Okay, to be fair, I love adventure fiction. I am a fan of all movies and shows from Marvel and DC. I love the Transformer series—seriously, who doesn’t love Bumblebee? So, when I saw the trailer for The Umbrella Academy on Netflix I was thrilled to watch the show. When the show came out on February 15th I finished the entire season, consisting of 10 episodes, in a day.
The show begins with a flashback that tells us how Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) acquires seven babies whom, he believes, have special powers. He brings those seven babies to his home and raises them as a team of superheroes under the name “The Umbrella Academy.”
I use “bring them up” in a very loose sense and you will see why soon. The actual story picks up after the death of Sir Hargreeves, when the OG Umbrella Academy reunite to pay their respects to their father and end up facing something that changes all of their lives.
*Disclaimer: Minor spoilers ahead*
Following are the main characters of the show, the seven Hargreeves children:
1. Number One, a.k.a. Luther (Tom Hopper)
The golden boy. He follows all the orders his dad, Sir Reginald, gives without question. At the beginning of the show, Luther is shown living on the moon, as part of the mission from his father. Saddened and feeling disowned by his siblings, the weight of his emotions are clear on his face, however, his loyalty and respect for his father are unmovable. He is a darling at heart but is set in his ways and often gets hated on by his siblings because of that. His power is his super strength—he can chuck people into the sky like nobody’s business.
2. Number Two, a.k.a. Diego (David Castañeda)
Diego is kind of the good rebel of the family. He doesn’t shy away from publicly hating his father for all that he did to him and his siblings. He is an emotional guy though, one who would cry in his room because someone hugged him and said thank you after he helped them. He could melt your heart in a second—and he does when the show explores his relationship with his mother, Grace Hargreeves (Jordan Claire Robbins). Diego is the vigilante of the town, using his training to catch criminals when the police department cannot. His specialty is that he can curve anything accurately, especially knives, which are his weapon of choice.
3. Number Three, a.k.a. Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman)
One of the only two ladies in a family of seven children, Allison is beauty and grace exemplified. Allison is a career actress and the most confident of the Hargreeves children. This is not surprising considering her specialty is making people do what she wants them to do. She is the only member of the team who has a family outside of the Hargreeves. Throughout the show, however, I could not stop gawking at her because her wardrobe was always on point, as were her remarks. She is the embodiment of the phrase “Yas, Queen!” throughout the show.
4. Number Four, a.k.a. Klaus (Robert Sheehan)
I am going to come right out and say this: KLAUS IS A PRECIOUS CHILD AND HE MUST BE PROTECTED. A drug addict, Klaus is rarely shown to be sober in the entire show but you soon find out why it is so. At the beginning of the show, he is shown leaving a hospital after being treated for drug use, promising to not use again and immediately trading his things for money for more drugs. I am not going to tell you his powers because that would ruin his story and I wouldn’t want to do that to you.
5. Number Five, a.k.a. Number Five (Aidan Gallagher)
Number Five is the only child in the show, at least physically. Lost for several years, Five makes a rather dramatic entrance on the day of Sir Hargreeves funeral service. Five is a surprise package of the series and we learn a lot about him as the show progresses. Even as a kid he was the coolest, most suave person and he maintains this personality throughout the show. However, he has kept a few secrets for his own, some of which might change the face of Earth. He is a surprise package which I will leave it for you to unwrap.
6. Number Six, a.k.a. Ben (Justin H. Min)
Ben is lovely. He is a cinnamon roll. He is warm and cozy. And he is dead. The show begins at a point where Ben has been dead for some time. All the Hargreeves children miss him but Klaus misses him the most. He does appear in some episodes of the show and it breaks your heart a little almost every time but in a hilarious kind of way. I will leave it up to you to figure out his specialty, it’s just more fun that way.
7. Number seven, a.k.a. Vanya (Ellen Page)
The other lady in the Umbrella Academy team—although not quite. Vanya is a violinist in the city choir. She also teaches violin to children to make ends meet. She is the only Hargreeves baby who is shown to have no powers. She is always ignored and isolated by her siblings, and as a result, is sad for most of the show. Out of hatred, Vanya publishes a book about the reality of The Umbrella Academy and gets a lot of hate from her siblings for it. Angered because of the continuous ignorance from her siblings, Vanya spends most of her time at first trying to please them and then staying away from them after getting a really supportive boyfriend. Her story is the most heartbreaking of all the Hargreeves children and you cannot help but feel like reaching into the screen, wrapping her in a blanket burrito and feeding her soup and hot chocolate for all eternity.
The show also boasts some amazing side characters and antagonists who are a close to perfect blend of hilarious, surprising and villainous. Grace and Pogo (Adam Godley), the only other residents of the Hargreeves’ mansion are unique in their own manner. They are the ones who loved the seven children when Sir Reginald was unable to do so, keeping them as sane.
One thing the directors of this show portrayed really well is the main pair of antagonists. The villains of the show have a tragic backstory and you do end up understanding why they did what they did but you still hate them—which is very rare and hard to portray, but the actors do a pretty good job of displaying these emotions throughout the series. I can assure you that at some point in the series you will go…
All in all, The Umbrella Academy is a thoroughly enjoyable show and the cliffhanger ending leaves you yearning for more. Here’s to hoping that the Hargreeves will return soon. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy three blankets and lots of hot chocolate for my babies—Diego, Klaus and Vanya.
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