The Big Picture

The Umbrella Academy
‘s final season airs in August, bringing an emotional end to the Netflix series.
The cast members are experiencing bittersweet feelings about the series’ conclusion while expressing gratitude for a purposeful ending.
The final season of
The Umbrella Academy
explores the characters’ struggles without powers, new guest stars, and family dynamics.

Netflix’s trippy, apocalyptic — or perhaps it’s better to say apocalypse-avoiding — series The Umbrella Academy is coming to an end this August, sending the Hargreeves family out on one last adventure, this time without their superpowers. A daunting prospect for any superpowered being, I’m sure, but even more so for the Hargreeves siblings, whose idea of “quality family time” is more often than not “preventing the apocalypse.” In May 2023, Collider had the opportunity to visit the set of The Umbrella Academy and speak with the cast as they filmed a scene from the fourth and final season. While the Hargreeves siblings might be looking forward to a break from saving the world when the series comes to an end next month, the cast themselves are feeling decidedly more nostalgic.

“It’s bittersweet,” said Tom Hopper, who plays Luther Hargreeves, when asked how it felt headed into the last season. “I realized the other day that I’ve been on this show, from when I got cast in it, a good chunk of my 30s. I said to someone the other day when they said, ‘How do you feel?’ I said, ‘Ask me in six months after we’ve finished, or after it’s been on.’ Because right now I can’t… we’re still so in it, it’s hard to kind of distinguish what I feel like.”

His co-stars Robert Sheehan, who plays Klaus Hargreeves, and David Castañeda, who plays Diego Hargreeves, similarly felt like it hadn’t hit them yet. Castañeda compared the experience to a breakup, adding, “As a boy, you break up and the first thing you feel is immediate freedom. And then, in about six weeks, it’ll be like tears and missing and all these things.” For his part, Sheehan admitted the scale of the series left him too preoccupied to think of the end, saying “”I kind of don’t feel anything yet, in terms of the end. There’s so much, every day, every week, you walk into a new strange reality in The Umbrella Academy.”

Emmy Raver-Lampman and Elliot Page, who play Allison and Viktor Hargreeves respectively, were grateful they got to go into the fourth season knowing it was going to be the last, and getting to end the story on their terms. As Raver-Lampman put it:

“It’s weird. It’s bittersweet. I think because we’re in the thick of it, it doesn’t quite feel like the end yet because we’ve got…so much to do. I won’t speak for both of us, but I feel very fortunate to start a season knowing that it’s the end because I think a lot of shows and a lot of actors and a lot of productions don’t get that. They kind of get cut off at the knees, and in between seasons, then finding out the season they did at the end was the last one and they don’t get to say their final goodbyes and don’t get to cherish the moments. And also, their characters don’t get the ending that they had hoped for or don’t get the nice bow put on the experience for the audience and for the creative. So I think it’s been really nice to kind of watch the show kind of wind down in a purposeful way.”

Page echoed the sentiments of his onscreen sister, adding that the cast is lucky that the audience responded as passionately as they have. “We work with all the incredible people we work with, in front of and behind the camera, who have made this all possible. It’s lovely to finish on this note with everyone, and it’s going to be sad to say goodbye.”

Ritu Arya, who plays Lila Pitts, told us she was already starting to feel the range of emotions associated with such a major project coming to an end, but also echoed her co-stars’ sentiments that at least they got to go into the final season knowing it would be the last:

“It feels bittersweet. I feel like it’s been such a life-changing experience, so I really don’t want it to end. I’ve had the best time. We’ve got two weeks left now, so I’m sort of feeling that pull on my heart a bit. But yeah, I think we were lucky because we knew that it was going to be our last season and a lot of shows don’t get that, so it can be a bit of a shock when they’re not coming back. So for that, I think we were really lucky.

