Warning: this piece contains spoilers about The Umbrella Academy season four.
Remember when Robert Sheehan was tipped to be the next Irish actor to conquer Hollywood? The Portlaoise native never quite achieved that A-lister billing – but has instead found the perfect vehicle for his left-of-centre energy in esoteric comic-book drama, The Umbrella Academy (series four on Netflix from Thursday).
Sheehan is Klaus, one of a family of superheroes assembled by the eccentric and manipulative Sir Reginald Hargreeves. While his adopted siblings have more traditional powers – super-strength, the ability to jump between timescapes, etc – Klaus can commune with the dead, which is a lot more awkward than it sounds when you find yourself facing off against a territorial ghost dog (as happens during this final season).
The Umbrella Academy is adapted from a comic book written by Gerard Way – better known for fronting the “emo” band My Chemical Romance. As anyone who ever hung outside the Central Bank in Dublin with their fringe dangling in front of their sightline will know, emo was a genre that elevated suburban mopeyness to a performance art – and it is tempting to conclude that Klaus is the character into whom Way has poured much of his “emo-ness”.
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Sheehan’s nervy charm is one of the driving qualities in a wildly enjoyable, if tangled, six-part farewell from a show that became a surprise hit for Netflix in February 2019 when it rocketed straight to the streamer’s most-watched list. As the action resumes, Klaus and the rest of the Academy are in a parallel timeline in which they have lost their powers but are cheerfully getting on with life as civilians.
For Klaus, no longer talking to the dead is a blessing. Living with his actor sister Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) and Allison’s daughter Claire, he’s sober for the first time in his life, and, he suspects, happy too (he’s never been happy before, so he can’t be sure).
[ Robert Sheehan: ‘I was a contrarian f**ker. I thought it made me seem more edgy’Opens in new window ]
[ Robert Sheehan: ‘I lost roles because I wasn’t high enough status’Opens in new window ]
Sheehan shares a fizzing chemistry with the rest of the cast. They include Elliot Page as angst-ridden Viktor, Aidan Gallagher as time-hopping “Number Five”, Tom Hopper as clumsy, if well-intentioned, Luther, David Castañeda as knife-wizard Diego and Ritu Arya as Diego’s wife Lila (formerly a time-travelling assassin).
All the actors do well with their characters, but Sheehan is especially good at projecting Klaus’s brittle hippy-dippy qualities (his American accent is flawless, too). Alas, just when Klaus has found peace, fate has other plans for him and the rest of the Academy, and, not for the first time, it involves a terrible event with potentially world-changing consequences.
That happening is “The Cleanse”, an imminent rupture in the space-time fabric forecast by a cult called The Keepers, led by suburban oddballs Jean (Megan Mullally) and Gene (Nick Offerman).
The Umbrella Academy is great fun, but you need to be up to speed with its dense and convoluted storyline, and series four is not the place to start. Instead, rewind back to year one, where lots of charming weirdness awaits.
However, for those who are already fully versed in the Umbrella Universe, the concluding season has lots of action, plenty of twists and a moving final episode. Even in these days of peak universal superhero fatigue, it’s worth your time.
