‘The Umbrella Academy’ Season 4 Had a Drizzle of a Debut

The fourth and final season of Netflix’s high-profile comic-book series “The Umbrella Academy” had an underwhelming debut, failing to top Netflix’s Top 10 list in its first week of availability. To be clear it made the list at number 2, but it could not overcome the second week for “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.”

Both of the series tallied a rounded 8.4 million views last week, which is low — but not unheard of — for top-ranking Netflix shows. It was the number 3 English-language series that reminds us Netflix was a bit of an afterthought streamer over these past few weeks.

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“Simon Biles Rising: Season 1” ranked third for both of the past two weeks on Netflix, while Simone Biles herself was busy ranking first and second over on Peacock. The docuseries has spent four weeks on the Top 10, and even with the Olympics’ gymnastics competition in the rearview, it brought in another 3.7 million views. This week’s Top 10 (TV-English) also saw the arrival of “Love Is Blind: UK: Season 1” at number 4 and the 10th season of kids’ series “Gabby’s Dollhouse” at number 5.

The fourth season of “The Umbrella Academy,” Steve Blackman’s genre-mashup of a series that hit Netflix on August 8, racked up 47.5 million viewing hours last week. For comparison, Season 3 of “The Umbrella Academy” was watched for 124.5 million hours in its debut back in 2022. Netflix at the time did not track its series by total number of views, only total hours. It hit number 1 and spent five weeks on the Top 10, even bringing back the prior two seasons to the Top 10 list.

To be fair, those seasons had 10 episodes each compared to this season’s truncated six, which likely padded the overall hours for Season 3. However, none of the other three seasons returned to the Top 10 this time around.

“The Umbrella Academy” was renewed for a fourth season in August 2022. Blackman, who had left amid toxic-workplace accusations (he has denied them), returned to wrap things up. He is also involved with the development of an adaptation of the popular PlayStation video game “Horizon: Zero Dawn” for Netflix, so he’ll be staying with the streamer for some time.

While IndieWire enjoyed the finale of this truly wacky series, it has left other fans and critics cold, with a 59 percent Critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and a dismal 17 percent score from Audiences.

“The Umbrella Academy” is led by Elliot Page and also stars Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Robert Sheehan, Justin H. Min, and Aidan Gallagher.

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