Based on the Dark Horse comic book series by Gabriel Ba and Gerard Way, the show is about a group of kids who were all miraculously born to previously unpregnant women on the same day in 1983. Eccentric billionaire, Sir Reginald Hargeeves (Colm Feore), decided to adopt as many of these children as he could track down, and ended up with seven kids that he raised in his mansion. Each had a special power (except for Number Seven - though you can imagine this turns out to be an important fact later) and they were groomed to hone their skills and form an elite crime fighting crew. However, when you raise kids to be superheroes and only refer to them by their number than their actual names, you tend to sow a fair amount of discord and dysfunction. When the show opens, the kids are grown and have embraced alternative careers, apart from Luther/Number One (Tom Hopper), who by virtue of being Number One, was the only one who drank the Kool-Aid and embraced his “father’s” plan. In Episode 1, Hargreeves has died, and the gang return to the mansion for his funeral, as well as to investigate if there was foul play. At the same time, Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), who went missing when he was thirteen due to a miscalculated time jump, suddenly reappears and tells them the world is going to end in a week unless they can figure out the cause of the apocalypse. As superhero missions go, this one’s a doozy.
You’d think with that kind of pressure, things would move fast, but nope. The show has a LOT of backstory to get through regarding each of these characters and their relationships with one another. Number Five is also being chased by assassins from the future, and explaining exactly what happened to him when he traveled through time is a head-scratching feat indeed. There’s a ton of plot, a ton of exposition, and everything seems to move as slow as molasses - this was not an instance when my trigger finger was ready to hit Play Next at the conclusion of every episode.
The show is shot spectacularly and I cannot fault any of the production design. I haven’t read the comic books, but I must imagine that the writers are grateful that the world they created on paper was rendered so vividly on film. The soundtrack of this show is also excellent - there are a lot of random musical interludes in each episode that do nothing to propel the story forward but feature absolutely fantastic songs that you will instantly want to download. And all of the actors are doing great work, bringing fully realized characters to life and playing off each other in fun and silly ways that make all the sibling rivalry feel very real and compelling. It's no accident that Ellen Page is playing the timid and powerless Vanya/Number Seven - by the end of ten episodes, that character has gone through a major arc that requires the skill of a consummate actress.
The Umbrella Academy is probably a great show for devotees of the comic and for people who love masses of plot and character development. But if you’re looking for a zippy storyline with a compelling payoff, this will not satisfy. Indeed, I watched the entire season in the hopes that the conclusion would neatly tie up all the different elements and provide a satisfying finale. That did not happen. The end is a bit of a cop out, a promise of more seasons to come, and unless there’s nothing else on TV when that second season arrives, I might not make it. There’s a lot of TV out there, and this one, while beautifully produced, ultimately doesn't make the cut.
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