‘The Umbrella Academy deserved a better ending’

After years of saving the world from apocalypses The Umbrella Academy have hung up their capes, so to speak, now the Netflix series has reached the end of the road.

The series is one of the streamer's best loved shows, but unfortunately the final season does the Hargreeves family little justice. Set six years after we last saw them, the story finds the siblings still without their powers and trying to make do until they suddenly get them back and the world is threatened again by one of their own, and they must do whatever they can to save the day.

So far so familiar, and you would think it would work the same way all the previous seasons have done but it doesn't take long for things to go wrong. Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Umbrella Academy's final season.

As a fan of The Umbrella Academy since the beginning, since Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá's first ever issue in fact, I've always had a soft spot for the Hargreeves family. Yes, they're dysfunctional with a capital D but that's what makes them loveable, and the Netflix show's cast brought them to life in incredible ways.

They highlighted the beauty of their familial relationships and the emotional toil that their characters experienced as they fought time and again to save the world. I could forgive the Netflix show some of its flaws because of them, but season 4 gives the actors so little to work with it's impossible to do so this time around.

Read more: The Umbrella Academy ending is 'exactly what it needs to be', cast says

This season's apocalypse centres on Ben (Justin H Min) whose power starts to become unstable after he meets Jennifer (Victoria Sawal). Fans have been curious why the Hargreeves family's original Ben died before the events of season one because of the "Jennifer incident" well now they know — Ben was killed because when he meets Jennifer they trigger an event known as The Cleanse.

In theory this idea should work but in practice it is a convoluted mess that makes little sense, and with only six episodes to work with rather than the usual ten the final season feels simultaneously rushed, dull, and aimless.

The Umbrella Academy's final season has a similar problem to what Game of Thrones had when it came to an end, the writers are working without any source material. Way and Gabriel Bá's comic book series only has three volumes so far, with the most recent story in the Hotel Oblivion arc being covered in season 3.

Now the Netflix show writers have free reign they unfortunately showed —just like with Game of Thrones— that it's not easy to close out a story without some guidance from the source material. And like the HBO series it feels like they chose the worst narrative arc to do so.

You'd think with less episodes the story would eschew meandering storylines in favour of a succinct narrative that reaches a heartfelt final act, The Umbrella Academy's final season has no such qualms. While the family come together at the beginning they soon go their separate ways, pairing off or doing their own thing that have no bearing on the others — Klaus (Robert Sheehan), for example, becomes a medium just because.

Lila (Ritu Arya) and Five (Aidan Gallagher) share a romance that comes out of nowhere, and seems more a misjudgement than a swoonworthy interlude because it's used to create tension in Lila's marriage to Diego (David Castañeda) to little effect. Only Viktor's (Elliot Page) confrontation and reconciliation with Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) feels meaningful because of how empowering it is to his struggles since season one and his transition within the show.

Meanwhile Ben and Jennifer's storyline, which is essentially the beating heart of this season, is only explored at a surface level. Sawal doesn't get much to do so she becomes someone who is just there for the sake of it, and Ben's character arc doesn't nearly show enough of Min's acting talent.

As the episodes go on the more the story feels like a waste of time, after all their development over the previous three seasons it's like the characters are taking two steps back. The show covers old ground and quickly becomes repetitive, going around in circles to kill time rather than deliver a meaningful story.

The story then culminates in a CGI-heavy final act that looks cheap and comes across just as bad from a narrative perspective. Even the group's tragic final sacrifice is more disappointing than emotional, the audience love the Hargreeves family so why would we want to live in a world where they no longer exist?

The characters deserved better, the actors deserved better, and ultimately the show's dedicated fanbase deserved better.

The Umbrella Academy is out on Netflix now.