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August 1, 2020December 1, 2020

“The Umbrella Academy” Season 2 – SPOILERS!

**MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY SEASONS 1 & 2 AHEAD!**

By the end of the weekend, almost everyone who intends to watch the second season of The Umbrella Academy will have binged all ten hours on Netflix: but for those of us who simply couldn’t wait and/or spread out our viewing across multiple days and who are now probably wishing they could travel into a future where season three is already out, here’s what I hope will be a comprehensive and detailed breakdown of every major twist and turn in season two of the mega-popular superhero series – with a special focus on those developments which will probably impact the series’ third season (if it’s renewed, but I think it’s a given that it will be). Not everything was left crystal clear after the season finale’s closing credits, and a bunch of burning questions were left unanswered. Characters were once again scattered across time and space…and some had even died. There’s a lot to go over, so settle in.

Let’s start from the beginning. There’s a massive spoiler in the first couple of minutes. Soon after Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) teleports his family out of an apocalypse in 2019 (a.k.a. everything that went down in the season one finale), he finds himself trapped in another one in 1963 – this time a nuclear apocalypse caused by the Soviet Union invading the United States and littering the country with atom bombs. Not only that, but the rest of his family have all been scattered throughout the early 1960’s; though each one arrived at the exact same location, in a back alley in downtown Dallas. Texas. Before Five can be obliterated in the cataclysm, he is rescued by Hazel (Cameron Britton), the sweet, lovable assassin sent by the Commission to kill Five in season one. Hazel, now an old man, takes Five back in time just ten days and instructs him to find the other members of the Umbrella Academy and unite them against the forces of evil. In the exceedingly brief time that Hazel is onscreen, he has time to inform Five that he lived out a full and happy life with his girlfriend Agnes before she succumbed to cancer – and almost immediately after that, Hazel himself gets violently murdered by the Commission’s newest agents, a trio of white-haired, Swedish gunmen. It’s a shocking one-two gutpunch that instantly raises the stakes for the rest of the season and reminds us that no one, not even the fan favorites, are invulnerable to a cruel writer’s whims.

Although it forms the crux of the second season’s plot, the nuclear apocalypse that Hazel warned about is actually dealt with prior to the finale. To nobody’s surprise, the key to the whole mess is once again Vanya Hargreeves (Elliot Page), who starts out the season suffering from amnesia after being hit by a car: since she’s unable to remember anything about her world-destroying superpowers or the harm that her siblings did to her, it seems for a hot minute like she might just get to be happy and carefree – but of course, it just wouldn’t be The Umbrella Academy unless Vanya was having every ounce of joy ripped away from her at all times. Before the end of the season, she relearns everything about herself and unleashes her powers on a group of cops, leading to her being arrested and placed in the FBI’s custody. Due to the horrible misfortune of having a Russian name, Vanya is suspected of being a KGB spy placed in Dallas to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. She gets tortured, but proves to be too strong for the FBI to contain – with her mind straining under pressure and her emotional state already fragile, it doesn’t take long before her sonic powers incinerate her guards and she starts blowing up buildings.

But this time, thankfully, Luther (Tom Hopper) isn’t around to make matters worse by trying to run headfirst at her, yelling. This time it’s Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Diego (David Castañeda), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), and Klaus’ ghostly traveling companion and deceased Umbrella Academy member Ben (Justin H. Min) who are there to try and save their sister and the world – and they actually do a good job. Diego, Allison and Klaus, to be fair, all get knocked out, but it’s Ben, taking a corporeal form with Klaus’ help, who manages to walk effortlessly through Vanya’s shield of shockwaves and possess her: a talent that Ben only began to learn about earlier in the season after accidentally (and later intentionally) doing it to Klaus. Ben is able to possess Vanya’s body long enough to bring her back, but it comes at a high cost.

