Umbrella
Academy Season Two 5/10
Full
of spoilers. Last week I finished season two of The Umbrella Academy.
In case anyone forgot this series is about a group of seven adopted
children born from women who were suddenly pregnant and their
children had super powers and were adopted by a guy who wanted to
make a team to protect the planet. They are all fuck ups in their own
special way and very dysfunctional. At the end of the first season
(click here to check out my review of that) they end up jumping into
a portal to time travel after one of the members of the team blows
the moon up an a chunk of it hits the Earth. There is also a talking
chimp.
While
I enjoyed this second season, particularly the first episode, there
were a lot of characters that just dragged this show into place that
bore me or annoyed the hell out of me. The story becomes about
stopping the assassination of JFK, a nuclear attack, meeting their
dad in the past, and heading back to the future. All the team members
land at different points in the early 60's in the same alley. I can
not write this the way I normally do reviews since this involves a
lot of time travel so I'm just gonna write things that I thought were
good, okay, and ugly.
The
Good Stuff
Five
This
character is by far the most interesting one to me. Five is the time
jumper and sees that even though they have gone back to the early
1960's that they end up causing the end of the world once again. He
is trying to gather the team back together to stop the apocalypse but
discovers that they are all either busy or have given up. The kid who
plays Five is incredibly good. Hazel, one of the killers from season
one that fell in love with the donut lady, appears older and is
killed after giving Five important information. As best as he tries
he can not wrangle his family together and makes a deal to get
another suitcase to time travel. See, he gets one the first time and
they can't get there in the time limit so he travels to another time
and murders a boardroom full of Commission members including one with
a fishbowl head. I'll get to that later. Meeting his older self made
me crack up laughing because though Five appears younger he brags
about being fourteen days older than the one that appears older. It's
nuts. Again, most interesting character and one of the best assassins
in the world.
Klaus
If you
don't like this guy something is wrong with you. He arrives in the
past with Ben and through flashbacks we are shown that he meets an
older woman, lives in a mansion, and has Ben help him do tricks like
float. This of course leads to Klaus starting a sex cult called
Destiny's Children. He also uses popular song lyrics as quotes to
sound enlightened. He goes through so much emotionally in this
getting to meet the man he fell in love with during his trip to
Vietnam before he enlists and accidentally causing him to enlist
earlier than planned. He ends up drinking again and is guilted by Ben
into stopping the cult again but ends up reigniting their passion.
Klaus allows Ben to inhabit his body which was one of the nicest
little scenes in this. Somehow Klaus is the one out of all the
siblings to bring the most humanity to any of the characters. And
holy crap, there is a scene during the first episode where he learns
how to use his powers where he can control an army of ghosts.
Ben
I like
Ben. I liked his character in the first season and got to see him
even more in this one. When he takes over Klaus' body and gets to eat
fruit and play in dirt for the first time in years. He first learns
he can use Klaus' body when he gets mad at dives into him. We also
find out that he is a virgin. At the end of the season we find out he
is the new leader of the academy. It's confusing. If there was a show
that had just Ben and Klaus during the cult period I would not be
upset about it. He ended up stopping Vanya from starting another end
of the world and revealed that when Klaus brought him back as a ghost
shortly after his death that it was not Klaus' fault and that he was
afraid of going into the light.
Weird
Shit
One of
the best things about this show is the weird shit. Not the time
travel. Not the talking chimp. Just weird shit that is shown and just
accepted like The Commission that controls time and makes sure things
happen as they should. The thing leading this team is named AJ and it
is a fish in a bulb that smokes. It makes no sense but in the context
of this strange ass show it is perfect. He ends up getting eaten
alive which sucked because I wanted to know and see more of this
strange ass thing.
The
Okay Stuff
Lila
And The Handler
The
Handler turns out not to be dead after being shot in the head and
recovers thinking she is gonna get her old job back but is replaced
and has to sit at the same desk Five once occupied. She forms a plan
to take over The Commission once again with the help of her daughter
Lila. Lila was taken by The Handler after they were killed by Five.
Lila doesn't remember any of this but learns that at least Five was
the one who shot them. She is a skilled fighter who met Diego in an
asylum. We later learn that she was one of the special children given
powers that Hargreeves wasn't able to purchase. She has the ability
to copy other powers which makes her incredibly OP. I enjoyed The
Handler's outfits but her character seemed to paint herself into
corners when she could have easily finished things off. Lila started
off interesting until her actual past was revealed and you find out
she was just being very used the entire time. They did drop subtle
hints of her ability such as her becoming a great fighter around
Diego (who gets his ass kicked a lot) and teleporting when hiding
from Five.
