i finished the umbrella academy s4. i am not amused. here are my thoughts (looong post incoming)
1. i donāt remember diego being so fucking annoying. actually thatās a lie heās always been annoying but since he was hot i let it slide but now that heās not treating lila right (how do u fumble a baddie THAT HARD) i think he should participate in the shut the fuck up challenge
2. ātheir uncle will pick them upā HUH? like obviously this timeline is different but youāre telling me lila has uncles (and parents! or someone! she was talking to some elderly couple before the party!). what does that mean for the others⦠were their mothers still killed in this timeline or did klaus live out his little amish dream, even if he wasnāt around to experience it? ykwim? like did they show up to this timeline and someone was like āomg where did u wander off to? i was looking all over for u!ā and then it turns out itās their sibling/uncle/whatever in that timeline and they just have to be like ah yes. i surely do know who u are
3. what they did to lila and diego was criminal!!! āshe said she couldnāt get pregnant while breast feeding. but she couldā dramatic ass reveal for no fucking reason. like get over yourself diego
4. ok i know they prob couldnāt get rays actor to come back but what the fuck do u mean he walked out. and how can allison afford that nice house when all sheās doing is being in commercials nobody wants. our girl has a BEAMER. also i thought they werenāt supposed to have phones or anything like that so why does allison have a vape lollll. not complaining bc that scene was funny to me but why and how
5. ughhh they were tryna set up lila and five SO BAD in the beginning. and even then they still gave off intense sibling vibes
6. ok maybe im just too american but the gun imagery was kinda not it for me. like idk i think the bit with santa claus coming out shooting at everything was supposed to be funny but idkk i think im just too sensitive bc i was like mkkk whatever not funny. also i know luther has super strength but even in s1 he still got majorly injured when that chandelier fell on him but now heās fucking indestructible apparently?? like getting shot at and stuff?? what???
7. ok but that grandma loading her old timey gun while she turned to the siblings like O.O was funny iāll give them that
8. speaking of guns wtf siblings are killing EVERYONE. like ik they started the apocalypse and everything but idek just the way they did it was so weird. like less detached/guilty and more like⦠triumphant? satisfied? idk but it had a different tone than even s3, i remember in s2 it was such an intense ordeal when allison made those two european brothers kill each other but this time they straight up mass murdered a bunch of ppl in a small town and were like B). like ok. like allsion mutilated that guy in front of her DAUGHTER and it was just chill. major tonal shift
9. āyou just had to one up meā 1) you just killed a bunch of ppl diego!! 2) that is NOT the lila and diego i know. the real lila and diego would have started making out nasty style the moment lila killed that guy w her laser eyes. also wtf were the point of the laser eyes. she used them like twice and then that was it
10. with that being said all that affair stuff and recovery and addiction and relapse was getting so heavy. which ik is the point and the umbrella academy has always been heavy but like holy shit u GOTTA pick a struggle. is lila gonna groom five or is klaus gonna give claire trauma cos u canāt have both
11. speaking of claire⦠āwould it help to remind u that we were just as shitty at her ageā no u fucking werenāt. u could have breathed at ur british alien father wrong and he would have made u do drills until u puked. donāt play rn
12. why did they not trust the audience to pick up on the fact ben spiked their drinks. like we did not need a full on FLASHBACK. or like to be fully immersed in that scene, a tiny little flashback would have done
13. ok but why is this season so scary. like that train station made me paranoid
14. i will never forgive them for what they did to my girl lila. she used to serve CUNT
15. that british lady alien annoyed the fuck outta me
16. WHERE was pogo. and grace. they needed to find a way to bring them back. maybe they could have transported to a universe where the apocalypse happened and now the world was getting ruled by a planet of [gunshots]
17. why the fuck was diego acting like jennifer and ben werenāt linked in some way when all of s3 they alluded to the jennifer incident every other scene. i get it was supppsed to be so obvious even to someone who has ONLY watched s4 that jennifer and ben were linked so it was just a case of diego being stupid BUT that doesnāt work when itās already been established that they all know jennifer played a part in benās death. hence calling it the Jennifer Incident
