'The Umbrella Academy' Recap, Season 4, Episode 1

The Umbrella Academy

The Unbearable Tragedy of Getting What You Want

Season 4 Episode 1

Editor’s Rating 2 stars **

Photo: Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix

It’s been more than two years since a new episode of The Umbrella Academy. While the “Previously on …” recap that kicks off the season-four premiere offers an essential refresher on where we left our heroes, it’s also a reminder that much of what happened in the show’s third season didn’t actually matter. All you really need to know is that the adult children of the Umbrella Academy have been dropped into an alternate timeline with two major differences: Their imperious adoptive father, Reginald Hargreeves, is apparently even more powerful, and all their superpowers are gone.

Once again, The Umbrella Academy has taken a season premiere as an excuse for a soft reboot. It’s not just that we’re in yet another alternate timeline; it’s that the show immediately leaps six years into the future from where season three ended. That means — for the third consecutive time — that we spend an entire premiere episode catching up on what each of our heroes has been doing in this brave new world.

The answer, now that everyone has been stripped of their superpowers, is … normie stuff. Luther is a stripper in a dingy dive bar. Allison is acting in detergent commercials. Klaus is a sober germaphobe. Viktor owns a bar (and has apparently broken the hearts of most of the eligible bachelorettes in Nova Scotia). Ben is just out of prison after serving time for running a crypto scam. Diego delivers packages while juggling the three (!) kids he has with Lila. And Five … well, Five is a deep-cover CIA agent, but that’s about as normie as it gets for him.

It’s always fun to catch up with some old friends, and as usual, The Umbrella Academy is at its best here when it just throws them in a room together — in this case, a children’s birthday party — and allows their wildly different personalities to ping-pong off each other. But for me, at least, all these resets have also introduced a kind of time-travel nihilism: If the world is constantly getting rebooted anyway, who cares if the Umbrella Academy saves it? At this point, what world would they even be saving?

The show’s answer comes in the form of a new group: the Keepers, which seems to exist somewhere between a support group and a cult. Led by Gene and Jean Thibodeau (Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally), this grassroots organization is united by its members’ belief in the Umbrella Effect (a cheeky riff on the Mandela Effect). Across the globe, people are coming together, united by shared, hazy memories that will sound awfully familiar to Umbrella Academy viewers. Hargreeves on the grassy knoll. A sex cult called Destiny’s Children. A gang of child superheroes in short pants.

That’s the real timeline — at least for our heroes. The Keepers seem to think returning to it will bring about either a great restoration or the end of the world, and Gene and Jean seem basically fine with either outcome. It’s this mission that has Five and Lila going undercover at a Keepers gathering as “Jerome” and “Nancy,” even if Five’s superiors at the CIA aren’t especially interested in this conspiracy.

But the conspiracy turns up on his doorstep anyway. Laundromat owner Sy Grossman (David Cross) kidnaps Viktor, prompting his siblings to mount a rescue mission that ends when Sy reveals he only wanted their attention. His daughter was a member of the Keepers who disappeared several months earlier. Based on the strange artifacts he found in her trunk — most notably, a newspaper article detailing an incident in which the Umbrella Academy kids saved the Eiffel Tower — he’s convinced they’re the only ones who can help find her.

How are they going to do that without any superpowers? It’s here, once again, that The Umbrella Academy is happy to pretty much instantly undo the cliffhanger it set up at the end of season three. The box of artifacts left behind by Sy Grossman’s daughter also includes a jar of “marigold” that, when drunk, will restore superpowers. The gang votes against using it, but they don’t count on Ben buying a round of shots and slipping each of them a dose. “See you on the other side, fuck-faces,” he smirks — and just like that, it’s a TV show about superheroes again.

• It’s worth noting that this final season, ostensibly a victory lap for The Umbrella Academy, also arrives with a large, dark cloud hanging overhead.In June, a lengthy Rolling Stone feature laid out a damning case against showrunner Steve Blackman, citing an HR complaint that alleged a “long history of toxic, bullying, manipulative, and retaliatory behavior” aimed at a variety of staffers. Blackman, who signed a development deal with Netflix worth a reported $50 million on the back of The Umbrella Academy’s success, called the allegations “completely false and outrageous.” You can read the feature here.

• Another sign that The Umbrella Academy might have undergone some creative retooling between seasons: The season-four premiere doesn’t even attempt to address the (already pretty inscrutable) mid-credits teaser from the season-three finale, which featured Ben reading a book on a subway in Seoul.

• Fan theory time: In previous seasons, The Umbrella Academy has dropped occasional vague references to a “Jennifer Incident.” Could the still-unrevealed true story behind that misadventure be connected to Sy Grossman’s daughter?

• The episode is set at Christmastime, and apparently for no real reason except an excuse to open the season with Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby.”

• Be careful what you wish for: Allison may have her long-lost daughter, Claire, back in this timeline, but their relationship seems to be strained at best.

• Diego spies Five and Lila together when she’s supposed to be at her “book club,” so we can probably expect a heated confrontation about the affair they’re not having within the next episode or two.

• Luther drops a quick reference to Sloane, the wife he lost when they departed the Hotel Oblivion, so the Sparrow Academy hasn’t been totally forgotten.

• One of the episode’s few poignant moments comes when Klaus attends the Keepers meeting. “I don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore. I feel like I can’t trust anybody,” he laments — and while he’s theoretically undercover and saying whatever he thinks they want to hear, that certainly sounds like how one might feel after skipping through so many parallel universes and possible futures.

• The various timeline artifacts double as Easter eggs for fans of the show, including Hazel’s dog mask from season one; Viktor’s autobiography, Extra-Ordinary: My Life As Number Seven; and a VHS copy of the second installment from Allison’s horrible-looking movie franchise, Love on Loan.

• The Eiffel Tower incident is a direct reference to the very first issue of the Umbrella Academy comic.

• “East Side piñatas are notorious for their difficulty.”

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