Superhero Media: The Umbrella Academy - Season 2

Either I wasn't paying too close attention to the first season of The Umbrella Academy, or the programme got enough better in season two to become what is honestly one of the best superhero television productions ever. Fleeing the apocalypse after having rescued Vanya, Klaus, Luther, Diego, Ben, Allison and Number Five find themselves in 1963 Dallas, days before the assassination of JFK. Spread out over a few years, Five has to get the family back together, prevent another potential apocalypse and find a way for them all to get back to 2019. The series opens with a full-blown World War III happening days after the assassination, 1960s era Soviet soldiers fight their way down a Dallas street until they hit the Umbrella Academy at full force, in one the the best soldiers vs superheroes sequences since the first Captain America film. The action is lighter on and more "low-rent" in the rest series until the finale, but this draw-in moment, plus a perfectly-executed engagement curve, shows just how much care and intelligence have gone into The Umbrella Academy. 

There are problems with the series, like The Handler and The Commission not really being all that engaging a set of antagonists without Hazel and Cha-Cha to front them, though I do like the introduction of Lila and hope she plays a bigger role in future seasons. I've been watching the Fox X-Men films at around the same time I was working through this series, and it's amazing that ten episodes of The Umbrella Academy do more with their time-displaced setting than several whole feature films. Whilst in 1963, the Hargreeves family confront issues of systemic racism and segregation, engage with the free love movement and combat conservative attitudes against homosexuality. One of the best moments comes when Allison is trying to convince her husband to travel to 2019 with her and she has to confront how slow the march towards equality has been for African Americans. It's a humbling moment for anyone watching, which is too soon undercut by a drunken Klaus. Also, how good is it that Ellen Page gets to finally play a queer character? Been way too long. 

As I mentioned in my season one review, I couldn't get into The Umbrella Academy comics when they were handed to me by a friend years ago, and as much as I'm enjoying this series, I don't think I'll be picking them up anytime soon. For some reason, this version has resonated with me and I'll be sticking to it for a while, maybe I'll look at the comics again when the series is finished. If I wasn't snowed under with lots of films and programmes to watch, I'd be tempted to go back to the first season of The Umbrella Academy and see how I felt about it now, but that's unlikely to happen any time soon. At the time of writing (August 2020), Mantic is preparing a Kickstarter for a The Umbrella Academy board game, complete with 32mm miniatures, but as they're modeled on the comic version, I think I'll be giving them a miss for the moment. I'm not honestly sure that I need all of the Hargreeves siblings on my gaming table, as their powers aren't as interesting as the characters, but a version of the younger heroes in domino masks and school uniforms could be interesting. Great superhero roleplaying fodder in this series though.