18. āthey tried to address that in later scenesā they failed. they didnāt know how ben died, fine. but they knew jennifer had something to do w it. iām tired of scenes that poke fun at diego for being stupid. heās not stupidāheās cocky
19. okay no but this season was SO gory. like. whatever they have guns this is a revolution but the guts? the intestines?? they wanted to be stranger things sooo bad
20. no but we need to talk about that. the monster thingie at the end was so stranger things and the guns and the military and everything it was like we were back in s3 (or whenever we met the russians)
21. LOL but that scene where diego finds out about five and lila was lowkey funny. this season was so meta in general
22. speaking of the holidays⦠i sure did love watching everyone sing christmas carols and walk around in the snow when it was hot asf in real time
23. i do like how many parallels there were to s1. like w viktor and reggie, it was very viktor and leonard in s1. and klaus getting kidnapped. although i was kinda tired of klaus getting abducted and his siblings not giving a fuck. i thought there was supposed to be growth there
24. okayyy but ben and jennifer were cute SORRY. āletās get marriedā that would have worked on me. however being rude to me while i was at work WOULDNT have worked on me so maybe yall are right maybe we didnāt need a love interest this season
25. i did NOT expect them to actually drag out lila and fiveās love story. other than the age gap (no matter how ur looking at it) you already knew it was gonna be bad as soon as they had their first kiss. i hate those multiple little open mouthed kisses that are literally just ALL lip and spit like thatās fucking gross if ur gonna stick ur tongue in my mouth u better do it by the third little :O we got going on there. and then five was giving boy. like literal boy. and lila is a literal goddess but a goddess thatās well into her 20s and the contrast was so sharp it rlly was giving mom and her caucasian child. i mean that bit about lila viewing it as survival vs five actually clinging onto it showed their different levels of maturity, but since itās never specified if five is still a 50 year old man or just aging normally, his reaction rlly was such a teenage boy thing. āiām gonna kill himā man shut the fuck up
26. ok no bc we need to talk about this. i think fives actor is my ageāmaybe even a little bit olderābut i donāt see how anyone over the age of 18 is supposed to find him attractive. like idk itās weird in the show but even creepier irl cos lilaās actor had to have known him when he was still a minor. why did anyone at the umbrella academy think we wanted this
27. anyway not to make this about myself but when i was writing the odesta longfic there were a lot of lore inconsistencies as we kept going bc i forgot some of the details and was too lazy to go back and read it sometimes, and i think thatās what happened this season. the most notable detail is when klaus covered his ears while everyone was shooting at each other. i was expecting some sort of vietnam flashback but like no. he was just there being normal about it, all things considered
28. āex-squeeze me?ā it wasnāt funny when klaus said it in s1. and it wasnāt funny here
29. alright i think thatās really all i wanted to say about the season tbh⦠like idk diego and lila starting a family made sense i guess and i know they were falling out of love (even tho they would never do thatā¦) but i didnāt rlly feel any of the love w the kids. like even when lila stepped off the train at the last min and her daughter was banging at the glass it looked more like she was like āoh no :(ā and then just started poking at the glass. i donāt even think it matters that she didnāt fully know what was going onāif youāre a child and ur mom steps away in an unfamiliar situation, youāre gonna start to freak. especially w everything else that was going on
30. ok this is such a small thing to harp on but they abused the fuck outta that time skip font. like i donāt think they ever used it that much before now
31. now letās get into the ending. this is how i would fix it:
we can keep jennifer. whatever. that thing they added at the very last second about her having a particle that causes the end of the world was⦠whatever. like i get it. they needed a way to explain the end of the world and that was the thing they used and even if it was very late to introduce such a (admittedly confusing) bombshell, at least it fits in with what we already know about this universeās rules. magic and particles and marigold and whatever. jennifer is fine.
