The first season of The Umbrella Academy on Netflix was an interesting exploration of the group’s individual and collective backstories. However, it crawled along at a snail’s pace. If not for being confined to the couch for a week with the flu last year when the show arrived on Netflix, I might not have stuck with it, but I’m glad I did. The characters themselves were believable and enjoyable, not an easy feat. The show definitely had potential.
The Umbrella Academy’s second season feels like a whole new show. The characters are the same (and the plot essentially), but there’s so much more to like in the Netflix sci-fi drama. The potentiality of the show is now fully realized. A strong narrative jumps right out of the gate within the first few minutes of Episode 1 and keeps moving through Episode 10.
In many ways, the second season is similar in scope to the first. Right away we learn that doomsday is coming. Not the doomsday of 2019 from Season 1, but a new (old?) apocalypse in 1963 — just days after JFK was assassinated. The Kennedy assassination itself is a central anchor for the plot. The group somehow created the conditions for a worldwide nuclear Armageddon by time-skipping to the past, and they are the only ones that can stop it.
UMBRELLA ACADEMY UNLEASHED
While Five (Aidan Gallagher) drives the narrative and group forward to thwarting the apocalypse, each member of the Umbrella Academy gets their own story. When Five time-travels the siblings into the past to escape the 2019 doomsday at the end of the first season, he teleports them to Dallas in 1963. However, they don’t all arrive at the same time.
Except for Five who drops in just before nuclear Armageddon, the others drop in over a period of years prior. Finding themselves untethered in the past, each member of the Umbrella Academy must find a way to life on their own. This is especially difficult for Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), who is black woman dropped into Texas during Jim Crow era segregation.
Vanya (Ellen Page) gets a much-needed do-over. She gets to redeem herself from her actions of Season 1, but more importantly, is redeemed by her siblings. They who work to erase the emotional and physical distance that their adoptive father Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) enforced which ultimately drove Vanya toward darkness.
FIRST-CLASS SECONDARY CHARACTERS
Season 1 had some solid secondary characters like Hazel. He shows up at the start of Episode 1 as an old man to save Five so that he, in turn, can stop doomsday (again). This season introduces new secondary characters who each support and interact with the members of the Umbrella Academy — in both good and bad ways.
Notably, the Swedes are a great addition to the second season. This interesting trio of assassins from the Commission are tasked with assassinating the Umbrella Academy team. The brothers are lethal and merciless, while at the same time being likeable for their familial eccentricities.
Season 2 of The Umbrella Academy is a satisfying time-travelling adventure, which is saying a lot because I hate the use of time travel as a plot device. However, showrunner Steve Blackman deftly employs time travel as a way to give both the characters and the narrative depth. In another showrunner’s hands, Season 2 could have devolved into an overly complex story. Yet, despite multiple intertwining story lines and nuanced development for about a dozen characters, Blackman and the production team delivers a meaningful story that hits all the good parts of a viewer’s brain.
The Warp Gate News crew is already pining for a third season. Netflix hasn’t announced if the show will be renewed, but with the stellar ratings and reviews of Season 2, we expect they’ll move quickly.
