#Umbrella Academy Spoilers

[sunsickjune]

“i felt that five had to have a love story” okay steve !! fine. i’ll humour you. picture this : lila and five in the subway. they’re travelling to different timelines, loosing hope, trying to find a way home. then they get to a timeline and five sees dolores. but she’s a human, not a mannequin. he falls for her. loves her. wants to stay with her in her timeline. and that’s why lila has to force him to come home. she has kids, a husband, a life. five wants to stay with dolores more than anything. but he goes home, back to his timeline, because he knows he has to save his family. because he loves them more.

[stevenrogered]

#siblings

[icemankazansky]

my queer, neurodivergent ass when The Umbrella Academy ends with, "you were born wrong, every bad thing that has happened to you is your fault, and the only way the world can be good and safe is if you are eradicated from existence"

[vodakstr8tnogay]

[catastrophicdisasters]

apologies, i'm still angry abt TUA S4

so, if we take out all of the blatant issues with the season (character assassination, 'resolutions' that create more plotholes than they solve, rushed scenes that make no sense, side plots that go nowhere, raymond vanishing for no reason, etc etc), what are we left with? let's see:

fatphobia (multiple jokes made about 'chubby Diego', when David just looks hydrated and healthy)

SA played for jokes (it's clear that Klaus having sex while possessed is supposed to be funny, but he's being held hostage and forced to do this for money, when we already know he didn't even want his powers back??)

cheating

problematic / borderline problematic age gaps (either way you spin it, either Five is physically 20-26 while Lila is likely mid 40s, or Five is mentally 70s while Lila is mid 40s; Aidan was 19 while filming, and Ritu was 34)

waiting for the actor to come of age before introducing a romance (we already know what some fans can be like over Five/Aidan, this will not have helped; I would be horrified if I found out the show runners had planned a romance arc with a coworked 15 years older than me and then waited for me to turn legal age to execute it)

sexism (i was reluctant to call it that but i also don't know what else to call it - Lila basically had her agency stripped away to become the love interest two men fought over; Steve wanted Five to have a romance and didn't care who with - use Lila simply because she was there)

complete disregard of character trauma (Klaus being buried alive despite it having been mentioned in every prior season that he was locked in a mausoleum by Reginald, including literally being left to die)

possible overstepping of an actor's boundaries (i've not been able to verify this, but i've seen it said that robert sheehan has requested not to do sex scenes?) (still havent been able to prove this; wasn't an issue with other roles so... hesitant to leave it)

actors requests being ignored (David asked multiple times if the Lila cheating sideplot was required, but clearly it went ahead anyway)

bad cgi

that awful vomit montage

Reginald (im not quite calling it abuse forgiveness but uh. it's not far off tbh)

i don't even know what to call this, but basically told the Hargreeves the abuse they suffered was their fault because they shouldn't even exist??

what did i miss? (im sure there's something)

from the replies:

the song in the ep3 dance scene uses a slur for romani people (and is also about a man and an underage girl)

SA dismissal (it's literally never addressed that Allison SA'd Luther last season. like, at all. everything's just a-okay now!)

more sexism (Allison's arc was also reduced to serving men; there's a single line to explain that Ray left, with no mention of why (i could go OFF about this but this post isn't supposed to be about mishandling of characters); even after everything, all her bonding with Claire comes through Klaus's storyline. also, Sloane is just gone and nobody gives a shit - Luther has one line and that's it??)

so many issues with consent (all of the girls shown in the place Klaus works look drugged / Klaus doesn't want to be there and doing any of that, it's all against his wishes / they all get their powers back against their wishes - although they do tell Ben that wasn't his choice to make / Klaus gets his powers back against his will when Allison is pressured to do it to save his life)

[secondaccounts-stuff]

Okay, I take back my original “how I wanted TUA to end” that I made a week ago and instead I want this:

The siblings realise the world keeps ending because they’re all in the same timeline. So in order to distribute the marigold, and save the end of the world, they all have to sacrifice being a family and never see each other again.

It ends with each sibling one by one (Lila and deigo come as a pair, I don’t make the rules) as they board the subway, each to their very own timeline in which the other family members don’t exist.

