Spoilers for all episodes of the Umbrella Academy Season 4 and profanity below.
What the actual fuck was that finale?? Was I watching the same thing directors looked at and went, “Yeah, this is cool!”
Those last two episodes were a total shit show. An absolutely horrendous finale to a wonderful TV show.
The first thing I am so fucking pissed about is how they’ve written Five in this season. They ruined him. They tore apart the aloof apocalypse-obsessed arsehole who loves his family, destroyed it, spat on it, and then danced on the grave before crushing it under an anvil.
In no fucking timeline whatsoever would Five and Lila be a thing. I understand where some people would come from to defend it — that yes, they were both isolated for seven years and could only find company in each other, distorting their relationship as they sought comfort which mistakenly and incorrectly transpired into ‘love’. No, it’s messed up. It’s so fucking messed up and creates unnecessary drama that the writers probably wanted since they were undeniably lacking in the finale. When I first saw the camera angles and shots they were getting prior to Year Five in the subway, I was naïvely thinking, “Surely not. Please don’t tell me this is where I think it’s going.” And lo and behold, I was right. And I’ve never hated to be right so much in my entire life.
Lila (WHO HAS THREE ADORABLE CHILDREN WITH DIEGO, BY THE WAY) has known Five for absolutely ages — since he was in the body of a thirteen-year-old child. Mentally, he’s however many decades older. Regarding the actors, Aidan and Ritu, themselves, there is a fifteen-year gap between them. But my point is, Five is not a home-wrecker. Five is the type of character who would not deliberately fuck around with his brother’s wife because he absolutely adores his family. It’s not in the nature that has been presented to us, and goes completely against his values — and for what? To serve exclusively as a shitty love triangle so that Diego and Five would fight in the finale and break up the family even more at the most crucial point for them?
Five is your textbook example of a pragmatist. He knows how to prioritise, and would certainly not decide that the time to fight Diego was when two of their siblings were badly injured and another had merged to bring about the Cleanse — a.k.a. end of the world, again.
I am so, so disappointed with this, especially as Five is the character I’ve had the strongest attachment to, ever. I think I’ve managed to disconnect S4 him from the first three (that fucking greasy rat’s nest hair of his has finally been given a beneficial purpose), but I’m still sick to my stomach.
Anyway, next thing: the episodes. I know we were told in advance about how there were only going to be six episodes, and we knew they had a lot to fit in to make it work.
It didn’t. It was executed very poorly. I understand some fans didn’t like the unnecessary subplots and fillers from the previous seasons, but S4 was a bit too rushed? I mean, they found and drank the marigold within the first episode. And floundered around at the end, not even bothering to stop the Cleanse until it had been aired on TV. I get they might’ve wanted to make the show more fast-paced, but it could’ve been handled differently. They didn’t have to do a ‘Stranger ThingsTM’ and make four goddamn films for a Part One. They just needed to properly iron out everything, and that didn’t happen, which is a massive shame.
The finale itself (not the erasing their identities, but from the moment Ben is shot) deserves some YouTuber to pick it apart with a four hour video until it’s dust. It was badly structured. Normally, you see a rather pleasant — not exactly linear, but in the concept we’re progressing positively — pattern as the episodes and plots build up to the finale. We see the family find out about an apocalypse, they fight and break off individually, then they slowly pair up, eventually coming together to save the world. This was not like that.
Instead, you had one sibling fucking around in a subway with his physically much older and mentally much younger sister-in-law, another that was hopelessly obsessed with a girl he just met (but no hate for him — no one exactly told him that being closer to Jennifer was just harming them both and the world), one germaphobe who, despite not taking drugs or drinking, is off looting money wherever he can find it and deciding that was the moment to pay off his debts??, three others doing fuck knows, and then the last one who actually gives a shit, teamed up with his hideous father, and tried to prevent him from killing Ben as long as possible because he knows what it’s like to end the world, and is therefore the only one who did anything useful. God, that was a long sentence, so I’m sorry for those of you who struggle with it.
The finale was not your Umbrella Academy finale. Once everyone had (I say this in the lightest way) been ‘brought together’, they had no bloody idea what to do. In the meantime, they’d disbanded about three times within the thirty minutes of screening because of petty fights and the drama I’ve already discussed. Five leaving them at the most essential moment (due to Lila and Diego, blah, blah, blah) was an error in his character. This old man has survived through apocalypses, the one who tries to round everyone up despite everything he has seen. Even with his doubts in the S3 finale, he was still there — and his doubts were shared enough that they created a majority. In this S4 finale, there was no majority. It was just Five, and Five alone. There were gaping holes and shredded pieces of the beautifully developed characters the show had done so well in portraying. They did this with Allison during that scene in S3, where they took her villain arc too far. There are so many flaws in this, and there is definitely many people out there who can communicate it better and more concisely, but here is my two pennies anyway.
I have a lot more thoughts, but I’m currently bone-tired. I might post another rant if I remember anything else — but don’t be too surprised if it’s Five x Lila related.
I am thankful and appreciative that the Umbrella Academy was one of the lucky shows that saw its way to the very end, but I think all of us are entitled to a little disappointment at its quality and execution as it was brought to a close.
