umbrella academy

by anna jane begley

If you’re scratching your head trying to recall the past three seasons of Steve Blackman’s Umbrella Academy don’t fret. Luther’s marriage and mission to the moon, Viktor’s destiny to destroy the planet, Allison’s betrayal of her family – these events are at best background info and at worst inconsequential.

This new series is essentially a repackage and resell the familiar ‘one member of our dysfunctional family is going to cause the apocalypse without meaning to and we have to stop them’ narrative, a line preferably delivered by Five (Aiden Gallagher) two episodes in.

We follow the Hargreeves siblings six years after they jumped into a yet another timeline, now without their powers, leading normal lives with regular jobs; most notably Diego (David Castañeda) and Lila (Ritu Ayra) who we see try and host a birthday party for their young daughter – cake, piñata, marital bickering and all.

But this is short lived: one shot of a strange glowing substance and hey presto they’ve got their powers back (albeit a tad different than before) so they can leave their boring human existence behind and go save the ominous Jennifer (Victoria Sawal). While doing so, they can also figure out how to stop ‘The Cleanse’ (see: apocalypse) and save the world.

On top of a new character however, we have multiple timelines, an alternate Reginald, Gene and Jean (a married couple who lead The Cleanse cult), a dealer who pimps out Klaus, and Reginald’s love interest Abigail who, lest we forget, was the reason Luther wasted half of his life on the moon watching over her body in the first season. She could prove to be Reginald’s Achilles’ heel, the one part of him that feels something close to love. But for a character that has been alluded to for so long, she is woefully underdeveloped in this season and used merely as a plot device.

Struggling to keep up? Me too. There is a subtle but important distinction between complex and complicated. One of the things that made the first season so gripping was the Royal Tenenbaum-esq family tension and trauma; how the horror of growing up around death without any familial love and the passing on of generational anguish can manifest itself in subtly different ways in adulthood. The plot itself was straightforward enough, but the intricacies of the characters – Klaus’ (Robert Sheehan) addictions to cope with his morbid power of seeing dead people; Luther’s body dysmorphia; Allison using her powers on her husband and daughter. These complexities were messy and dark and intriguing.

Now the characters that Blackman has taken three seasons to nurture are devoid of consistent personalities and serve only to further a convoluted plot peppered with gimmicks and unnecessary tangents – and that’s without mentioning Five and Lilla’s cringe-inducing love affair. Their chemistry as witty friends and time-hopping colleagues is brilliant; as lovers, they become soppy and irrational.

As for Klaus, the progression from addict to cult leader to stay-at-home uncle with OCD is a fascinating one. But again, in this season it’s irrelevant: once back to his necromantic ways, he’s right as rain. Dependency? What dependency?

The initial season of The Umbrella Academy was original and exciting but unfortunately, after all the hype, this season has become its boisterous and under-achieving brother.

For the drinks pairing, I want to focus on the morbidity that defined the series, the blurry and bloodied lines between childhood and adulthood. We see it mainly in Klaus; he’s the most childish of the group – air-headed, irresponsible, avoidant of adult responsibility. But he has the most disturbing power: to see and communicate with the dead, which brings its own mature set of responsibilities.

This dichotomy is also represented visually: from season one where we see the colourful big bear masks worn by assassins Hazel and Cha-Cha (remember them?) to season four where we see bodies shot and decapitated against the backdrop of a Christmas Wonderland.

The battle between the innocence of childhood and the darkness that eclipses the Hargeeves family’s lives is neatly captured in a Dark and Stormy: the saccharine-sweetness of fiery ginger beer balanced against the smoky, bitter undertones of dark rum, here replaced with Crossip Dandy Smoke – a non-alcoholic liquor reminiscent of barbecue smoke and cloves. Simply add 25ml to 200ml of ginger beer and add a squeeze of lime. Garnish with a twist of lime peel and you have a moreish mocktail that will probably go down better than the series’ ending.