#tua screaming

[taiturner]

Why could I never stand up to Dad? I should've stood up for Ben. I should've stood up for the family. I just... I should've stood up for Sloane.

DIEGO & LUTHER HARGREEVES in a deleted scene from season 4 of The Umbrella Academy

[myheadphonesareneverloudenough]

me when i’m the audiences’ least favourite character and finally get my redemption arc only to be reduced to a stripper joke in the finale. and the woman i would give my life for disappears and i don’t spend any time looking for her, and only reference her once to make someone else happier about their life.

me when i’m a well loved character that audiences love because of my spontaneous acts of chaos and caring soul, only to be shoved aside and have my whole life ruined in the finale.

me when i’ve had so much taken away from me in my life that i had to resort to becoming the villain of my own story just to return to the people i love, only for my love interest which i fought so hard for to be left barely mentioned in the finale, and his absence doesn’t do anything to motivate my actions.

me when i spend years on self improvement before getting sucked back into my dark, self destructive ways and barely any of my so called family notices. and then my entire arc is left unnoticed and does absolutely nothing to my character development.

me when i spend my whole life trying to protect my family and have a clear set of priorities and passions, and then i throw that all away when i see a chance to get with my brother’s wife who’s physically 20 years older than i am.

me when i'm practically sacrificed because the girl i love is is the key to the end of the world, and all i do is turn into a hideous creature without any real sendoff or significant death scene.

me when i've been arguably the most significant character for the whole show just to get zero character development throughout the finale as i'm separated from the rest of the main cast.

me when i was introduced later in the show because of my vital importance to the plot, only to have my personality stripped from me so i can cheat on my fan favourite husband with his brother.

me when i'm a squid that swallows a girl and no one cares to explain why.

[bylergetonefree]

i am appalled

[whywouldyoudothistua]

i keep seeing ppl say five/lila made sense and i want to be nice but youre so wrong

"it was seven years" not everyones life motivation is romantic relationships just cuz youre alone w someone does not mean ull get together im sorry u think everyone is that shallow

"five had dolores the first time" five went absolutely insane bonkers the first time and only got along w the Fake Mannequinn bc she was Fake and a Mannequin

also i feel like the ENTIRE conversation is revolving around "would five or wouldnt five" as if lila is just some prop woman no one is considering her beyond "uhm shes a tired mom so shed obviously fuck the first guy to give her an ounce of attention" i hate to be the bearer of bad news but that is not how women work and lila would never, w that crusty dusty old man that fucked her kidnapper

[freetobeafcknriot]

FIVE & BEN ft. checking up on your little brother.

[menaceisdrawing]

isn't he just...

(x)

[literarymerritt]

Currently re-watching TUA and doing a small drawing per episode!

These are the first four, I post one weekly on Tuesdays to my Twitter!!

[brionysea]

allison and five are actually fascinating to write together. allison is the sibling for checking on people and asking in plain english if they're okay but five would literally rather bleed out than show a shred of vulnerability

[isoldewas]

something something i’m your lover and i’m your jailor

[handofmidas-writes]

I didn't hate season 4. Or the love triangle. Let me explain.

Okay. Listen. Listenlistenlisten.

I know everyone is pissed about season 4. I hear you. I get it. I don’t think anyone is thinking that this was a well-executed season. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

But hear me out.

The bones of the thing are good in principle. The arc makes sense at the heart of it. Again, hear me out.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

The entire series is about saving the world by stopping the apocalypse. And as all the Fives in the deli have shown, the apocalypse is due to the Hargreeves siblings’ very existence. Reginald has fucked over every iteration of the kids to bring back his wife who died as a result of her own actions in creating marigold. He couldn’t give her up, and he was willing to rip universes apart to get her back. Five has tried time and time and time again to save his family, ad infinitum. He knows how to solve the problem, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Until this Five. They are, as we here on tumblr love to say, doomed by the narrative.

Five also says the universe loves balance. We saw this in season 3 with the kugelblitz. They were an impossibility in the universe and the kugelblitz formed to solve the problem by eliminating them. Impossibility for impossibility.

One of the Fives founded the Commission to solve the problem. It happens every time.

Abigail’s purpose through the whole season is to ensure the Cleanse, to reset the universe to the correct timeline. She shouldn’t be there. The kids shouldn’t be there. They are a direct result of Reginald releasing marigold into the world to enact his plan of resurrecting Abigail. The universe is trying to return to homeostasis, balance itself. And in every iteration, it needs to rid itself of the marigold, the substance that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Ergo, the principle is sound, in my opinion.

