I’ve seen a lot of negative takes on Five and Lila’s relationship - the age issue, what happened to her family, the fact that she’s Diego’s wife and more. There’s also the argument that Lila only used Five and that her feelings weren’t real. What’s your take on all of this?
I’ve seen all of these arguments so many times over the past year and a half that if I got a quarter every time, I’d already have a full piggy bank. I’m also pretty sure I’ve written about it before, but sure, let’s try to sum it all up in one post.
Age – I’m not going to go too deeply into the actors’ ages. They were both adults during filming. Large age gaps between actors aren’t that unusual anyway, it’s just that in this case the story itself made it far more noticeable.
(Which I find a bit funny when I later read comments from Aidan’s fans saying he’s their imaginary husband, so apparently he’s “old enough” when it comes to their personal preferences…)
The characters’ ages are a whole different matter. Five is an old man in a young body, and that would be an issue with any partner he might have. Unless she had gone through something similar to him. Sometimes I even think Lila could canonically be older than she seems, considering the time jumps and her work for the Commission. But that’s just a quick personal theory.
Lila’s parents – the real killer was The Handler, even if she didn’t pull the trigger herself, and I think Lila fully realized that after season 2. On top of that, Lila herself was a hired assassin, so she could easily see the whole situation from a very different perspective than most viewers.
If it had truly been that big of an issue for her, she probably wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with Five at all. She wouldn’t have been able to work with him, let alone maintain any kind of relationship with him, even a purely platonic one. The story would have treated it as a major conflict.
I’m not saying that excuses what happened or somehow erases it, but the moral framework of The Umbrella Academy can’t really be compared to how the real world works. And it’s far from the first story to include a complicated dynamic like that.
Diego – a lot of people like to ignore this, but Lila made it very clear to Diego beforehand that she wanted a break and needed time to figure out whether their relationship even had a future. The fact that their relationship was already standing on shaky ground was pretty obvious, and honestly it felt like their kids were the main thing keeping them together. Even Diego didn’t look particularly happy in that marriage.
(To be honest, I didn’t like the decision to give Lila and Diego three kids after the timeline shift and build their entire storyline around marital problems, but that’s another discussion.)
A lot of people say “Five would never do that to his brother.” But honestly, that argument feels absurd to me. It’s hard for anyone to judge someone like Five after everything he’s been through. Yes, he tried to do everything he could for his family, but let’s be honest… after six and a half years, I’d actually be far more surprised if things had remained purely platonic between them, especially when there had clearly been something there before that.
“Lila only used Five.” Used him for what, exactly? A lot of people interpreted her return as her going back to her old life, but from the very first scene after they returned it was obvious that would never really be possible. Honestly, I’m not thrilled with what the writers cooked up in the final episode, but at no point did I feel like Lila truly went back to Diego. For her children? Absolutely. For Diego? Not a chance.
Many people also take Lila’s line that it was “just survival” completely at face value. But think about how people behave in the heat of the moment. Have you ever been angry at someone and said something you later regretted? If not, I can understand why that scene didn’t make sense to you. Yes, Lila was hurt when she found out Five had hidden the notebook with the way home from her. But I don’t think that’s something they couldn’t have worked through later, if they’d actually been given the time to do so.
If Lila truly hadn’t wanted to be with Five, she never would have been with him and never would have let things go further than absolutely necessary. She was with him because she wanted to be. It’s really that simple.
And that mall scene? I still think Lila was just trying to end the conflict with Diego, and it ended up being a very clumsy plot device for creators to make Five disappear in the subway.
“Five didn’t deserve Lila.” I’ve seen that take too, again mostly tied to the fact that he didn’t tell her about the notebook. No, it wasn’t fair to her. But the fact that he was afraid of losing her is simply human. For the first time in decades he finally had a life where he was actually happy after so many years of suffering. I don’t think anyone can truly imagine what that must feel like.
I’m not trying to play their lawyer here… or maybe I am a little. But this is just my personal take. And to be fair, I’d be lying if I said there was nothing about the storyline that bothered me.
Last Episode - I do have one major criticism of the story myself: the idea that Five would sacrifice everyone - his family, Lila, and himself - for the sake of humanity without hesitation. Nothing in the entire show felt more out of character to me than those final minutes. He meets a few alternate versions of himself, disappears for a moment (or maybe it wasn’t just a moment for him, who knows), and suddenly it completely rewrites all of his principles.
Especially when the finale showed that they could somehow visualize the marigold outside their bodies, I don’t understand why the story didn’t go in the direction of them permanently losing their powers but surviving. I know the narrative had been moving toward something like that for a while, but the execution felt rushed, hastily created and honestly just bad.
The ending of the story is bad, it really is. But it’s definitely not because of Five and Lila. From the moment they returned, everything just became incredibly strange, and who knows how much the overall picture might have changed if all those deleted scenes had actually been left in.
I wish more people could see all the things about their relationship that were genuinely great and actually worked...
