How to explain the enormous success of ‘The Umbrella Academy’, a series that, like the comic by Gerard Way (script) and Gabriel Bá (drawing) on which it is inspired, throws overboard the traditions of the superhero genre? Your Creator, Steve Blackman, was Noah Hawley’s right-hand man in ‘Legion’; that is, he knows that unusual stories about superheroes can be received with relative enthusiasm.
“The thing is that I don’t see it as a series of superheroes,” he tells us by video call. “I got on the project because I saw the story of a dysfunctional family. And that’s what I like to write about. About families and the kind of flaws and quirks anyone can relate to. That’s why it might attract a very diverse audience.”
In Blackman’s free adaptation (“the comic is too crazy”), a billionaire inventor, Sir Reginald Hargreeves (colm feore), adopts seven of the forty-three children born on the same day to single mothers who gave no previous signs of being pregnant. These unexpected creatures mostly have supernatural powers that Hargreeves hopes to help them harness so they can use them to deliver justice.
The Sparrows arrive
In the first season of the series, the strongman Luther (Tom Hopper), the skillful with knives Diego (David Castaneda), suggestion specialist Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), the reluctant spiritualist Klaus (robert sheehan), spacetime traveler Five (Aidan Gallagher) and the violinist (among other things) Vanya (Elliot Page) saw a sad family reunion turned into a fight against the apocalypse. They also tried to stop the end of the world in the second, this time in the sixties and intertwining their destiny with the assassination of JFK. Much the same thing happens in the third, after, returning to 2019, they have given rise to a black hole that dissolves all forms of life that cross its path.
Blackman and team continue to joke about the ease of the Hargreeves to flirt with the apocalypse, but this new season, which Netflix premieres on Wednesday, the 22nd, introduces important novelties in the formula. Six Major New Features: The alternate Hargreeves brothers our heroes face in a 2019 that is actually different from the one they knew. The Umbrella Academy is here the Sparrow Academy, much more skilled in its superhero facet. “We wanted to play with a different dynamic,” explains Blackman: “Instead of seeing the family fighting with itself, we wanted to see the family against another family. I usually differentiate them by saying that the Umbrellas are brothers who don’t know how to be superheroes, while the Sparrows are superheroes who don’t know how to be brothers.“. Justin H. Min repeats as Ben (a ghost in the original family, but here clearly visible); the rest of the Hargreeves are new signings, including Genesis Rodriguez like the antigravity Sloane, for which Luther will show a non-brotherly interest.
From Vanya to Viktor
According to Blackman, ‘The Umbrella Academy’ is, in essence, “a call to accept differences”, an idea especially applicable to the third season, in which we see how the Hargreeves deal with a certain announcement from Vanya: now it will be Viktor. It is a fictional reflection of the moment when, in December 2020, Ellen Page announced on social networks that he was transgender and answered to the name of Elliot.
“At first, Elliot approached me privately and said he was going to transition,” Blackman recalls. “The scripts had already been written by then. I didn’t know much about the trans community, so I approached GLAAD [la organización que vela por la correcta representación y la aceptación de la comunidad LGBTQ]who put me in contact with the trans scriptwriter Thomas Page McBee. Together with Elliot, we looked for a way to introduce this element without it being imposed or too distracting from the plots. It wasn’t meant to be a plot per se, just a change to be introduced as elegantly as possible.”
According to data from GLAAD itself, the number of transmasculine characters grew slightly in the 2021-2022 US television season (when there were 14) compared to 2020-2021 (when there were 12). In other words, it remains to be done, but we are on the right track. Blackman is proud to bring Viktor to the next reckoning. “Plus, it’s a positive story,” he notes. “Right now there is a lot of transphobia, and if we can help some trans kid to feel better, more accompanied, we have done our job.”
The importance of a song
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When he talks about the directors who have marked the series, Blackman usually talks about wes anderson, something that can be seen in the use of songs: they are not simple compulsive ornamentation but an integral part of the stories and their visualization. “In fact, I try to encourage my collaborators to annotate the songs in the scripts. I, at least, let myself be very inspired by them when I write. Sometimes the choice is very obvious and I already like it. But we also look very much for the absurd, that the song does not make sense in that context and that at the same time is perfect”.
We have recently seen Kate Bush run up lists thanks to ‘Stranger things’. Does Blackman predict a case similar to that of ‘Running up that hill’ with the songs of this season? “There’s a version of Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage dream’, from a group called The Rescues, which might surprise people. It’s not known and it’s like a ballad. I still remember when we used Tiffany’s ‘I think we’re alone now’ and she herself texted me thanking me for shooting her numbers with a song by & mldr; thirty years. She was so happy!”