Netflix’s Umbrella Academy rains on the TV superhero status quo
As lead singer of rock band My Chemical Romance, Gerard Way enjoyed sold-out arenas and screaming teenage throngs, but nothing can compare to seeing his quirky comic-book clan come to life and dance to a Tiffany jam in Netflix’s “The Umbrella Academy” (streaming Friday).
“My wife had asked me what it was like, and it’s a mixture of excitement and strangeness and it’s very weird. Like, it never stops being surreal,” says Way, whose Dark Horse comic with artist Gabriel Ba has become the streaming service’s new must-binge superhero show.
But the usual do-gooder tropes get blown up, doomsday style, in the 10-episode first season of “Umbrella,” which executive producer Steve Blackman (“Fargo”) describes as “a dysfunctional family show with a body count.” He wanted something subversive, with flawed characters out of a Wes Anderson film and absurdism à la the Coen brothers. “The goal was to make this as cinematic as possible.”
The “Umbrella” mythology begins in October 1989, with the inexplicable birth, on the same day, of 43 children to previously unpregnant mothers all over the world. Eccentric monocled industrialist Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) adopts seven of them and, as the children exhibit extraordinary abilities, he forms a crime-fighting squad of kids in domino masks.
Years later, their father’s death is the setting for a reunion of the now-estranged siblings: hulking leader Luther (Tom Hopper), who’s been stationed on the moon for four years; A-list celebrity mom and Luther’s unrequited love Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman); hotheaded Diego (David Castaneda), who’d stuck with being a vigilante; drug addict Klaus (Robert Sheehan), who sees dead people; and Vanya (Ellen Page), a quiet violinist and outsider, because she never had superpowers. (She also wrote a tell-all book about the family.)
Their long-lost time-travelling sibling Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), a middle-aged man in the body of a 12-year-old, shows up in spectacular fashion to inform them they have eight days to prevent the apocalypse. And in hot pursuit are a pair of mysterious assassins with cartoonish animal masks named Hazel (Cameron Britton) and Cha-Cha (Mary J. Blige), who complain about per diems and hit up the local diner for doughnuts when not on assignment.
Hopper compares the “Umbrella Academy” to “a world-famous children’s pop group, like a One Direction or Jackson 5. All their life has been work and performing a job. They never got the time to go, ‘Yeah, but who am I? What do I want to do?’ You don’t get a childhood,” he says.
Hopper has wanted to play a superhero, more for “the human being underneath” than the powers. “It’s amazing that they have super strength and can fly and do super-cool stuff, but what (burden) comes with that?”
Yet the “normal” sister also has issues after growing up in an abusive household and being ostracized by family members. “Vanya struggles with depression, anxiety, feelings of worthlessness and barely even knows how to have a personal relationship, let alone an intimate relationship,” Page says. “Her journey is to dig deep through those layers, and find out who she really is and what she really feels.”
Way loves that Blackman added some darkness to “Umbrella” but stayed true to the comic’s weirdness. Fisticuffs and gunfights are just as much a part of the show as Luther’s heart-toheart convos with wise old chimpanzee Mr. Pogo and multiple dance sequences, a particular favourite of Page’s.
One scene in the first episode finds all the siblings cathartically dancing to “I Think We’re Alone Now,” as each character lets loose, solo style in various corners of the house. “It’s showing how similar they are, and also highlighting their differences, even just in terms of their movement,” she says.
Way says “Umbrella” is for people who’ve never been into superheroes, and those who’ve seen way too many of them.
Superhero movies and TV have changed over the last decade, but are still hung up on origins, devoting time “with somebody realizing they’ve got superpowers, and processing that. In this show, you get that in the first five minutes,” says Way, who’s writing the third “Umbrella Academy” comic miniseries with Ba called “Hotel Oblivion.”