I’m not sure if the first episode of The Umbrella Academy counts as a pilot in the traditional sense. In the decades since television began, pilot episodes have generally been made as a sample to convince a network to buy a show. The public doesn’t see them unless the show is picked up — there are thousands of unseen or rarely seen failed pilots lying around in company vaults, though some, such as the 2011 David E. Kelley Wonder Woman pilot, have leaked and become in/famous on the internet — and oftentimes even when a show is picked up, either the pilot is partially or fully re-shot (Gilmore Girls is a famous example, refilming scenes featuring Dean and Sookie, both of whom had their roles recast between the pilot and the series being picked up) or elements of the pilot are dropped completely by the second episode (The Golden Girls pilot featured a housekeeper, Coco, who was never seen again).
Streaming, though — and to a lesser extent, serialization — completely upends that model. If Netflix orders a full season of The Umbrella Academy right off the bat, then that first pilot episode exists not to sell the network on the series, but to sell the audience on it. And if the entire first season is one long story, then the pilot has to not only introduce the characters and concept, but also kick the plot into high gear and set up clues that will be paid off later in the season. It’s a tricky tightrope to walk, but I think the first episode of The Umbrella Academy does it better than almost any pilot I’ve ever seen. In fact, I may go as far as to call it a perfect pilot.
(And yes, I realize I’m a little late to the game here, but Season Two suddenly reminded me how much I like this series, and I didn’t have this newsletter yet when Season One premiered!)
Now, when I call the pilot perfect, that’s not me saying that every single person who watches it is going to love it. That’s impossible. But what this pilot does do is establish its characters, premise, mysteries, style, tone, and priorities in an efficient, entertaining way. If The Umbrella Academy is for you, you’re going to know it right away.
Out of all those categories, “priorities” might be the most interesting to me, and it’s the one that gets established first. The opening scene of the pilot follows a young girl and boy flirting at a pool in Soviet Russia in 1989. The characters never get names and never appear again after this scene, but the show still purposely takes a few minutes to follow their endearingly awkward attempts at adolescent romance before the plot kicks into high gear with the girl jumping into the pool — perfectly fine and normal — and emerging from the water bleeding and suddenly, magically, nine months pregnant. This does two important things. First of all, it creates a stronger reaction when viewers first see the blood and, a second later, the girl emerge from the water; it’s not just a shocking twist, but one that’s legitimately upsetting and sad because we’ve just spent a few minutes following this girl and can see her crush desperately trying to reach her in the background. It humanizes them, and that leads into those priorities: this opening scene establishes the fact that The Umbrella Academy is more concerned about character than plot. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to you*, but either way, you can’t say the series wasn’t up front about it.
*I think the best shows are strong in both, but if you’ve gonna prioritize one over the other, I’ll take character over plot any day.
Next up is the premise, which hits in two waves. First we get the expository sequence explaining that on October 1, 1989, 43 unconnected women across the world simultaneously gave birth despite showing no signs of pregnancy before labor began, and that eccentric billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves bought/adopted seven of the children, who eventually all developed extraordinary abilities and powers, and trained them to fight crime as a group called the Umbrella Academy. Instantly I was hooked. What a unique way to not only suddenly populate your world with extraordinary individuals, but to immediately draw a line between the various factions, between protagonists and antagonists! I was awed by the potential.
Admittedly, the series never fully delves into that potential (spoiler alert: the show never introduces/acknowledges any of those children outside the seven Hargreeves until the final episode of Season Two), but after that exciting introduction, the next scene does further clarify its premise while also starting to dole out character. The introduction to five of the Hargreeves children as adults does several things: it clarifies that the series will be about these characters as adults, dealing with the aftershocks of their upbringing after their father’s death; it quickly and economically introduces these five characters and immediately gives them distinct personalities and lives; it introduces the mystery of what happened to the other two Hargreeves children, then actually solves that mystery by the end of the episode (and does so by showing! Rather than telling!); it does all of this stylishly.