Ben is a ghost, but it turns out that he’s also not officially dead yet, having never entered the literal “light at the end of the tunnel”. This explains why he’s still able to take a physical form and sometimes even interact with other characters. Klaus is led to believe that the reason for this is because of something he told Ben years earlier, at the latter’s funeral, but Ben reveals to Vanya while inside her head that it was never that: it was because Ben was too scared to leave his family behind entirely. But by entering Vanya’s head and possessing her body, Ben uses up all his energy, sacrificing himself to save her. He and Vanya have a touching final conversation before Ben drifts away, with Vanya hugging him so that he won’t have to die alone.

But despite how climactic all that may sound, that’s actually not the finale. President Kennedy still gets shot, and the government still puts out bounties for the arrest of Vanya and the rest of the Hargreeves family, but the Umbrella Academy has bigger problems to worry about. Vanya realizes through visions that she needs to return to the farm outside of Dallas where she had been living with her lover, a woman named Sissy (Marin Ireland), and Sissy’s son, Harlan, who accidentally received a portion of Vanya’s powers and has become a swirling tornado of unstoppable energy. In what I feel might just be the most emotional scene in the entire series, Vanya at first starts driving off toward Sissy’s farm alone, but is stopped when Klaus suddenly jumps into the passenger’s seat. He is followed by Allison and Diego, and, soon after, Five, who tells Vanya that she owes him one now. Even Luther clambers into the trunk. The family, finally united, heads to the farm to take on the new threat.

But when they get there, they don’t just find Harlan and his mom stuck in the barn while snow and lightning whips around them. They are also greeted by none other than The Handler (Kate Walsh), who had returned earlier in the season (she didn’t actually die when Hazel shot her in the season one finale: a steel plate installed in her skull saved her from his bullet). Now in charge of the Commission and intent on slaughtering the Umbrella Academy, The Handler brings with her an entire army of the Commission’s time-traveling assassins – every last one, in fact. Also alongside her is her adoptive daughter, the mysterious woman named Lila (Ritu Arya), whose short, tempestuous romance with Diego (before he knew she was a Commission agent) ended with Lila promising to murder him, if only to please her mother. The Handler’s army sweeps across Sissy’s farm, but it’s Vanya who actually averts a catastrophe this time by using her powers to fly over the battlefield and send a massive shockwave hurtling back towards The Handler. All of the Commission army are killed in the blast, but The Handler and Lila somehow survive, thanks to a force-field bubble around them. A force-field bubble which looks identical to Vanya’s own powers.

As the Umbrella Academy watches in horror, Lila herself takes to the air, absorbing Vanya’s powers and sending them straight back at her. Vanya tumbles from the sky, crashing into the side of Sissy’s barn. But Lila isn’t done yet – she hunts down every member of the team (well, except for Klaus and Diego), and proceeds to mimic their own powers: she sends Luther hurtling through a brick wall with super strength; she persuades Allison to stop breathing (Allison is only rescued by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from Luther); she even fights Five, blinking in and out of portals and nearly defeating him – but Five stops her in her tracks by revealing a terrible truth: The Handler never loved her. She’s always been using Lila. In fact, she gave the order to kill Lila’s parents so she could pretend to swoop in and rescue the orphaned child. Why? Because Lila’s powers of imitation prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is one of the other thirty-eight superpowered children born on the 1st of October, 1989, and The Handler has been manipulating that power for Lila’s entire life.

But here’s the real shocker. Just as Lila begins to realize that Five is telling the truth, as her eyes well up with tears of emotion, as the rest of the Umbrella Academy joins her and offers to take her in as family – The Handler enters with a machine gun and mows down the entire Academy. Only Five survives the initial attack, and is able to watch, dumbfounded, as The Handler goes on to murder Lila before herself being murdered by the last of the three Swedes, who rightfully blames her for the death of his brothers. Just before the Swede can shoot Five dead, Five remembers something he learned from his father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore), earlier in the season when they sat down for a light supper – that time travel can be a matter of seconds rather than years or decades. Five is thus able to rewind time to the moment right before The Handler entered, and snatches her weapon. A lot of things happen very quickly: Lila angrily confronts her mother, asking for the truth, but The Handler is shot by the Swede before she can respond. Lila, enraged, grabs her mother’s time-traveling briefcase and escapes. After a tense staring contest, the Swede and Five both put down their guns and the Swede leaves.