The experience is obviously still emotional for Arya, though, when it comes to saying goodbye to Lila Pitts. “I can’t let go of Lila, I love playing her. I’ve just been so blessed and so grateful to be part of this show. So, yeah, I’m gonna be a wreck when it ends.” While the rest of the cast was more focused on how they felt facing the end of this four-season journey, Aidan Gallagher, who plays the youngest — or rather, youngest-looking — Hargreeves sibling Five, took the time to share his excitement about the final season, and where it takes his character in particular:

“Well, coming out of this last season, it’s been extremely fun. I’ve had more fun this year than any others because everything’s like so tight. And also, this year is sort of different in a lot of ways, which sort of breathed a lot of life into it. And Five has this really fulfilling emotional arc this year throughout the course of the show, he’s been like nonstop because it’s only been, like, a few weeks for him. But in Season 4, he has no real purpose, he doesn’t know what to do with his life. He’s lost. He’s using the job at the CIA as this facade of purpose and something that he can hold onto, but it’s hollow, and yeah, he just doesn’t know what his place is in the universe. And when he goes on this emotional arc, it, for the first time, sort of gives him a place in the world, and he feels like there’s a reason for really living. Without it, everything means nothing to him.”

How Do ‘The Umbrella Academy’ Characters Deal With Being Powerless in Season 4?

A big surprise at the end of The Umbrella Academy Season 3 was the way the Hargreeves siblings — and Lila — suddenly find themselves without their powers, and head their separate ways. So what does this mean for them heading into the fourth and final season? For Klaus, this new normal forces him to reevaluate the way he’s been living his life. As Sheehan put it:

“For Klaus, it means he’s really, really terrified of death now. He’s really very scared of dying, which is a nice little sort of 180. So he’s kind of become a bit of a germaphobe, bit OCD – well, not a bit, to the extreme – so he’s bubble-wrapped in his apartment. He’s one of those really boring people who’s scared of everything, you know? And that’s the sort of lesson that he has to learn, I suppose, as the series goes, you know, how not to be scared of life.”

Hopper echoed the “boring” sentiment, saying that Luther now finds himself back in a place he hasn’t experienced for a while: namely, without his gorilla body. “[I]n various ways, he’s embracing what that means for him. He’s without Sloane, as well, so that’s the thing that he’s sort of been dealing with quietly, very quietly, maybe too quietly.”

Diego, on the other hand, is in a much more resentful place, not only for the loss of his powers but due to other major changes in his life as well. As Castañeda said:

“I feel like, “Oh, yeah, we’re superheroes without powers. We’re all dealing with the exact same thing. And I’m like, “Actually, we’re not… this is completely different goalposts!” So like, someone who is not really honoring who they really are because all the powers are stripped away. It sort of puts him in a place of always resenting things, resenting everyone because he feels like he can’t be accepted, and he’s doing favors for everyone. He’s trying to make everyone happy and it’s sort of making him more and more and more miserable. So that’s sort of where Diego’s at.”

For Raver-Lampman, she teases that Allison has reprioritized her life after reuniting with her daughter at the end of Season 3, and getting everything she fought so hard for. “Allison got the most important thing, the thing that she’s been fighting for three seasons to get, [which] was to be a mom again and to get reunited with Claire. So I think this season, Alison is very much in mom mode and the family won because of the decision she made the season before. But this family, and the nonsense that they always get involved in, is not a priority to her anymore.”

There is also, of course, the slightly awkward matter of Allison’s siblings feeling betrayed by her actions last season, something Raver-Lampman says comes up again this season. “People are really mad at her and her decisions,” she said. “So I think she’s feeling a little awkward for a lot of this season just around these people. Some of their lives, she really destroyed, so there’s guilt there, there’s awkwardness, but also, I think she doesn’t regret it because she got her daughter back. I think any mother would do that.”

For Page’s Viktor, the separation from his siblings allows him to thrive in his own way, making the inevitable, but necessary reunion awkward:

“Viktor is kind of off on his own. He’s really separated himself from the family, and he, in coming back to meet up with everyone, does so relatively reluctantly. I think he’s established his life, he’s feeling good, he’s feeling embodied, he’s doing his thing, and in many ways ends up sort of going off in a way, not that he wishes, but he feels he has to because it’s his family. And in regards to the relationship with Allison, it’s very much what Emmy said, you know, there’s been time, so he actually does understand her decisions. She wants to get back to her daughter, that’s completely reasonable. But of course, it’s awkward and we’ve had these moments, but ultimately, we’ve all ended up in a situation where we’re back together again and we need to figure out how to get along and work together.”

