UMBRELLA ACADEMY 2 REVIEW: I HEARD A RUMOR THE SHOW IS FANTASTIC…

It’s still a family affair for the Hargreeves in season two of The Umbrella Academy, and the core cast of the super-powered-time hopping family adventures just keeps on getting better.

In its first season, the Netflix series “The Umbrella Academy” (based on the comics series from Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá) followed its source material predecessor and zeroed in on a handful of adopted family members with incredible abilities. Faced with certainty that the ‘end of the world’ was just around the darn, corner, and their actions caused the entire dang thing.

It was left to Five (Aidan Gallagher) to fling his family across time by the same gambit that spared them from annihilation in the opening season’s timeline, the quick thinking of the youngest (nope) oldest member of the siblings ultimately leads to each of them hurled into the same Dallas alleyway in separate years across the early 1960s.

As each of these brothers and sisters adjusts to new lives in this timeline, separate from each other, some realize the version of history they’re experiencing is about to veer from precedent and take another wrong turn to oblivion.

Where “The Umbrella Academy” season one was previously bogged down by family bickering and finger-pointing, seeing these screwed-up superheroes on their own seems like the perfect antidote for a great second season.

Of course, there are some major changes in season two. While season one was set in a sort of alternate-present day, season two is set specifically in 1963 Dallas, Texas, a few days before the assassination of JFK, meaning there’s even more time-travel tomfoolery to enjoy.

In typical Umbrella Academy fashion the time-jump went wrong, scattering all seven Hargreeves-es across different periods in the early ’60s.

Clearly, by arriving in the past the group must have changed something that led to this second, earlier apocalypse – but what? And what does any of this have to do with JFK?

Unpicking this mystery forms the crux of season two,

When it comes to Klaus (Robert Sheehan), he is still in a codependent love-hate cross-dimensional relationship with dead brother Ben (Justin H. Min), and the season cashes in on the brothers love and hate for one another and follows what the clairvoyant enfant terrible would do if freed from the necessity of using his powers to avert crises. Sheehan absolutely knocks it out of the park as he turns up the dial on Klaus’ tendency to go completely over-the-top in damn near every exchange onscreen.

It’s unlikely that an underground fight club featuring an undefeated massive half-ape wouldn’t turn a few heads in Texas, but there’s Luther (Tom Hopper), taking out his aggression for some under-the-table cash.

Vanya (Ellen Page) and Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) each fashion new lives for themselves, albeit with different amounts of memories from their past existence, and different outcomes for both of the sisters. While Culturedemandsgeeks love everyone in the cast, it is Allison and her arc that must be given a spotlight as she confronts what it means to be Black in Dallas in the early ’60s.

And let us not forget Diego, (David Castañeda), the brother who never felt like he ever fitted into the family at all. But where he lands, is definitely not outside of his comfort zone, and everything he sees in this new timeline, he sees as an opportunity to do good.

Who is Lila? A brand new character. She has been described as “a chameleon who can be as brilliant or as clinically insane as the situation requires.”

She meets one of the Hargreeves siblings, Diego, when the pair of them break out of the hospital where they’ve been locked up. Watch out for her very interesting story arc that comes full-tilt at the end scene in the last episode.

The series is slick, fun fantasy storytelling is just as engaging as ever, and it looks like the straits of our “heroes” are only just beginning. Overall, despite some familiarity, The Umbrella Academy’s brand of charming fun can’t be beaten.

In a very exciting and dramatic battle scene near the end of the season, an army of the Commission’s forces led by the Handler (Kate Walsh) appear out of nowhere to take on the Umbrella Academy, and the two groups run headlong into one another in a big, loud, flamboyantly CGI skirmish.

There are also questions regarding their father, and what Sir Reginald (Colm Feore) could/couldn’t be all along? Think Roswell!

The end result?

Well, you just have to watch the darn show and discover the outcome for yourself.

FINAL VERDICT:

Yeah, its the end of the world as we know it, but season two picks up greatly from season one, and the siblings are allowed to form their own paths through their own timelines, which greatly makes the audience feel more for the character’s own plight being stuck in a different timeline.

There is so much more I wish I could tell you right now about just how good The Umbrella Academy Season 2 is over the course of its 10 new episodes.

Roll on to season three, and let the shenanigans begin all over again.

5/5 STARS