Despite how much death and destruction there is, the final battle ends on a happy note, with Vanya rescuing Harlan and Sissy, and The Commission, now in chaos, electing sweet, innocent Herb (Ken Hall) to run the organization. Herb, who became a close friend of Diego’s during the latter half of the season, shows up to inform the Umbrella Academy of the good news and seems to indicate that The Commission will even be an ally of the Academy’s going forward. I expect The Commission to still play a large part in the storyline, but I wonder whether they’ll ever again return to villainous practices, or whether Herb’s leadership will improve the place exponentially.

With the battle over and 1963 saved, it’s time for The Umbrella Academy to pack up and return to their own timeline. We watch as each member of the team says their goodbyes to the people they met and became close to in the 60’s – Allison is spared having to do so in person, but she leaves an emotional farewell letter for her husband, Raymond (Yusuf Gatewood). I hope Allison and Raymond will be able to see each other again at some point. Their marriage was fraught with trust issues, but both characters were willing to do everything in their power to make it work, and they weren’t siblings, which was a big step up from season one Allison.

Thankfully, Allison’s relationship with her brother Luther is pretty much over by the end of the season, though there are still hints that it could continue into season three. Luther still yearns for her and is clearly upset that she got married to someone else, and his mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is a bit too enthusiastic, if you ask me. But where one incestuous relationship on this series ends, another one begins. Diego and Lila’s romance is suddenly very disturbing in hindsight, and even Diego realizes that – though that doesn’t stop him from confessing his love to her just a few minutes after learning that she is, in fact, somehow related to him. That’s one of the major problems with having a show that focuses so heavily on family: romantic options are limited.

However, that’s not a valid excuse, because somehow Vanya was able to do the unthinkable and form a close, romantic bond with a person outside the Hargreeves family unit. Her slow burn relationship with Sissy is the second season’s beating heart – she gets to finally enjoy the company of someone who actually loves her for who she is and isn’t just trying to play on her emotions and weaponize her powers, and that love (as well as the responsibility of having to care for Sissy’s autistic son in an era before the condition was fully understood) proves vital for her character development. Unfortunately, the couple go through some hard times, with everyone around them trying to pull them apart, send them to pastors for spiritual guidance, or imprison them. They end up mutually parting ways at the end of the season, despite how hard Vanya begs for Sissy to accompany her into the future. Sissy tells Vanya that if she ever finds a safe way back to her, that she’ll be waiting – which gives me hope we’ll see her again. We’ll definitely see her son again, since it’s shown that he still has a little bit of Vanya’s powers left in him.

Klaus is also able to reunite with the love of his life, a man named Dave (Calem MacDonald) he met via time travel in season one, though his attempt to stop Dave from enlisting in the army (an action which will later result in Dave’s death in the Vietnam War) only results in Dave doing so even sooner. Near the end of the finale, we see Dave boarding a military bus, but looking back over his shoulder – is he regretting his decision? Could we possibly see him again? If we do, I hope it will be with the actor from season one: Dave in season two seems to be in his late teens, which would make any actual romance between him and Klaus slightly uncomfortable.

Speaking of Klaus, the free-loving, groovy cult he leaves behind ends up recruiting an unexpected new member in the finale – the third Swede, who sighs deeply before boarding their flowery double-decker bus and riding off into the sunset.