The execution was shit, as I’m sure we all can agree.  I don’t like that they cease to exist, necessarily, and I think there were other avenues they could have taken to avoid that. But I can stomach it.

The shit storm is certainly in the characterizations. They did almost everyone dirty in some way or another. I think it could have been saved with a few more episodes, but we know that Netflix sucks like that and the season definitely suffered after the strike. I won’t be going into all of the characters just now since I’m apparently a loquacious bitch and don’t have the space. (And I know this is all being screamed into the void anyway. None of y’all will be reading any of this lol.)

Here’s where I’m going to ruffle feathers. I buy into the whole Diego/Lila/Five thing. And here’s why. (Cut here because this bitch got real long. Like 1.5k words long. Oops.)

The first episode is called “The Unbearable Tragedy of Getting What You Want.” Is it a slightly contrived Now That We’re Not Superheroes Our Normal Lives Kind Of Suck thing? Absolutely. Has it been overused in basically everything ever? You bet. Does it kind of work here? Yeah, actually.

These people legitimately don’t know what to do without powers. They’re coming fresh off the heels of trying and failing to save the world 3 different times. That takes adjustment. A lot of adjustment.

Lila and Diego fall into parenthood, which is a huge thing in and of itself. It’s not surprising that Diego turns into the stereotypical suburban dad, the breadwinner because that’s what he thinks his role should be. It doesn’t fully make sense that Lila turns into a housewife, but I can see her trying to throw Diego a bone and trying to make up for how she’s treated him in the past. Not to mention proving herself as a mother.

It makes sense for Lila to want to get out of the house and do her own thing, without her kids and her husband. It makes sense for Diego to resent his low level job when all he’s wanted to be is a badass and a hero.  Their frustration about their family life is understandable. Being a family is a lot of effort. There’s a loss of freedom when people become parents. And these are two headstrong people who have things to prove to themselves, to make sure they show up for their kids. Which leads to breakdowns in taking care of themselves and their relationship to each other.

Now, the sticky bit comes in with the whole love triangle. I know folks hate the subway subplot. Here’s the thing, despite how it was executed, it makes sense, too.

It’s an interesting way to portray the Many Worlds Theory and it’s plausible enough that Lila and Five connect in this way because of their shared knowledge of the Commission. It makes sense that they explore it together.

Which leads me to this: Five is incredibly lonely. He spent 40 years alone in an apocalypse and tried everything in his power to get back. He fell in love with a mannequin because she was the only thing keeping him tethered and sane-adjacent (sweet Dolores, we’ll never forget you, queen). He was desperate and alone and persisted because he had to.

He joined the Commission to try and stop said apocalypse and then inadvertently ended up in another. He’s tired of trying to save his family over and over and now he’s not sure there’s anything he can do to save them this time. And now here he is, stuck in the labyrinthine Subway of Fuckery with Lila and they can’t get out. Lila who has the same training as him, the same knowledge base, who went with him to the remnants of the Commission in season 3 and tried to save them all. Let’s call them frenemies, I guess.

And now here they are. Stuck together and feeling helpless. Enduring every fucking thing under the sun, watching each other’s backs, and they only have each other. And they’re tired. They’ve been searching for a way home for six fucking years. So, they decide to stop running and catch their breath. I won’t say it’s an inevitability, but Five is so lonely and scared. And Lila is lonely and scared and without her children. But they’re safe with each other, and they take comfort in each other, and it’s so easy to blur those lines.

So yeah, they end up together in the now infamous cottagecore greenhouse with the strawberries. And they try not to think about Diego. Is it right of them to do this? Well, no. But are people messy as hell? Yes. And are their actions understandable? Also yes.

So, to me, when Five finds the notebook and keeps it hidden from Lila, it tracks. Because he’s so fucking scared of what’s going to happen now. What if they still can’t make it back? What if they can’t save the world this time? What if it all comes down around his ears again? So he hides in easy domesticity and thinks about the solace they’ve found in each other.

And Lila, understandably, blows up when she realizes Five has hidden this from her. Because for her, this was a way to cope. To survive, as she says. She loves her children. And she loves Diego. She didn’t stop loving them. She couldn’t stop loving them. But she might just love Five, too. And isn’t that scary as hell?

People are many faceted, my friends. Does it make what she did morally right? Of course not. But does it make sense? I truly think it does.

The limited number of episodes is one of the largest contributors to the half-baked-ness of it all. There’s not enough time to flesh out a proper resolution to the whole thing. Which led to Diego’s hunch from episode 2 of Lila cheating with Greek guy/Five accidentally being correct foreshadowing. Which then resulted in a heavy confession from Lila in front of the entire family (which I was digging, just like the siblings, tbh). And then the boys started throwing punches and the whole love triangle thing went completely down the shitter (a dubious and debatable statement, I know).

