The Umbrella Academy

The six-episode conclusion of The Umbrella Academy is a definite STREAM IT.

All these balls are juggled with lunatic enthusiasm. The tone can be all over the place: comedic one moment, bleak the next. However, The Umbrella Academy has real affection for its lovable weirdos (in contrast to The Boys, which invites you to hate all the characters). As the story builds to a moving final twist, it is revealed that the show’s true superpower is its humanity.

The Umbrella Academy Season 4 isn’t perfect, and it often feels constrained and narrow thanks to its shortened length. Still, it does right by its ragtag group of superheroes.

Most of the individual elements you want from The Umbrella Academy are still there, embedded somewhere in the six episodes - the family drama, the irreverent soundtrack, the brutal fight scenes, the shock twists, and, of course, the looming threat of the end of the world. But, as a whole, it feels muddled and incomplete, especially as we head towards the end.

After three amazing seasons, "The Umbrella Academy" has an enormous amount of goodwill from fans, but the show's final season is just too short to do them justice. That said, these characters are enormously fun to hang out with, and in the end, that's almost enough.

The first stretch of season 4 is not only great. It delivers some of the best episodes in the entire show. That only makes it more painful when the show returns to its old vices, splitting the party too thin and juggling too many side stories simultaneously. .... Calling The Umbrella Academy finale sloppy would be a compliment. While the season’s final events would be controversial in themselves, their lack of coherence adds insult to injury.

Cutting Season 4 down to six episodes should have resulted in much tighter plotting, Netflix bloat be damned, yet some aspects of this final chapter still feel rather drawn out, which all leads to an abrupt end that goes for the heartstrings but tugged on my patience instead.

The Umbrella Academy's finale manages to pull together most of the plot threads that have been left hanging over the seasons, but not all of the characters get the attention they deserve. And for a show that thrives on mess, the ending feels disappointingly neat.

When The Umbrella Academy first started in 2019, it felt genuinely fresh and conceptually exciting. Now it’s just another bullish superhero series that uses shock value to get attention.