‘The Umbrella Academy’s New Cast Members Are a Highlight of Season 4

Besides the opportunity to once do scenes as a group, something Hopper speculates is a fan favorite, Season 4 also brings in a trio of incredible guest stars: Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally, and David Cross. The comedic trio is a highlight for the cast, with Sheehan saying:

“They’re awesome additions to the show. I like that Klaus, he goes off on a very, very strange tangent in this season, and that’s going to be sort of quite, very, very bizarre, very macabre. We shot some great stuff. There’s an actor from Toronto who I really admire called George Tchortov who plays strongly in that side thing. And we, the two of us, had some really, really good stuff, and Klaus sort of plummets back into drug addiction quite severely, and then sort of through, I think just through relaxing and also kind of getting power back and everything else, he starts to discover other aspects of his power, he can do other stuff”

Raver-Lampman and Page echoed the sentiment, with Page expressing his shock when he heard just who would be joining them for the new season: “I think Megan and Nick as Jean and Gene is definitely a major highlight. They’re fantastic characters. They’re obviously sensational, next-level talented people. When I heard they were doing it, my jaw literally dropped.” Raver-Lampman also shared that she was excited for fans to meet the newcomers, but emphasized the importance and the excellence of the moments when the whole family gets to be together on-screen.

“I think the magic of the show is when the family is all together, so there’s just a lot of that. There’s a lot of the family dynamic and the nonsense and the shenanigans and the jokes, but we also hold on to the emotional core that the show has where there’s still some really moving moments and some of us going on some really overdue journeys. I think, kind of bringing it to a close, I think we’re touching on things that people have been waiting to be touched on. So, yeah, I think there’s a few good things.”

Speaking of family, Raver-Lampman teases that fans will get plenty of the siblings all together as the show winds down, something that hasn’t always been a given as they venture onto their separate arcs in seasons past:

“With the end coming, we’ve spent a lot of time this season, all of us packed into a car for many episodes [laughs]. So I think that that’s been actually– because we tend to kind of spread out as the season goes, but this season there’s a little bit of that, but I think because the magic of this show exists when we’re all together, I think we’ve spent a lot of time not only together, but crammed into a vintage VW van riding all over the place. So those have been chaos, but also really, really fun just to kind of exist in such a small space together at the very end.”

Page also teased that he will be spending a lot more time with Colm Feore, who plays the family patriarch Reginald, this season. “We have a fair amount together and that’s been quite a treat because he’s such a tremendous actor. It is funny when you do these long seasons, and you know, we’ve done four seasons, but there are certain people where you didn’t actually really have too much interaction with. So that was nice, after all this time, to have the scenes with him, particularly as Viktor with his father and how that’s culminated in the final season. That was quite a joy.”

Will ‘The Umbrella Academy’ Season 4 Have Those Iconic Needledrops?
Image via Netflix

As much a part of the series as anything else is those iconic needledrops. We all remember the Footloose number from Season 3, and it was actually watching Season 1’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” number that convinced me to even watch the show in the first place. So can we expect more of the same in Season 4?

“There are some excellent needle drops, I will say that this year,” Hopper told us. “A lot of ones that I think will keep fans very happy.” While Sheehan said there were limitations on their ability to include a full-scale dance number — though hope still springs eternal — Castañeda did say, “We do one in the CIA that’s almost like a dance,” with Sheehan adding, “There’s a big fan-favorite at the end of the season, isn’t there?” Whether he’s referring to a song or a dance number remains a mystery, at least for now.

The fourth and final season of The Umbrella Academy hits Netflix on August 8. Stay tuned to Collider for more from our visit to the set.

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