But the Umbrella Academy themselves aren’t going to be able to ride off into the sunset just yet – after giving Klaus a moment to steal one of Sissy’s cowboy hats, the entire team teleports again, this time as a group and to the future. The date of their arrival is April 2nd, 2019: the day after the original apocalypse. The Academy mansion is still standing, the world is not destroyed, and it almost looks like everything is alright. But it’s not. Because somehow, Five seems to have made another mistake in his calculations: they’ve landed in a different timeline entirely. One in which Reginald Hargreeves himself is still alive, and is the headmaster of a new, Sparrow Academy with its own team of superheroes. And this team’s Number One is a scarred, floppy-haired alternate version of Ben Hargreeves.

The impression I’m under is that this timeline is some sort of parallel universe. Something that the Umbrella Academy did in 1963 must have caused Reginald to start a very different kind of Academy: by the looks of it, an ultra successful one that hasn’t been divided by infighting over their years of service. I’m already prepared to hate them all, and their smug, entitled attitudes. But there’s another interesting thing about the possibility of an alternate timeline – in this timeline, who else is still alive? Could we see Eudora Patch, Diego’s former girlfriend, return? Is Allison’s daughter Claire even alive? Does Harold Jenkins still bear a hatred for this version of the Academy? And most importantly, are our six protagonists going to meet themselves in this timeline?

Then there’s the question of who Reginald is. Late in the season, it’s revealed that Reginald is an alien (something that was already suspected) when he pulls off his face and reveals his true, reptilian form. Unfortunately, we only get a little glimpse of this, so we’ll have to wait until season three to find out what he really looks like beneath his human disguise. Whatever he is and wherever he’s from, I assume it has something to do with his secret operations on the Moon – throughout season two, he’s busy working with the real-life Grace (Jordan Claire Robbins), who seems to have been a scientist specializing in animal behavior and Reginald’s girlfriend before she was the Umbrella Academy’s robotic mom. Pogo, the humanoid chimpanzee who acted as Reginald’s right hand man in season one, is also revealed to have been Grace and Reginald’s pet project: for some reason, the couple were training him to fly rockets to, you guessed it, the Moon. Something is going on up there, and as much as I hate to admit it, I think Luther may have been right all along: the Moon and the history of the Umbrella Academy are intrinsically linked.

But don’t expect the moon to cause another apocalypse in season three. Showrunner Steve Blackman has already revealed that he plans to move away from end-of-the-world storylines in the third season, which makes me suspect that the Umbrella Academy will have to face off against a more physical enemy – the Sparrow Academy.

In this confrontation, I fully expect Vanya Hargreeves to take the lead. Although Luther is still technically the Umbrella Academy’s leader, he has become a lot less arrogant and defensive about his position over the course of season two, whereas Vanya has grown from being shy and diminutive to being a confident, capable heroine. As the team’s most powerful member and the character voted most likely to rip Reginald Hargreeves limb from limb, it makes sense to establish her as the opposition to him and his rival Academy.

So what did you think of The Umbrella Academy season two, and what do you expect will happen next? Share your own thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!

July 31, 2020December 1, 2020

“The Umbrella Academy” Season 2 Review!

The first season of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy was, no questions asked, an exhilarating and entertaining ten hours of twists, turns and time travel. But the second season, which picks up mere moments after the season one finale and finds the seven members of the dysfunctional Hargreeves family split up throughout the 1960’s, takes the series to a whole new high: The Umbrella Academy elevates all the best elements of the first season, arriving at a delicate yet necessary balance between goofy, comic-booky fun and epic, emotional drama, while simultaneously working to revise or improve parts of the story that were heavily criticized, such as pacing issues and certain problematic character beats (ahem, romanticized incest).

