THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY Season 2 Is Better Than Season 1

Heavy Spoilers is doing a Spoiler Free review and whilst I try and avoid these like the plague I just had to talk about The Umbrella Academy Season 2.

Somehow it’s actually better than the first season in every single way and I think that this is probably one of the best comic book adaptations that I’ve ever seen.

Now though this is a spoiler-free review in order to talk about things we have to well…talk about things so if you want to go in as blind as possible then bail out now. None of these things will ruin the show but they will give you an idea of what’s going on in it so yeah I don’t wanna see no crying because I told you about things that happen in the first episode.

The Umbrella Academy Season 2 Review

The season picks up immediately after the events of the first entry with the family traveling back through time to try and stop the apocalypse.

Number Five did warn everyone that going back in time was risky and it turns out that he was right as it scatters the group across the early sixties and one more leads to the apocalypse happening again, only this time much much earlier.

So, once more the group has to band together to stop it from happening and also decide whether they wanna give up the lives that they’ve build in the past.

Now the season is a loose adaptation of the second graphic novel in the series called Dallas but even if you have read that, the show still has some surprises in store.

Even though I’ve read most of the original works there were some thing I’d even forgot about that popped back up being big reveals that made me just want to keep binging this over and over. The season is 10 episodes long, roughly weighing in at 45 minutes apiece but even then, the pacing is incredible and they pack the run with so many interesting reveals that it’s difficult not to get swept up in it.

Because each character has been scattered throughout the time period, sometimes ranging from years apart in some cases, they have to sort of survive in the past and thus they build their own lives and these new opportunities allow us to discover what they characters would be like if they actually got a chance to be normal.

Diego And Allison

In the first season, I really felt that some kinda got swept to the side including Diego and Allison, however here we get to see what they would really have been like had they not had all the crazy things in their lives happen.

Now, these elements are in the trailer so I think I can talk about them but each character goes on a really interesting arc.

Diego goes fully off the deep end and is put in an asylum due to him trying to stop events in the past, he gets a fully fleshed out arc here and goes way beyond the sort of Batman parody that he was originally. Allison settles into her life initially being quite subservient before stepping up to the forefront of a civil right movement.

She kinda wrestles with whether to use her powers or not and arguably has what I’d say is the most human arc in the entire season.

Vanya also retreats from things and with the character that had the most complicated arc in the first season, they kinda build on what she actually wants in life rather than how she was sort of railroaded down a certain path like how she was in the first entry.

I think Ellen Page probably had a lot of influence on how her arc was handled but I think what they do with Vanya works really well and it actually makes a lot of sense in context with the first season. She was a character that didn’t really get to have a family the first time round and this time she’s sort of trying to do whatever she can to keep together the one that she creates in the past.

Luther becomes a fighter for a mob boss and Klaus a cult leader. The scenes that he gets are absolutely hilarious and not only that they have some amazing music to them too. Klaus and Ben have a sort of double act together where the former is making these outlandish statements and the latter is sort of winking at the audience as if to say look how stupid this all is which I think works really well.

Klaus is one of those unique characters that comes along once in a blue moon and there’s not really a bad scene with him in the entire season. He actually tries to write one of the wrongs from the first season and seeing the struggle that he goes through being unable to change anything whilst also being worshipped as a god by some is a really really good watch.

Number 5

Now, I have to say out of the bunch that 5 shines the most and I think most people will walk away from this entry with him being their favorite character. Aidan Gallagher who plays him has an extremely bright future ahead and he once more manages to capture the presence of an old man stuck in a young boy’s body to great effect.

5 is sort of the driving force of the season and whilst everyone gets their own arcs and lives, he’s the one who comes in to bring them all together. Also, he gets to do some of the goriest things in the series and I think by about the second episode you start to see him as the leader over Luther because he’s such a dynamic actor.

I think it just goes to show how good a show can be if the casting is correct which I feel is throughout this season from the core group to the additional characters which I’m not really allowed to talk about here.

Time travel storylines are some of my favorite things to watch and read and I think that they did an incredible job with what was here.

Every character feels serviced and because it’s set in the past they get to interact with a lot of key characters, not only from the shows history but from our history itself. This leads to a lot of cool little easter eggs that I think fans of the sixties will enjoy.

Fans of the 50s though should get the hell out of here.

Hargreeves

Now Hargreeves is back and though we learned very little about him in the first season, that’s completely changed here. Initially, all we were told was that he was an Olympic gold medalist, inventor, architect, and whatever other strings he had to his bow but here we get to see first hand how he must’ve accomplished these and how he may have had more sinister goings-on in the past. One day I would actually love to see a Hargreeves prequel show or something as he’s just that interesting.

The soundtrack is incredible too and whether it’s Golden Brown or a cover of Billie Eilish, the music is used to great effect to add a lot of weight to the action scenes and things on the screen.

The Bad Points

Now no show is perfect and I think where Season 2 is let down are in its villains. There are actually three Swedish triplets from the temps commission that are trying to erase the group from history and they’re mute for the most part, just showing up to cause some trouble whenever the show needs to ramp up the action a bit.

They do introduce new villains such as Carmichael, aka the talking goldfish and though he’s interesting to look at I think you will probably have the memory of a goldfish when you think about how much he brought to the season.

Sorry, that joke was atrocious.

On top of this, the finale is a bit sort of left field with what they do and personally I feel that they could’ve ended the season one episode earlier and not had this moment where they jump the shark…or rather Goldfish.

Sorry, again ruined it.

However they do pull it back around and tease more things for Season 3 which I’m definitely very excited for.

I’ve probably made that all sound worse than it really is as I was trying to create a balanced review and it’s the family that takes the main focus which is definitely how it should be as they’re the most interesting parts. In conclusion, all of them get really well developed arcs and feel fascinating to watch.

I really hope that Marvel are sat taking pointers from this for their inevitible X-men reboot as this is how the stories should be done. We don’t constantly see the powers being used all of the time and this is because the story of the group takes centre stage which in my opinion is how it should be.

You could quite easily strip the superhero elements out of this and still have a really interesting story which is a compliment to how well everything is developed and handled.

Umbrella Academy Season 2 Review Score

In summary, as I said earlier, this is better than the first season in every single way. The story is better, the characters get more to do, the acting works a lot better better better better.

Buy my butter.

Overall the season was an incredible ride from start to finish and I think that after this entry the Umbrella Academy will be cemented as one of not only the best series on Netflix, but one of the best comic book tv shows of all time.

It’s just that good.

Umbrella Academy was phenomenal and it gets a…