That sense of style, and especially the use of music, is intrinsic to this series (though two different scenes later in the episode would better solidify it), and again, helps the writers show, rather than tell. Exposition is boring; we don’t want to be told who these characters are and what they’re like, we want to see it, and this introductory sequence does that not only by introducing us to these five Hargreeves in their everyday lives, but by adjusting its tone and style according to their unique lives and personalities. Luther’s home is shot in a tight style that shows how confining it is before cutting to the reveal that he’s living on the moon, revealing his life as being simultaneously wondrous and suffocating. Diego’s chosen to make his life an action movie, so it’s shot that way; likewise, Alison’s glamorous life is framed in full movie star grandeur. Klaus’ life is purposely hectic and disorienting, so the director switches to shaky, hand-held style shooting with quick, jarring cuts. Vanya’s introduced in grand, dramatic fashion, playing her violin expertly, before being revealed to be playing to an empty auditorium, immediately unearthing the core conflict of Vanya’s character, the life she wants in comparison to the life she actually has. It’s all incredibly clever stuff.
I’m also impressed by how the writers choose to show, rather than tell. With only one exception, the various Hargreeves’ powers are never explained or stated to the audience. Instead, we see them in action, but their abilities are also very purposely revealed to us in a flashback to the Umbrella Academy’s first mission as children, when they’re still eager and excited to use their powers and be a team, when it’s all still fun. As adults, their relationships to their powers have changed, and that’s slowly revealed by the ways they do, or don’t, use them as adults throughout the rest of the episode. Diego is the only one still using his power to fight crime, but more because he’s got something to prove than because he’s dedicated to justice. Alison is purposely choosing to not use her power, and Luther is trying to hide the ways his abilities have evolved, both of which becomes mysteries to explore as the season continues.
Klaus is the complicated one here. His ability to commune with the dead isn’t revealed in the flashback because it’s not a helpful power in combat, so instead they sneak a line of exposition in early on about him “talking to the dead.” Still, from there we get to see Klaus try, and fail, to summon the ghost of their father, and in one of the final scenes of the pilot, his abilities finally kick in as we see Klaus communicate with the ghost of his dead brother, Ben. This, again, accomplished multiple things. It helps the audience realize that Klaus can only use his powers when he’s sober, as he’s dried out by the end of the episode, and thus that he’s been purposely self-medicating to dull his abilities. We see that Diego can’t see Ben, and thus when he sees Klaus talking to Ben he only sees half a conversation, cutting to the tragic heart of Klaus’ relationship with his siblings; they think of him as crazy because of his addictions, but they also think of him as crazy even when he’s sober because of his powers. It’s also smart pacing, as the reveal of Ben’s ghost acts as an end of episode surprise/cliffhanger of sorts.
Speaking of pacing, it’s excellent throughout the episode. Making Five’s reveal of the impending apocalypse the end-of-episode, cut to black cliffhanger is another smart move, as it gives viewers the entire episode to get used to the sibling dynamics that are the heart of the series before providing this sudden impetus to make us want to binge that next episode. The reveal of Five himself is also smartly timed. We learn that he vanished as a child maybe fifteen minutes into the episode, but Five makes his grand return from the future exactly half-way through the pilot’s runtime. That allows the episode time to establish the dynamic between the remaining Hargreeves before completely upending them in interesting ways by reintroducing Five to the proceedings, but it also leaves plenty of time to establish Five as a key character before the end of the episode.
Five’s big fight (set to “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” by They Might Be Giants) against a group of armed goons in the final act is almost the pilot episode’s standout scene, and does a lot of heavy lifting to establish Five’s attitude and relationship to his powers in the way the opening scenes did for his siblings, while also showing the choreography and music choices we could come to expect from future Umbrella Academy action sequences. Still, it’s edged out of the spot by the instantly iconic dance sequence.
Narratively, this scene does nothing to move the plot along, but in every other way it’s brilliant. First of all — and most memorably — it’s a welcome bit of joy, color, and catharsis for both the characters and the audience after a tense set of reunions. It’s just plain fun. But it also reveals hidden facets of the characters’ inner lives by allowing them to let down their guard. Up to this point we’ve only seen Luther as a stern, self righteous leader, but here we see him as the awkward overgrown child he is inside, the one who was so busy running missions that he never had time to grow up. Alison reveals that beneath her glamorous exterior is someone who still remembers how to have fun; Diego, though, is highly regimented and coordinated even when he’s having fun. And poor Vanya is stiff, awkward, and somewhat glum looking even in a moment of pure joy and dance. It’s the first sign that her issues run deeper than anyone’s.
This scene’s greatest important comes thematically, though. It’s only by coming home that these characters are able to let down their walls and reconnect with this more innocent and joyful part of themselves. Yet, despite the fact that the whole family is there, dancing along to the same song, they’re also all separated, walled off, unable to share the moment with each other. It’s the first sign that the Hargreeves kids can only fix their lives and come to terms with their pasts by coming together as a family, and when that finally happens at the end of Season Two, it’s a joyous moment indeed, something we’ve been waiting to see happen for twenty whole episodes.
