I’ve seen a couple posts about how everyone was wildly out of character and totally inconsistent this season and I’m just like… were you guys paying attention?
Arguably the biggest shift in character between the two seasons, but it makes sense. Luther spent a year fending for himself and thinking his entire family was dead.
This is the first time in his life that he had to hold down a job and actually live on his own. It was literally his first time living out in the world among anyone other than his family, and you can see in his reactions with the other characters from that life (the boss, his landlord, those kids that idolize him, and the waitress) that it has really mellowed him out. It has allowed him to be more normal, despite being very much not normal. You can see the way he’s so much more comfortable in his skin. Literally the only times he looks uncomfortable is when he’s fighting people, shirt off and body on full display. He’s still not comfortable with that, but he’s not trying to hide under huge overcoats anymore. He has people in his life who accept him for being a little weird, but really do treat him normal.
So is he a little less uptight and mission focused? Yeah. Because he can finally see another life, and it’s the life that he honestly did want in season 1 but felt like he couldn’t have because he was number 1 and he had a responsibility to his dad, his family, and the academy to be the leader. Having a year on his own frees him of all that.
But he also spent all that time thinking his family was dead and feeling so guilty about it. You can see in his very first interaction with Vanya, where he suddenly feels that responsibility again. He brings a gun, not knowing what’s going to happen and, despite what he told Five, he absolutely does still have that lingering feeling of responsibility. But then he sees Vanya and she’s not a threat and everything he has been holding in for the last year comes out. Because he does feel guilty as hell for what he did to Vanya, but also for the fact that his actions pushed her into causing the apocalypse. He spent a year with the knowledge that he did that and thinking that his family was dead because of his actions.
He’s willing to listen now because he spent a year living in a world where his actions killed his whole family. And now he finds out that that didn’t happen and he has a second chance. Of course he’s going to take it!
In the first season, Diego finally admitted that he wanted to be close to his family and that he cared about them and wouldn’t leave them again. He confronted the guilt about leaving, which he had previously denied. He realized the difference between revenge and honoring someone’s memory. But despite all that, he never confronted the reason why he, a grown-ass-man, wandered around the city as a leather clad, mask wearing vigilante.
So when we see Diego show up in 1963, that’s still who he is. He wants to be that hero and he finds an answer for how to be that hero in the first several minutes that he’s there. So he takes it. I mean, what else is he going to do? His family is gone. Maybe they’ll show up again. Maybe this is it. Either way, he’s on his own like he was before, so he’s got a duty to be the hero he has chosen to be.
And then he meets his dad again. Everyone keeps telling him he has daddy issues, and they’re right. He absolutely has daddy issues. He’s still trying to simultaneously prove that he’s good enough for his dad, but also doesn’t need Daddy’s approval. Except he does need it. He still desperately craves it and he feels gutted when his dad denies him that approval, even falling back into the stutter he had as a kid.
Now, despite the way we joke, Diego is not dumb. He is so observant and he makes some of the most poignant statements about his siblings and the way they see the world. He sees the people around them and he understands them, but he has never been able to completely turn that gift inwards and see those same things in himself. In this season, Lila breaks through all that and he finally sees himself in her at the end.
“Do you know how hard it is to trust people when your whole childhood was bullshit manipulation? Then why would you do that to me?”
Diego sees himself in Lila, in her failure to break away from her mother despite the fact that he knows she wants to. In the final episode, he sees that she is just like the rest of the siblings, but she doesn’t have to be. None of them have to be stuck with their daddy issues, because they have each other. They can support and care for each other. It’s the last step of the growth he started in season 1, moving beyond his tendency to define his life and his family through their father.
Throughout season 1, Allison struggled with whether or not to use her powers, but it was all centered around getting back to her daughter. When she appears in 1961, that motivation is effectively removed. She thinks everyone else is dead. She thinks that she is stranded in the past and that she will never get back. She finds a group of people to support her and before long… she finds her voice again.
It’s no coincidence that Allison’s first spoken words in the series come right after she gives Ray that pamphlet with a bunch of added notes. She finds her voice in the civil rights movement. She finds her power there. She finds a way to help change the world, to change reality, and she does it without her powers.
This is something she struggled with through the entirety of season 1, feeling inadequate for using her powers to get what she wanted, not knowing if anything was real or earned. Now she has the chance to earn everything without those powers and she is thriving.
And then she is forced to use her powers again. It all turns out fine, but now she’s showing off and experiencing all over again how good it feels to have power. She spent two years in a world where she was denied equal treatment, where she could be arrested and assaulted for any reason those with more power came up with. And now she feels that power… She doesn’t have to wait for people to give her respect. She can demand it. But the pain is still there, and it’s not enough to just be respected, because these people have hurt her. They almost killed her husband. They have used their power to cause pain to her and all those who look like her time and time again and now it’s time to understand what it’s like to be powerless, to be hurt and to be unable to stop it and…
And it’s scary. It’s scary to have that much power, to see how you could become the kind of person who uses your power to hurt others. And she knows that her power has hurt people she loves and suddenly she’s right back where she started.
She doesn’t shy away from her powers in the final fight. She is obviously still finding that balance and I would expect this struggle to continue for her in future seasons. Power can be addicting and Allison’s power is so strong. She knows the danger there, but she also knows that sometimes it’s needed despite the danger.
Klaus is an addict. He finds obsessions to bury himself in to avoid dealing with reality. In season 1, he buried himself in drugs and booze. When he shows up in the 60′s, he finds a new drug to bury himself in: adoration.
