The Umbrella Academy Season 1 Review

An Unexpectedly Entertaining Superhero Show

I finished watching, The Umbrella Academy the other night, and I must say by the end of it I was happy with how things turned out.

The story begins on a day in 1989 when 43 infants are all born at the same time. This wouldn't be out of the ordinary, except their mothers weren't pregnant at the beginning of the day. An eccentric billionaire, Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) adopts seven of these children. Six of them are gifted with extraordinary powers, number 1 Luther (Tom Hopper) is super strong, number 2 Diego (David Castañeda) who can throw knives with perfect accuracy, number 3 Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) who can convince people to do just about anything, number 4 Klaus (Robert Sheehan) who can talk to the dead, number 5 (Aidan Gallagher) who can teleport and time travel, number 6 Ben (Justin H. Min) who could sprout forth tentacles from his body but he died as a boy and only Klaus can see him, and then we come to number 7 Vanya (Ellen Page) who is absolutely ordinary. They have grown apart as adults, but when their father dies they are brought back together. Also number 5 has been missing since they were children, and then all of a sudden he comes back. Number 5 explains they have to stop the apocalypse from happening and they only have a few days to do this.

Phew! That was a long and drawn out explanation for the series, but it was necessary. It may take two or three episodes to get into, but once you do, oh man! The series progresses in exciting ways which you don't always see coming. The break down I just gave, that's the shortest I could put the plot. There's so many different things happening in this show it never really got boring.

The series started out as The Umbrella Academy comic book/graphic novel series. It was also created by Gerard Way. If that name rings familiar to you, then you might remember a certain band from the mid-2000s he was a part of called, My Chemical Romance.
You don't have to be a big comic book superhero fan to get into this show. It stands on it's own two legs and does a fairly well job. Granted like most things, it has some problems, but overall, it's pretty entertaining.
The vast majority of the actors in The Umbrella Academy are great. My favorites were probably, Ellen Page as Vanya, Robert Sheehan as Klaus, and Aidan Gallagher as number 5. There is a big cast in this show, but it's pretty easy to follow who is who, due to the fact that each character has such a distinct personalities. I will give a small applause to the entire cast, because they did good in the end and there wasn't really any stand out bad performances.
The Umbrella Academy is actually a pretty good and fun show. What happens to the characters feels natural, even in the weirdest of circumstances. Trust me though, some things get pretty darn weird in the show too. If you have Netflix and you want to watch something fun, then I would recommend checking out, The Umbrella Academy.



final score: 4/5