The Umbrella Academy Season 3 will debut on Netflix on June 22, 2022. Below is a spoiler-free review.
In some ways, the most unexpected thing The Umbrella Academy could’ve done was pull back on some of its trademark wackiness to tell a more intimate story of a family in crisis – as the world ends (again) in the background. Season 3 requires a tad bit of patience to see its vision through, but if you hang in there through a few slower initial episodes you’ll be rewarded with a moving portrait of a complicated and flawed family, bolstered by excellent performances and a good amount of Umbrella Academy-flavored fun.
This season opens in a very different place than Season 2 did (which isn’t a huge surprise, given that The Umbrella Academy also soft-reset itself after the first season); where the previous installment saw the Hargreeves separated, this one starts with them all together and confronting The Sparrow Academy, essentially the alternate-universe version of themselves that they accidentally created by messing with the timeline. Season 2 had fun bouncing across each sibling’s various storylines, but bringing them all together again allows for a more focused style of storytelling. Don’t get me wrong: I’m thoroughly enjoying Stranger Things Season 4’s ambitious, branching-narrative style, but it’s also refreshing to see a streaming series dare to go smaller and more disciplined (all the episodes are between 40 and 50 minutes), and for The Umbrella Academy, it’s a surprising change that works.
Still, it takes a little while for things to get cracking and lean into what this particular superhero series does best: delving into the nuanced relationships between the siblings. While the first episode is a ton of fun, playing with the dynamic between the Umbrellas and Sparrows in riotous fashion, the next couple slow down quite a bit as the characters try to figure out their current apocalypse and struggle with some growing pains of bringing the band back together. But give it time – or, more specifically, give it three episodes. Episode 4 is when we start cooking with gas, firing up some crazy twists and unfolding its vision for our traumatized and exhausted Hargreeves.
These familial relationships, and the character development for each individual Hargreeves, is where The Umbrella Academy has always shined, and it continues to do so more than ever in Season 3. No single member of the family is given the shaft, story-wise, and there’s not a weak link in the bunch in terms of performances. In particular, Luther, who in previous seasons has struck me as more annoying than endearing, is given something of a redemptive arc, and Tom Hopper’s performance makes the character a heck of a lot more likable in this batch of episodes.
Five (Aidan Gallagher), Diego (David Castañeda), and Klaus (Robert Sheehan) are given plenty of time to develop, too. Gallagher continues to deftly wear the exhaustion of an elderly time-traveler trapped in a teenager’s body, and Diego – once one of the show’s more underserved characters – gets a moving arc of his own. And even when Klaus’ storyline might seem a little too removed from the larger vision, it eventually pays off, and Sheehan plays him with such charm that it’s hard to be mad at the detours. But the real heart of the season is the relationship between Viktor (Elliot Page) and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman).
Season 3 is ultimately about the way families can fail us, no matter how much love and loyalty is there, and how hard it can be to repair relationships once trust is broken. It’s a theme that’s beautifully woven throughout, but especially between Viktor and Allison, and both Page and Raver-Lampman give heartbreaking performances. And, as previously revealed, Viktor does come out as transgender in this season, mirroring Page’s own real-life transition; we won’t spoil the details here, but trust that the way it’s handled is perfectly on-brand for The Umbrella Academy in the best way, ending up as just another layer in Viktor’s nuanced arc this season.
What it loses in wackiness, it gains in heart and the clarity of its message.
As for The Sparrow Academy characters, some of them end up a little thinly sketched and one dimensional, but they also make up for it with a lot of the action, and it’s never not fun to watch their powers up against the Umbrellas’. Unsurprisingly, the highlight of the crew is Justin H. Min, who gets to return as Ben thanks to the gang’s timey-wimey shenanigans. It quickly becomes clear that this Ben is a very different one than the one the Umbrellas know, though, and Min gets some dynamic scenes to play with that dawning realization.
That said, action and fight scenes do take a bit of a backseat this season, and I did find myself missing that – although the fights that we do get are just as great as the highlights of previous seasons. And credit to the production designers for making the limited (compared to the first two seasons, at least) locations still feel stylish and fresh, with some more excellent needle drops to boot.
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