STORM APPROACHING
‘Umbrella Academy’ schools surly superpowered siblings
Another day, another superhero series. Not quite. On Friday, just as DC Universe drops the premiere of its wild, weird “Doom Patrol,” Netflix presents “The Umbrella Academy,” an adaptation of an award-winning Dark Horse Comics title about another family of heroes.
But this series is “This Is Us A Million Little Brothers & Sisters” with a dash of the “Arrowverse” action and a style and humor all its own. It delivers a terrific cast toplined by Ellen Page (“X-Men: Days of Future Past”) and Tom Hopper (“Black Sails,” “Game of Thrones”), who dig into the psyches of their flawed superpowered protagonists.
On the same day in 1989, 43 women give birth across the globe.
Nothing unusual about that.
Except when these women started their day, they weren’t pregnant.
Intrigued, billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Boston native Colm Feore, “House of Cards”) sets out to collect as many of the children as he can. He adopts seven, raising them as part of the Umbrella Academy, nurturing their special talents.
“Together you will stand against the reign of evil,” he boasts.
In the present, his survivors return to the mansion after hearing of his death. They haven’t seen each other in years.
Vanya (Page) is a classical violinist, a woman so repressed she seems about ready to sink into the walls. She was the only one of the seven not to manifest powers and Reggie treated her abysmally, banning her from family pictures and outings, and reminding her that she was nothing. Page presents a woman holding back a lifetime of humiliation — and that dam could shatter.
Luthor (Hopper) possesses super strength. He’s spent years on the moon and now suspects their father’s death could have been murder — and that one of his siblings might be the killer. Hopper shades his strongman with kindness and decency.
Allison (Emmy RaverLampman) can twist reality with her words, but she longs to connect with her estranged daughter. Klaus (Robert Sheehan) is a drug user who can communicate with the dead. Diego (David Castaneda, “Switched at Birth”) haunts the streets like Batman and hurls knives with supernatural precision. Ben died years earlier. Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) disappeared more than 15 years ago. His return comes with a warning: The world ends in eight days.
Oh, he knows because he was there.
Can the siblings pull together when they can’t stand to be in the same room with one another? Complicating things: Two assassins, Cha-Cha (Mary J. Blige, suitably off-kilter) and Hazel (Cameron Britton), are closing in on them and racking up quite the collateral damage.
The story is a little too Dark Phoenix, and the series’ pacing can be maddening. But you have to love an action-packed finale that rips from a kid’s birthday party at a bowling alley (little Kenny is never getting over that one) to a concert hall on the cusp of the apocalypse.
The climax is an ending and a beginning. “The Umbrella Academy” is just getting started.