The Umbrella Academy used to be one of Netflix‘s greatest shows. Not only is the streamer’s high-profile comic book adaptation one of the few speculative fiction shows that didn’t get a premature axing after two seasons, but it also never dipped terribly hard into fan service (a fate that even Stranger Things, for all its merits, couldn’t avoid).
Unfortunately, now that the fourth and final season has made its bow, The Umbrella Academy has proven that maybe it should have ended earlier. Indeed, the swansong for this once-beloved series has manifested in an awkward, jarring mess that has seemingly convinced itself that an excess of quirkiness and shock is an acceptable stand-in for storytelling.
As such, the internet is ablaze with disappointment, with X serving up some stone-cold comparisons to the infamous Game of Thrones bookend while Reddit tries to process the trauma from this clumsy nosedive.
Based on Gerard Way’s comic book series of the same name, The Umbrella Academy premiered its first season back in 2019, garnering oodles of viewership numbers and eventually becoming the most-watched series of that year. Back then and throughout its second and arguably third seasons, the show established itself as the home of some of the finest superhero storytelling around, balancing levity, emotional weight, colorful genre stylings, and a lived-in urban aesthetic to fantastic effect.
But that was then, and this is now, and by all appearances, there are no alternate timelines to save The Umbrella Academy from this particular fate.
All four seasons of The Umbrella Academy are available to stream on Netflix.