tbh when jennifer started feeling sick i was honestly thinking that they were gonna go the surprise pregnancy route even though they werenāt even fuckinf hinting at that i just have no media literacy. i wouldnāt have minded that tbh, like the monster transformation made more sense but imagine if we did a twilight ripoff for a second, except that jennifer and ben were both equally protective of the killer baby growing outside of jenniferās womb (or in her womb⦠whatever. point is thereās a baby). i donāt think this is a good ideaāif anything i think this is a shit idea. but something thatās always been so prominent in tua are the moral implications of what theyāre doing, like with everyone wanting to kill harlan in s3 instead of letting the entire world die, and with everything that happened with viktor in s1. there was the whole āi canāt kill my brotherā bit, sure, but everyone kinda didnāt rlly seem too enthusiastic about it.
actually the baby addition is actually a shit idea. iām just keeping that part of the rant in bc we need SOME sort of moral dilemma that isnāt just viktor arguing w hargreeves and then his siblings dropping in later with opinions that donāt even seem that strong. everyone needs to have a strong opinion on SOME sort of moral issue that we wanna introduceāthat, in a perfect world, weād be building up to throughout the seasonāand then yeah whatever there can be an epic fight scene
i donāt watch/read a lot of time travel stuff, but from what i gathered, the timeline can never be restored once itās fucked with. there has to be consequences, like with any story. and tua did address thatāthey tried restoring the timeline thousands of timesābut i think they shot themselves in the foot there. time travel with a (somewhat) happy ending is possibleāthere just has to be something to lose, and it has to be something that isnāt nonnegotiable. claire was nonnegotiable, which is why i think they stayed in s3ās timeline for as long as they did
point is, i think they should have gone back to 2019. i mean i donāt think anyone really wanted them to die. i made a joke in s3ās rant that i would just give up, but lucky for me, i am not a fictional character in tua, so the fact they just die in the last five mins and weāre supposed to be ok w that makes the last three seasons pointless. like, actually pointless. what was the message here? why is the ending of the show painted as some sort of utopia just bc we got rid of the siblings? and why is five okay with that? i think him being on board w dying could have been an interesting route to take if they showed his relationship w his siblings consistently deteriorating (both on screen AND off screen) but they only rlly managed to do that with diego, and it was for something fucking stupid
ANYWAY. bring those fools back to 2019, but donāt make them totally happy. just give them something that makes them all just stay put, like how allison has claire (doesnāt matter which timeline. it could be from the fucked up timeline. i donāt think the cleanse would happen bc of that bc claire is only one person and not an entire fucking organization like tua or an assassination like jfk. so hell. might as well throw harlan and sissy in there for viktor. that makes lila and diegoās motivation really easy for staying put, cos then they have their kids. klaus is klaus and no offense to him but i think hes just gonna roll w the cards heās dealt without trying to fight back, for better or for worse. then ben can have jennifer and since they love each other idk they just stick around. then fiveās motivation for staying is that his family is alive and none of them want to leave and thatās good enough for him bc thatās why he time traveled in the first place
again⦠i donāt think what i came up with is any good. i just think itās better than them all dying at the last fuckin second. i think this show relied on a lot of haha random xd humor at the beginning and they tried to keep that intact here but everything got so serious that i think them all dying rlly did seem like the only way out but.. itās not. they could go back to the way things are as long as there were consequences. it would suck, and none of them would be as happy as they could be, but they know thatās as happy as theyāre gonna get, so whatever. like, if we were gonna take the suicide route, we might as well gone the time loop route and gone back from the very beginning when five blinks back to 2019. i think that rly would have driven home the āthis all would have happened anywayā point way better than them just being like guess ill die :) bc ughhh. no they wouldnāt. also they wouldnāt let lila leave bc she still had marigold in her but⦠what about her and diegoās kids?? theyāre half marigold, and claire is a quarter, so⦠whatās up with that?