I don’t know if the rest of Umbrella Academy ever fully lives up to this pilot. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the first season quite a bit, and I think the second season is even better (it fixes a lot of the problems the first had and moves in interesting new directions), it’s just that this is a practically flawless pilot, worth not only enjoying as a piece of entertainment, but breaking down to see just how it works so damn well.
COMICS VS. TELEVISION
Of course, The Umbrella Academy television series is based off a series of comics by Gabriel Ba and My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way. Surprisingly, I had actually never read the comic before checking out the show, and this might be a hot take, but after having read the first volume, it turns out I much prefer the show!
The biggest complaint about the show is that it’s lost a lot of the absurdity of the comic, and this is true. I do wish we got to see the characters use their powers more, and there’s a lot of colorful, outlandish stuff in the comic — a sentient Eiffel tower, a man’s head screwed onto a gorilla’s body, a man with a Goldfish tank for a head (though that one does eventually show up in Season Two) — that would have been fun to see pop up in the show. The writers and showrunners have stated that the main thing holding them back here is, of course, the budget.
But the comic falls short in other ways. It just doesn’t have the time and space to explore the characters in the way the show does. Klaus does almost nothing in the first volume, for example, and the only characters who feel like they have any sort of arc throughout the volume are Vanya, Five, and maybe Diego. The comic also complicates the characters by giving them all three names (their number/rank, their superhero name, and their real name), and I think it was a smart move for the show to drop their individual superhero names and costumes altogether and have their numbers and school uniforms replace them.
Yet, the show also paints the Hargreeves as much more complex, interesting, and sympathetic characters. The comic versions are more simple characters, and thus much more unpleasant ones. I’m not saying these characters need to be nice and pure, Superman or Captain America. Even in the show they’re incredibly flawed and dysfunctional figures, but they also have souls, you can tell they’re trying to be better and that they’re just terrifically bad at it. Their comic counterparts almost seem to revel in being cruel, grim, and edgy.
For example — AND MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW — Vanya’s deep insecurities stem from growing up powerless and ignored in a family of famous superheroes. It’s eventually revealed that Vanya is actually the most powerful of them all, that her father had been hiding her abilities because he was scared of her, and she ends up being the one to bring about the very apocalypse the Hargreeves are trying to prevent. In the show, Vanya’s actions are driven by her own insecurities, but she’s also been manipulated by her father all her life, she’s manipulated by a villain who disguises himself as her love interest in order to prey on her weaknesses, and all of her siblings also make major, devastating mistakes handling the discovery of her abilities, all of which lead to her losing control of her powers. In contrast, in the comic, after facing yet another rejection from her family, Vanya purposely and maliciously decides to destroy the world because of how badly it’s treated her. Likewise, in the show Five is shown to have a kinship early on with Vanya, even if it’s one he’s willing to abandon when she’s not useful to him, and all the siblings accept their responsibility in how Vanya turned out and try to save her once she’s lost control. In the comic, Five dispatches her with a cold “I never liked you” and a bullet to the head. The show has more nuance, but the comic is all “badass” cruelty.
The comic also has a kinda screwed up attitude about incest and adoption. Diego is romantically interested in Vanya, and Luther and Alison have a pseudo-romantic relationship going on. When asked about it after the first season of the show premiered (about half way down in this interview), Way says that when he wrote the comic, he didn’t consider it incest and “they’re not even related!” This, of course, misses the whole reason why incest is so taboo (it’s not the blood, or at least not just the blood, it’s that people who grew up together in the same home falling for each other is creepy and dysfunctional), and has the unfortunate implication that adopted siblings or children aren’t actually family or related to each other. Way does, at least, say that his views on this have changed as he’s gotten older. The show removes the Diego/Vanya entanglement entirely but sticks to the Luther/Alison stuff in the first season, but almost entirely drops it in the second after mostly negative fan feedback on it, and does so in an organic way and even makes fun of themselves for having ever really attempted it at all!
Ultimately, The Umbrella Academy is a deconstruction of your typical teen superhero/superhero team book. It’s just that the comic deconstructs them by essentially saying “being a kid superhero would turn you into an awful person,” while the show deconstructs them by treating the characters like real, flawed people trying to make a change. I know which one I prefer.
So yeah, sorry purists, but as much as I love comic books, I’m team TV all the way on this one.
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!