It’s heartbreaking, and for a family that were split and torn at the beginning of the series, the choice being made for them is even more heartbreaking because they’re a family now more than ever. But as they board the subway, we see a montage of them all in their HAPPY timelines, the beats of “I think we’re alone now” start playing and we realise, while the Hargreeves siblings finally have their happy ending, they are in fact, alone now. Cut to black. Cue BTS images.

[strawlessandbraless]

The fact that Deadpool 3 is gayer than this new season of Umbrella Academy. Damn.

[krittec]

there’s something extremely extremely creepy about taking an actor that you have known since they were 13 years old, only JUST a teenager, and making them kiss a fully grown woman the second that they turned a legal adult.

Steve Blackman already has a ton of shit out against him which came out recently so it unfortunately doesn’t surprise me that he would write something like this but it makes me genuinely concerned for everything behind the scenes.

There has been a HUGE problem in the Umbrella Academy fandom since season ONE when Aidan was a 13-14 year old of people writing insanely disgusting stuff and defending it because his character was mentally an adult but oh my god did they make it worse. You’d think they’d protect actor & character by avoiding any romantic interaction but instead you have him kiss an actress 15 years older than him. The age gap being the age that he was when they filmed season two. Quite honestly I feel that if he could’ve done this seasons previously and gotten away with it then he definitely would’ve done it, given the jokes that are actively made.

Quite honestly may Steve Blackman never work again if this is how he treats his actors because this is awful. I’m not even done with the season but that gave me very little desire to continue and this show has been important to me in ways I can’t explain. Maybe I am blowing this out of proportion but it feels so insanely creepy and horrific to me and I needed to rant.

[batattack409]

If the “Reggie shot Ben and Jenifer” thing was written better, they could have had Klaus being the only one who knew, because Ben told him and/or the brainwashing didn’t fully work because of how the drugs changed his brain, and when he’d try to talk to the others about it (before they all realized how bad their dad was and left) he’d get the brainwashed response or they’d say he’s lying or being crazy so he eventually just drops it.

Then after they find out and reunite they’d ask him “do you remember how Ben died” expecting to get the same response they had and instead he goes “yeah dad shot him why” and they’re like “… you KNEW?!” And he’s like “you didn’t?” And they’re like “no?!? Why didn’t you tell us??” And he’s like “I did, you just didn’t listen or would say I was being crazy and shouldn’t joke about that” (because of their responses when they were younger is how Viktor believed the same as the others even if he wasn’t brain washed).

Which would have kept the kind of running joke of Klaus kinda knowing relevant info despite doing side quests that happened in the other seasons (that did happen right I’m not just hallucinating it?).

Anyway someone please write a fic about this please please please please the angst potential is immeasurable

[whatificantbegoodenough]

also i’m sorry but klaus being fucking raped added nothing to the plot and SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED

[morganaspendragonss]

does klaus’s plotline actually have anything to do with…anything, or did they just not know what to do with him except make him the junkie fuck up who gets himself in messes and needs rescuing

[stevenrogered]

love it when writers don’t even remember details from their own show

[miss-galaxy-turtle]

Listen. Listen. The more I think about it. I have a better idea for a bittersweet Umbrella Academy ending that WORKS

The group sacrifices themselves, but die instead of being erased. Reunite in the PREVIOUSLY ESTABLISHED afterlife, which would also connect to how they were like "hopefully we'll see each other again somehow" "that would be nice" thing, AND be a callback to Klaus and Luther in s3. Reunion dance to I Think We're Alone Now, paralleling s1ep1 but they're all together now instead of apart

[vodakstr8tnogay]

Thank god Dave is dead because if he wasn’t they’d probably have him kissing fucking Diego or some shit at this point

[wicked-watering-can]

Can't believe we got Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman as a villainous southern cult leader couple named Gene and Jean with absolutely endless possibilities for fun shenanigans and it happened in one of the worst seasons of televisions I've ever seen

[h1-j1nx]

No but Steve Blackman said in one of the last teasers where they were doing goodbye interviews that "from the very beginning i had an idea of how i wanted to end the show where i thought was fair to the characters, fair to the fans, and fair to the source material."

IS HE DELUSIONAL??????? WHO??? WHY???? HOW?????????????? LITERALLY NO ONE WANTED THIS