So, that leaves us with Lila who is now in the middle of two brothers. Said brothers are now physically fighting out bad blood and pent up frustration. And only part of it is due to Lila.

Diego’s character is criminally underdeveloped. He was always halfway between the underdog and class clown and his characterization in this season falls spectacularly flat in all aspects. He’s a character who has fought to prove himself over and over again, and is still trying to do that here, but nothing really lands. Diego and Luther are comic relief mostly. And Diego’s role, unfortunately, ended up being a stick in the spokes of a sloppy love triangle and pretty much nothing else.

Five is obviously the favorite in Blackman’s eyes. Five is knowledgeable. Five always has an idea. Five is the one the family looks to for answers, more often than not. Five is the one who almost always opts to save his family in some way, shape, or form. And this has resulted in Five being sad and helpless, in a way. He has been building this emotional bomb for decades and across timelines without any real release or acknowledgement. So Blackman chose to have Five get his emotional release in the form of “a love story” with Lila. Doing it this way, with the limited number of episodes, left Diego’s part woefully inadequate.

No resolution really takes place here. Diego kind of “wins” insofar as he convinces Lila to take their family to the subway and she takes his hand first when they all say goodbye. Five gets the teary “I hate you for this,” after she ends up choosing self-sacrifice with the others, which we know means “I am so incredibly sad and I hate that you told us the truth because it means everything ends for real this time and I’ve had to let my family go.” Then she holds his hand, too, showing that all is forgiven, here at the end of all things.

There’s definitely not a resolution for Diego, and it can certainly be inferred that he still pretty much hates Five’s guts. I get the feeling that Five is just resigned to finally ending the cycle. He knows he’s hurt Diego badly and I think he does feel bad for it, but it’s not translated into the final scene, which leaves the whole situationship hollow and earned it the well deserved hate for hilariously poor execution.

So that’s it, friends. That’s my unpopular opinion and way too many words justifying it. I surprisingly have more I could blather on about, but I’ll spare y’all from including any more in this post. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

And for a final palate cleanser for those of you who do not care about any of this: I think we deserve a side plot of Five and Derek the Twink from the CIA. The true OTP. (Also Brisket Five, who is the real MVP.)

[valkaryah]

PRAETORIAN JACK SMILING PRAETORIAN JACK SMILING PRAETORIAN JACK SMILING PRAETORIAN JACK SMILING this is not a drill i repeat PREATORIAN JACK SMILING PRAETORIAN JACK SMIL- I want him.

[myheadphonesareneverloudenough]

if season 2 or 3 lila and five heard about season 4, they'd both kill themselves immediately.

[echosdevil]

ALLISON AND CLAIRE.... CLAIRE AND KLAUS.... 😭😭😭

[evie-writes-sometimes]

What gets me about Five is how constantly and consistently he's doomed by the narrative to fail. Everytime he tries to do something, he always manages to make things worse, in a way that's not his fault whatsoever but at the same time completely his fault.

The biggest example of this, imo, is when Five turns back time to return to his family to try and stop the commission. In his absence, Allison helps Luther out his depression and anguish from Reginald sending him to the moon, Diego is able to talk to Grace and is just about to get the truth about Reginald, Viktor finds out about Leonard and would've ended up going back to the academy and probably would've been accepted by them (considering he hadn't hurt Allison this time), Klaus meets Dave again and reconciles with his ghost.

But Five returns and the chain of events completely shifts and fits back in place to create the perfect circumstances for the apocalypse to happen.

I can't remember another time where Five's actions directly or indirectly contributed to the apocalypse once again, but there's still this recurring theme of Five trying to prevent the apocalypse and/or save his family, only for it to be pointless in the end. When he kills the Board for the Handler, when he meets up with his future/past self, when he and Lila go to the Commission in S3.

And the times he does succeed at doing something like time traveling at the end of S1 and S2, it only ever manages to fall to pieces once again.

[kafkaesqueer]

I just know that these characters are bisexual I can't explain it or prove it but they just are:

[blackturtlesofdeath]

Rewatching tua, the scene where harlan accidentally tells Allison the truth about the mothers makes me so damn sad.

He brings it up, "I know why you don't like me," because he was thinking out loud and and trying to reason it out, to make her dislike not be about his personality or behavior, but rather a bad thing he did that he knows was wrong. When he realizes that she didnt know, he panics, and she kills him not for the sake of saving the world, or because he needs to be killed for safety or whatever, but because she is angry and unstable and projecting and he is the first immediate target