The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Review: Netflix's Biggest Superhero Drama Has Lost Its Zany Appeal

Returning for a shortened final season, offbeat superhero drama The Umbrella Academy has lost its edge. The needle-drop action scenes aren't hitting like they used to. The apocalyptic stakes are starting to feel repetitive. Rather than being appointment viewing for one of Netflix's biggest hits, this season is more for the dedicated fans, offering a definitive send-off without measuring up to previous highs. Meanwhile, showrunner Steve Blackman faces multiple accusations of "toxic, bullying, manipulative, and retaliatory behavior" behind the scenes, casting a shadow over the show's final act.

Premiering in 2019 — the peak of Hollywood's superhero craze — The Umbrella Academy started out as a subversive response to A-list franchises like the MCU. Trained as a gimmicky team of child heroes by their controlling father Reginald (Colm Feore), the Hargreeves siblings grew up to be dysfunctional, self-absorbed, and chaotic. Their superpowers invariably cause more harm than good, and they're terrible at staying on-mission. 

Caught in a cycle of petty feuds and fraught reunions, most Umbrella Academy storylines involve the team joining forces against a shared enemy, then instantly compounding the problem with their clashing personalities. Then they squabble and miscommunicate their way through a meandering series of self-created disasters, careening toward their latest cataclysmic finale. Think It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia meets X-Men.

This formula worked well in the first couple of seasons, paired with a stylized aesthetic that stood apart from other superhero dramas. Rather than being wedded to realism, The Umbrella Academy's world is peppered with quirky details like the Hargreeves kids being raised by a chimpanzee and a robot. This went hand in hand with a darkly absurd sense of humor, poking fun at the siblings' self-destructive idiosyncrasies. But after four seasons, those strengths are wearing thin. With weaker scripts and a downgrade in visual flair, Season 4 feels like a step back instead of forward. 

5.1

The Umbrella Academy

at Netflix

Like

• Aidan Gallagher continues to shine as the grumpy Five
• We get a satisfying conclusion to the Hargreeves family drama

Dislike

• There's a noticeable lack of energy and humor compared to previous seasons
• Not enough visual panache
• The writers seem to have run out of ideas for certain characters

After the events of Season 3, the team are now trapped in an alternate timeline without their superpowers. With no world-saving missions on the horizon, they've carved out mundane lives for themselves. [Slight spoilers ahead.] Ben (Justin H. Min, playing a grouchy alternate-universe version of his original character) is a criminal. Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Diego (David Castañeda), and his wife Lila (Ritu Arya) are frustrated suburban parents. No longer invulnerable, the hard-partying Klaus (Robert Sheehan) is now a paranoid hypochondriac. 

Obviously, things don't stay that way for long. The team soon regain their powers, embarking on a new quest with its own set of eccentric antagonists played by real-life married couple Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. 

As ever, the main cast receive a somewhat uneven distribution of subplots. While earlier seasons faced different issues (e.g. saddling female characters with miserable domestic storylines while the guys got to have fun), the main problem here is time. Six episodes isn't enough to give everyone their due, and some characters fare better than others. For instance, former team leader Luther (Tom Hopper) has been flanderized into a one-dimensional Disney Channel sitcom himbo. At the other end of the scale, the show doesn't really know what to do with the consistently downbeat Viktor (Elliot Page), who doesn't get much character development.

The writers also struggle with Diego and Lila's newfound role as parents. Allison always had a conflicted relationship with motherhood, but while her teenage daughter has a bigger role this season, Diego and Lila's kids are a narrative inconvenience, lacking personalities or emotional drives of their own. The good news is that with her kids largely offscreen, Lila gets one of the best arcs this season, unexpectedly paired up with Five (Aidan Gallagher).

An old man trapped in an adolescent body, Five has always been one of the most compelling characters — made all the more impressive by the fact that Gallagher started out as the lone child actor in an ensemble cast of adults. Five is the smartest of the bunch, continually frustrated by his siblings' inability to see reason or follow a coherent strategy. This time, there's an extra layer of pathos to his role, trying to take control of his life but getting sucked back into the family melodrama at every turn.

In some regards, this season isn't so very different from what came before. Fans may appreciate it as a welcome farewell, avoiding the all-too-common problem of Netflix canceling shows on a cliffhanger. That being said, earlier seasons did a better job of covering similar ideas.

At its heart, The Umbrella Academy is all about family trauma, exploring how the Hargreeves siblings' bizarre childhood shaped them into uniquely dysfunctional adults. Balancing out this rather dark central conceit, the show's tone leans into wacky comedy and cartoonish world-building. But in Season 4, that balance comes unstuck, and the show struggles to find the zippy humor that kept its convoluted storylines ticking along. It doesn't help that in 2024, The Umbrella Academy no longer feels like an exciting take on the superhero genre — especially now that multiverse storytelling is ubiquitous across Marvel and DC.

If anything, this season highlights the difficulty of maintaining the correct vibes in a vibes-based drama. All of the old ingredients are here — government conspiracies, villains with big personalities, likable actors confidently behaving like they're in two or three unrelated shows — but the energy levels are down. This just isn't attention-grabbing TV, and after six episodes you'll probably agree it's the right time to wrap things up.

Premieres: Thursday, Aug. 8 on Netflix
Who's in it: Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, Emmy Raver-Lampman, David Castañeda, Robert Sheehan, Aidan Gallagher, Ritu Arya
Who's behind it: Steve Blackman and Jesse McKeown (co-showrunners), Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá (comic book co-creators)
For fans of: Doom Patrol, Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Legion
How many episodes we watched: 6 of 6