Klaus is so impulsive and it’s not difficult to connect the dots of how one thing leads to another until suddenly everything is out of his control. Honestly, that’s the story of Klaus’s life, no matter where he goes. And then something changes. He gets tired of his cult and leaves. Except… that’s not really the reason.
After all this time, Dave is still the love of his life, and he knows he has an opportunity. He knows where Dave will be at this one time and he knows exactly what he has to change to keep Dave alive.
He also knows that Ben is going to have thoughts about this.
I know some people were disappointed that there wasn’t more Klaus and Ben bonding this season, but it makes sense that there is tension there. I think a lot of that tension comes from Ben’s circumstances, which I’ll discuss later, but Klaus is also not responding to that tension well.
They are fighting more than ever (not that they ever didn’t fight in season 1, where they spent much of their time being snarky to each other and Ben literally punching Klaus in the face for being an asshole), but the fighting is about something new this season. Ben wants his own life and Klaus is not in a position to give Ben what he really wants. We also learn that he has been carrying around this guilt for the last 17 years about forcing Ben to stick around as a ghost. He forced this half-life on his brother and now that it’s not enough for Ben, Klaus doesn’t want to deal with it. So he avoids and deflects and snarks and we see the toll on their relationship. We see it in the way he tries to deal with his plans around Dave entirely on his own. He focuses so much into that last ditch effort. He’s already in such a low place before this, so when that fails, we see him snap. We see him give up and crumble. And Ben falls back to his old role, trying to save Klaus from himself.
But the tension isn’t gone and Klaus’s guilt isn’t gone. We see it again when Klaus finally agrees to let Ben possess him. Klaus has always been afraid of his powers and being possessed is just as terrifying a thought as being surrounded by the dead. And yet he gives Ben that chance. It’s the last good thing he can do at that point.
I do wish we had gotten more closure for Klaus and Ben’s story. I think Vanya’s reveal could have been given a little more time, but that’s not really a problem with inconsistent characterization, so we’ll save that for another post.
OK, who would argue that Five was out of character or inconsistent? He’s obsessed with stopping the apocalypse, is willing to cross a lot of lines to save his family, and constantly frustrated by his family’s failure to go along with his plans. This is textbook Five.
What I loved about this season was that we got to see Five finally meeting his father again. They interact as two adults, not as a child trying to find away to become his own person, frustrated by a lack of trust from his father. It allows Reggie to see Five in a different light and to actually provide advice in a constructive way, something he has almost never been able to do when viewing them as his children. But despite outward appearances and despite the fact that Five is a grown man, he still sees his father the same way he always has. He doesn’t register Reggie’s advice as advice. He hears that he’s striving beyond his abilities and that maybe he can only travel in seconds. He hears his father telling him he can’t handle time travel. That’s why he doesn’t try to actually take the very good advice until the very end.
An old dog can still occasionally learn a new trick and Five proves that true.
As I mentioned earlier, Ben is chaffing at his ghosthood. Maybe it’s because Klaus has been sober enough to keep Ben around solidly for 3 years. Maybe it’s because Ben is no longer spending all his time trying to keep Klaus alive and sober. Or maybe it’s the fact that he has finally found someone that he actually wants to spend time with. Whatever the reason, Ben wants to be alive this season.
Again, as I mentioned, that’s causing some tension. Ben doesn’t want to be tied to Klaus, but Klaus is ignoring that because he feels so guilty about it. Ben doesn’t want to admit that he was too scared to go into the light on his own, so they’re at a bit of a standstill.
And then Ben gets the opportunity to be alive again, if only for a while. And in a lot of ways, it’s wonderful! But it’s not the same as being truly alive.
So when the time comes, when he’s faced with that light again… he’s not afraid. He knows that it’s time to move on. He knows this isn’t where he should be, but he also got the chance to be there for his family. He misses them, but he got to talk to Diego and Vanya. He got to save Vanya. He got to save Allison and Diego and Klaus and Luther and Five and the whole world! So while he would have stayed, he’s not sad about leaving anymore, and he’s not afraid.
OK, she was a little out of character because… you know. She had amnesia.
But aside from erasing her past, the amnesia allowed us to see Vanya without the anger and resentment that plagued her for all of season one. Vanya was always someone who was kind and loving, someone who cares enough to leave peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches out for a missing brother for years. Someone who knows the pain of not being seen and who will always take the time to truly see other people. She’s someone who wants to love and to be loved and to protect those she loves.
That was all here, with or without the memories. And as soon as the memories came back, so did the guilt and fear about what she had done, what she had become, terrified of what was inside her in a way that she was not when her powers first surfaced. But Ben is used to being afraid of what’s inside of him. He knows she’s not a monster and is the perfect person to explain that to her. And this time around, she has experienced the love and care and attention of her siblings (and Sissy) to back up those words. That’s how she finally accepts them as truth, how she finally accepts her power as a part of her.
Overall, there are things that I wish this season spent more time with, but there was nothing that I felt was out of character or wildly inconsistent. The characters still struggled with all the baggage from their shitty childhood, their fear of their powers, and the guilt in their past. Some struggled in new ways this season and some continued old struggles that had never fully been resolved. The season felt very different than the first, but it still felt like the Umbrella Academy. It was a good mix of new and old and a good mix of feel-good moments we have all been waiting for and frustrating and sad moments that just come with having a complicated family. I loved this season. And now, I’m going to go re-watch every episode.
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