior to this season. This season introduced a new female character, Jennifer, who followed the typical trope of falling in love with one of the male characters from the main cast. Many questions about her background and purpose were left unanswered by the finale. 

   The former flare from the past season’s cinematography was sorely lacking in this one. Missing were any visually compelling scenes, save for a few shots here and there. Creative fight scenes were swapped for bland displays of new powers coupled with corny one-liners. Each season before this had an amazing combination of music and fight sequences, both of which were traded out for them to play the same song over and over. This season disappointed fans and sacrificed complex character development for the sake of a weak punchline.