Edited to add: I forgot to do this last week when the show was released but I've changed the thread's tag to spoilers so we can talk about the show openly. Apologies for my big review full of spoilers without changing the tag first.
Finally had the chance to watch the whole season (crazy ass me
had to wait until I had enough time to watch it all in one sitting...) and wow, that wasn't quite how I expected it to end.
I absolutely loved the first half of the season, seeing where everyone landed, and how they adjusted to their new lives, before inevitably being snapped back into the next impending and truly final apocalypse. I do wish we had gotten the full season of ten episodes because I would've loved see more of their mundane, powerless lives before their inescapable abilities were restored. On the plus side, it did allow the season to jump immediately to the true problems at hand and forced their reunion faster than any of the previous seasons (first season's initial for the funeral aside).
That said, I felt like the second half of the season did stumble a bit, as if it rushed ahead a little too fast and had to stall before the grand finale. Klaus' mini-arc with the biker in particular felt like a cul-de-sac and didn't really add much to his character growth. I was
far more interested in the Klaus who had become super cautious in life with his immortality striped away and took his sobriety to the extreme, and I think it's a pity that we instead got much more of the imprisoned (yet again) sex slave Klaus. If I could change anything about this season, I would restructure it in such a way that delayed the return of their powers and focused on the more interesting Klaus arc.
Another issue I had with the second half of the season, although I didn't mind it quite as much, was how jarring each of the story arcs felt in contrast to each other. I loved the craziness of the Five/Lila extended adventure and surprise romance (which was a tad odd to add so late in the game but it worked for me). I loved the weird road trip Viktor and Reginald went on in search for Ben and Jennifer. I even kind of loved the mundanity of Diego's dream of working at the CIA come true and having it turn out to be a complete shit show (albeit because he and Luther were deliberately swept under a carpet). But each of those arcs, along with the weak Klaus storyline and practically nothingness for Allison, really clashed with each other as the episodes switched from one to another.
On the positive side, I was happy to see that I was correct that the Jennifer Incident was the crux of the season...but I was shocked by the simplicity of Ben's death. And yet, it explains so much regardless of the memory wipe. Upon seeing the manner of Jennifer's introduction into the world, I'm sure I wasn't the only person who thought she was actually one of the few unaccounted children (since the show's opening narration said there were 16) but I liked how she was in fact imbued by the very opposite of what the rest of the children were. However, I was less keen how Ben and Jennifer's reunion and expected romance devolved into a flesh monster straight out of
Stranger Things' third season...even if said monster felt like a nice nod to the original graphic novel's crazy monsters.
But overall, I really did love this season.
I cannot express into words how much I wept with cathartic joy
and retribution (not the world I want but my brain is completely failing me) when Viktor finally had to chance to confront Reginald for the horrible sins he put Viktor through during his childhood, even if it wasn't the actual version of Reginald who treated Viktor that way.
My heart broke for Lila when she made the great and horrible sacrifice of letting her family (not just her children but her
living parents!) go in order to restore the timelines back to the singular, pre-Marigold timeline.
I even loved how the show kind of handwaved the unnecessary but grateful explanation for how all of the different timelines and paradoxes, as well as the very existence of the Commission, could exist simultaneously (even if it doesn't ultimately withstand scrutiny).
Above all else, I loved how the siblings finally accepted their fates that they cannot exist without continuously causing the end of the world and made the greatest sacrifice of all: Choosing to cease existing in the first place. What I didn't expect was seeing the (albeit somewhat silly) happy ending with (almost) all of the show's secondary characters enjoying life together, blissfully unaware of the grand sacrifice the Umbrella Academy made for them. It was wonderful seeing the Swedes (!!!), Dot and Herb, Grace, the Handler, and best of all, Agnes and Hazel living their best lives. The only significant missing people were Eudora, Sissy and Harlan, Raymond, and Cha-Cha (but Cha-Cha didn't deserve a happy ending so I didn't mind her absence).
A few odds and ends:
- I can't believe this is falling into this section of the review, but I absolutely adored Gene and Jean. Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally are always wonderful on their own, but when they're paired together (Parks & Recreation, Will & Grace, etc.), they're pure dynamite! They were such a joy to watch being as zany and weird and ridiculous and leaning so damn hard into nutty conspiracy theorists (even if they were actually right!). I didn't think there would be much room for new characters this season but they made it work. David Cross, too, and while I knew something odd was going on with his characters, I was wonderfully surprised by the reveal!
- It's a minor thing but considering how Harlan was the one who coined the term Marigold for the energy that resided within the Umbrella and Sparrow children and himself, it was a little odd hearing Reginald and Abigail use the same term when talking about the Durango (which itself was a weird term but I guess I missed the connection there). I guess you can handwave it to say Harlan's term became imprinted in their minds when the universe was reset.
- Considering how short the season was, I didn't mind his absence, but it was a bit weird how Raymond was quickly written out of it after he brought forward into time to satisfy Allison's needs in the reset. I can only assume Yusuf Gatewood wasn't available for the season and/or the writers couldn't find a way to properly use him.
- On the note of Allison, as I expected, we didn't get much exploration on the consequences of Allison's righteous but blind fury last season, but at least we did get some acknowledgement of it. I loved hearing Viktor saying they weren't friends as a tangential way of not saying they couldn't forgive Allison for murdering Harlan. Even if he had previously said he had forgiven her...but I believe even then he suspected Allison's forgiveness of him for lying wasn't genuine.
- Either I completely misread the season three mid-credits scene or the showrunners decided to completely drop second Ben plot thread (much like they changed Sparrow Ben's hairstyle after the season two finale). To me, that scene always seemed to indicate that the Ben we see on the Seoul subway was the Umbrella Ben considering how happy and relaxed he appeared, in stark contrast to the Sparrow Ben. And even if it was suppose to be Sparrow Ben, what purpose did that scene ultimately mean? Especially considering the path his story ended up taking in season four.
- Lastly, and again, I didn't expect explanation considering the abbreviated season, but we never got an explanation for why Reginald and Abigail decided to remain on Earth after the universe was reset. Abigail mentioned how the Durango destroyed their world but that could've been something Reginald could've changed when he reset the universe...unless that was something he didn't have time to do before Allison killed him.
