when it comes to the umbrella academy, a lot of people seem to think that the first half is great and the second half is terrible. personally, I think only the first *season* is great, or even good. here's why:
the mission statement at the end of season 1 is fixing viktor, but viktor isn't the only broken one, so you can infer that they're all going to have to fix *each other* - as a family, the one thing their abuser never let them be. and the world's burning down around them because of the most dramatic sibling confrontation to ever grace the earth, but they're holding hands and escaping together and surviving the impossible with the intent to move forward, even if that means momentarily moving backwards. it's a masterful allegory for finally growing up, accepting responsibility for your personal trauma and tragedy and how they shaped you, and the moment you take that power back by choosing to heal your inner child, only after being slapped in the face with the fact that if you don't, it *will* destroy everything you've ever built, ever cared about, and ever could.
and then the rest of the show forgets all of it. as it were, it goes in the *exact opposite direction.*
on the surface, the second season isn't *as* bad as the subsequent ones are. but season 3 and 4's faults can be traced back to season 2 by how it pivoted away from the serious subject matter that the story (not the plot - the *story*) was heavily baked in, leaning hard into the goofier elements instead, without ever understanding the contrast that those conflicting elements served to highlight. it made them both more powerful; the jokes were funnier because you were just devastated, and the trauma was more devastating because you were just in tears laughing. the emotional roller coaster is key to understanding these people, and you *have* to take the serious stuff seriously for it to work. at least half of the show doesn't, and as a result, the emotional moments feel hollow.
controversial opinion: as a character, luther is better in season 1 than he is anywhere else. he's more unlikable, but that's because he's implicitly there to show what *not* to do - even if he'd succeeded narratively by locking viktor up and saving the world, he still failed thematically by emulating their father and continuing the cycle of abuse - so luther's a character that's being very effectively used to add to the core theme of the story. he feels like a real, frustrating person, whose brain chemistry got messed up by years of abuse and isolation, all for the crime of thinking his father loved him and wanted the best for him. not like a made up guy on your screen doing silly stuff solely for your entertainment.
season 2 was also the start of the characters getting love interests instead of storylines, which season 1 never would have *dreamed* of; klaus and dave's tragic romance only served to further klaus's character arc, viktor's creepy boyfriend was actually manipulating him the whole time, five's fractured-psyche-mannequin was a narrative tool to let us see into the head of such an emotionally reticent character, and so on. the romance served the character, but fairly quickly into the show's progression, it felt like the character started serving the romance. five was immune to this curse for a long time due to aidan gallagher's age, which is why he's (for the most part) the best, most consistent character across the show, because they had to use their *imagination* for him and actually *write an arc* instead of falling back on tired romance tropes that any selection of characters could slot into to fill the dead space.
after season 1, the umbrella academy is entertaining, but it doesn't have anything to *say.* which is extremely disappointing when the show initially made such a strong case for what it wanted to be.