Hargreeves
In a
review I saw after this I completely forgot about a scene from the
first season that showed Hargreeves on another planet with a wife and
violin. Like, completely forgot that shit. Otherwise I would not have
been surprised when he removed his head and was an alien. It is
implied that he is the one that shoots Kennedy which is weird because
we know that Five did it previously and is setting up to do it this
time but they are still using Lee Harvey Oswald's involvement. It was
confusing. Hargreeves kicks ass and beats and stabs Diego. He has a
baby version of Pogo. It turns out Mom the robot was once a human
that Hargreeves dated. He meets the kids as adults and instead of
being impressed he sees they are all fuck ups and how he hates
children so why would he ever adopt them. I enjoyed seeing him and
Five together talking when he realizes that even though he appears to
be a child that he is the most rational one out of all the kids.
The
Swedes
This
season has these three Swedish dudes as the assassins. I liked them
for what they were but they were not as interesting as Hazel and
Cha-Cha were. They don't even really talk so there wasn't much
character development with them.
The
Ugly Stuff
Luther
Luther
is a fucking idiot. He landed alone, started working with a mobster,
fights in underground clubs, and when he sees Vanya his first thought
is to find and kill her. Let us forget that he was complicit in her
fucked up mind. Forget the fact that he still harbors feelings for
his sister Allison. He is so up in his feelings that even when Five
tells him what they need to do he says he doesn't want to help. Then
he does. Then he wants to see their father. The same one that put his
monkey ass on the moon for years just so he didn't have to look at
him. And he makes so many stupid decisions during the season I
wondered if he was suffering from brain damage. He didn't learn shit
the entire season.
Diego
This
guy went from being one of the coolest characters to an actual
character of himself somehow. He is in an asylum with Lila and they
escape. He is obsessed with stopping the JFK assassination. If the
previous season had pointed to some weird obsession he had for all
things JFK I would get this. But out of nowhere the way this was
shown felt odd. He gets his ass kicked by his dad. By the Swedes. He
gets tricked by Lila and recruited to join The Commission. All the
work he does means shit. Like, it meant nothing. Oh, and he can bend
bullets now. That is the only good thing that came out of that movie
Wanted. The term “bending bullets.” He is the most unlikable
person on the team but also the loudest and most gung-ho. He wants to
rush into fights he will lose! Oh, and don't forget that he's already
moved on from that cop that was killed in the first season.
Allison
When I
saw the year she appeared in the first thing I said was “Oh, no...”
I have said for years if you are Black anything before the 70's is
iffy as fuck. She lands in the alley and rushes into a restaurant and
they stare at her like she is crazy and then point to the sign saying
no Black folk can be in there. She is chased and runs into a salon.
Fast forward a year or so later and she is married to a civil rights
activist, had her voice back, and the hairstyle of a Supreme. She
uses her power a few times and ends up abusing it the same way she
did to make her daughter go to sleep because she didn't want to tell
anymore bedtime stories and her husband left her. She is now with
that guy Ray who she eventually has to explain herself to. Luther
still has a thing for her and she has one for him. Just fuck already!
So throughout this season she is happily married until shit gets
crazy and only twice does she think “Oh, right. I have a daughter
that died when we caused the end of the world in 2019!” There is
nothing actually likable about her character when I sat and thought
about it. She is a villain.
Vanya
Fucking
Vanya, man. So she lands in the street, gets hit by a car, and has no
memory of her name or where she is from. She stays with this family
of a miserable wife, horrible husband, and a child with special
needs. She helps take care of the boy while she tries to piece her
life together. When she meets her siblings they are either afraid of
her or want to kill her. Klaus straight up tells her she lost her
shit and blew up the moon. She learns to control her powers better.
She also saves the little boy and somehow gives him powers. She and
the mother start making out because...I don't even fucking know other
than the fact that the actress playing Vanya is lesbian in real life.
In the first season she dated a psychopathic dude. She wants the
mother and son to come with her to the future. She is arrested after
trying to escape with them. She is then tortured as a suspected
Russian spy. This makes her get her memory back and she is about to
blow up the world until Ben stops her. I hated her entire story. I
didn't care about her or that wife or the kid. At all. I didn't give
a damn.
Overall
this season had more good and okay than bad. Its just that the bad
was really bad and annoying. I know that this is all time travel
based but it got to the point where it was fucking with the future so
much that it would be better if these characters just let shit
happen. No one really learned anything other than that they are far
more fucked up together than apart. Realistically the only person
that should want to go to the future is Allison because she can
“rumor” anything she wants out of life. No one else has anything
good waiting for them. Oh, and when they do return to the future they
are replaced by a new team with a new name. I may have to skip
another season if they make one.
Ellen
Page as Vanya Hargreeves/Number Seven
Tom
Hopper as Luther Hargreeves/Number One
David
Castañeda as Diego Hargreeves/Number Two
Emmy
Raver-Lampman as Allison Hargreeves/Number Three
Robert
Sheehan as Klaus Hargreeves/Number Four
Aidan
Gallagher as Five Hargreeves/Number Five
Justin
H. Min as Ben Hargreeves/Number Six
Colm
Feore as Sir Reginald Hargreeves
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