The Umbrella Academy Season 2 is Out of Time and Right on Time

After a wait that seemed interminable (over a year!), Netflix’s X-Men like superhero show, The Umbrella Academy, makes a rather glorious return to screens everywhere on July 31st, 2020. Adapted from a comic book created by Gerald Way and Gabriel Bá, the first season of Umbrella Academy followed a dysfunctional family of superheroes as they struggled to work together and end the apocalypse. Ultimately their attempts were unsuccessful, and Season 2 picks up right where Season 1 ends, with Five ( Aidan Gallagher) transporting his brothers and sisters through time in an attempt to avoid the world-ending piece of moon rock hurtling towards the planet.

Unfortunately, Five’s time-travelling leaves a lot to be desired-his last attempt left him stuck in a nightmarish future and in the body of a child-and he winds up depositing his siblings in an alleyway behind a television store in 1960s Dallas. That doesn’t sound like too much of a problem until you realize that although they all land in the same place, they don’t all land in the same year. Five has managed to scatter his siblings between 1960 and 1963, and somehow this mistake changes the timeline enough so that a nuclear war is imminent. If Five doesn’t manage to get his siblings back together within a week, another apocalypse is nigh. 

Interestingly enough, the time displacement serves as a much-needed respite for all of our characters. Being separated from one another has managed to bridge the gaps between the siblings that were evident throughout much of last season. Without the codependent relationships they’d formed during their time at The Academy to lean on-and to blame for their problems; the Hargreeves find a way to survive during the months (or in some cases years) they’ve been alone. 

Klaus (Robert Sheehan) accidentally founds a cult called Destiny’s Children-using his ability to commune with the dead (primarily Ben) and catchphrases ripped straight from unreleased pop hits (“Don’t go chasing waterfalls,” sound familiar to anyone?). Luther (Tom Hopper), with his impressive strength, winds up a prizefighter moonlighting as a nightclub bouncer. At the same time, Diego (David Castañeda) works his way into an insane asylum because his obsession with preventing the assassination of JFK leads him to stalk Lee Harvey Oswald. Each male character’s journey is fun, endearing and is largely responsible for the humorous aspects of the show in the first few episodes. Allison and Vanya, however, have the storylines that I found the most impactful.

Vanya, who was responsible for last season’s almost apocalypse (almost murdering her siblings and using her sonic abilities to explode the moon), stumbles out of that alleyway and right into the path of a moving vehicle. Her accident leaves her with total amnesia, but in the capable and caring hands of a family of three, one of whom is an autistic child. Vanya’s time with this family leads her into a romantic plotline that could once again be responsible for another apocalypse (falling in love with the wife of the farmer you’re staying with in the 60s might not be the best bet). Still, the moments where she is reunited with her family, and they begin to rebuild their trust are genuinely touching. Ellen Page does much better work this Season, simply because she is allowed to bring more than two emotions (anger and sadness) to Vanya, and the character quickly goes from being my least favourite to one I wouldn’t mind delving more into. 

Allison’s (Emmy Raver-Lampman) storyline is, without a doubt, my favourite. ‪Usually, stories that feature time travelling Black & other non-Black PoC gloss over their experiences with racism (if they mention it at all).‬ Umbrella Academy makes a bold step to not just explore what the 1960s would look like for a Black woman‬, but also to uncover what actions she might have taken to fight back against the overt racism and police brutality experienced during the Jim Crow Era. Allison’s story begins with her stumbling into an all-White diner, rendered mute (a condition which she deals with for a year) by Vanya and wearing black leather. She exits and finds herself being chased by a group of white men. Shelter appears in the form of a beauty salon for Black women, and it is also here that Allison meets people who will become hugely significant to her life.  

Allison slowly becomes involved in the Civil Rights movement, including participating in a sit-in in the very same restaurant she first ran into. If the scenes we see during the sit-in seem strikingly familiar to the audience, it should be because the sit-in (and it’s aftermath) mirror almost eerily current and ongoing Black Lives Matter protests happening across the United States daily today. Steve Blackman’s (showrunner, Umbrella Academy) decision to take an honest look into the past and show its horrors to his watchers might have seemed prophetic. Still, one must remember that the struggles that Allison faces during her time in Dallas never stopped; they were only hidden better. 

The scattering of the siblings did an excellent job of developing their characters (answering audience pleas to move beyond the quickly becoming stale recurrence of familial drama as the only plot motivator in Season 1).  As a result, however, the supporting characters suffer. Hazel (Cameron Britton) and Cha-Cha (Mary J. Blige) have been replaced and not in the right way. Each villain seems weak and perhaps even dull, and maybe that’s purposefully done because this allows for the Hargreeves siblings to confront their real enemy: Sir. Reginald Hargreeves. Although his death is what reunites the siblings in Season 1, he is alive and well in 1960s Dallas, and each sibling is allowed to meet with him in some way or another. It turns out that, even though he does not know the siblings yet-he is still just as capable of diminishing them as he always has been. Fortunately-instead of breaking the siblings’ shared bonds, his presence this season seems to reinforce them. 

Overall, the sophomore season of The Umbrella Academy is a surprisingly better version of the show we watched last year. It did exactly what it should have, building on the foundation already laid, evolving things that were poorly received and crafting a season that is entertaining, evocative and enjoyable all at once. It’s exactly the type of show that I needed during this pandemic, and I hope others find enjoyment in it as well. 

All ten episodes of The Umbrella Academy: Season 2 will be available to stream on Netflix on July 31st.