When the season opened (turns out, the clip released by Netflix a few days ago and advertised as the first scene isn’t quite the first), I enjoyed a raw moment of catharsis because it felt so wonderful to be back, spending more time with these characters – each and every one of whom, with the obvious exception of Luther (Tom Hopper), is truly delightful. They’re each so unique, so independent, and so beautifully messed up. Their family dynamic is what makes the series click. And they thrive both on their own and as a team – which stands in contrast to season one, where many of their individual subplots felt meandering or aimless compared to the few and far between team-up moments. In season two, each member of the Umbrella Academy is going after their destiny with purpose and determination, making them each more compelling and significantly more dangerous, as their agendas clash repeatedly.

Once again kicking off the events of the season, Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) is, in my opinion, the most fascinating of our seven antiheroes: having successfully teleported the Umbrella Academy out of reach of the apocalypse at the end of season one, Five quickly realizes, with a little help from Hazel (Cameron Britton), that the end of the world is going to follow the Academy wherever or whenever they go. This time, it’s not Vanya Hargreeves with the white violin in the theater – it’s an impending Soviet invasion sparked by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Much like in season one, Five takes the initiative – hunting for clues across the timeline, doing his best to find his family and unite them, and colliding violently with the bureaucratic Commission – but this time around, he seems more personally invested in the fate of the world, and we watch as his frigid facade begins to crack under pressure and he has to resort to more uncharacteristic methods: for instance, hand-to-hand combat. We finally get to see the once-legendary killer in action, and his fight scenes (and there are several!) are well worth the wait.

Second to Five but not far behind him is Vanya (Elliot Page), who has had a massive character overhaul since the season one finale. It’s hard to say too much without risking spoilers, but Vanya isn’t quite the same person she was when she blew up the moon and destroyed the world with her supersonic abilities. In fact, she’s actually kind of…happier? If I had to criticize, I’d even say she’s a bit too calm about everything that happened. That being said, while her portrayal in this season starts out a bit weak, by the finale she’s fully come into her own and is rocking a new personality and some cool new powers that I definitely can’t talk about. What’s not a spoiler is that Elliot Page gets to dance again this season, and Vanya actually has moves! Still a little awkward, but a definite improvement from the…disjointed shoulder shuffle.

Speaking of dancing, we have to go off-topic for a moment and talk about the soundtrack. I have my suspicions that it won’t be as instantly iconic as season one’s, which gave the series a reputation for setting all sorts of scenes to absolutely random yet brilliant songs, but there’s still a lot of hits. A lot. I want to highlight Daniela Andrade’s “Crazy” and Boney M.’s “Sunny”, which plays over an unforgettable Klaus (Robert Sheehan) scene.

Back on topic, just like that. Klaus and his ghostly companion Ben (Justin H. Min) arrive in the decade before any of their siblings and have the most time to ease seamlessly into the 60’s. Klaus, predictably, gets entangled with a cult and somehow becomes their leader and nonsensical prophet, a duty with many perks which he later regrets as the cult starts following him obsessively around Dallas. But the zaniest Umbrella Academy member isn’t just there for comedic relief and drug-fueled, psychedelic hijinks; he also nails every dramatic character beat he gets. Ben does too, but all of Ben’s best scenes count as spoilers.

Then there’s Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), whose relationship with Vanya was arguably the thematic core of season one. She’s just as much in the spotlight here, leading an entire Black community into the civil rights campaign alongside her new husband, Raymond (Yusuf Gatewood), who is thankfully not her brother – no matter how many times Allison might claim that she and Luther aren’t “technically” related, I’m with Klaus on this one: once you have to use the word “technically”, there’s already a problem. But Allison’s biggest issue isn’t her brother anymore: it’s her superpower, which she has to refrain from using, even when it would be so easy to use it to get whatever she wants, from free clothes to equality to vengeance.

Surprisingly, I have to say Luther was my next favorite, but that says more about how little I liked Diego (David Castañeda) this season than it does about any radical improvements from the Umbrella Academy’s emotionally stunted strongman. If there is one highlight in the character’s portrayal, it’s that he’s mostly comedic relief now. And I’m happy to report that the series doesn’t try to excuse or apologize for the fact that he subjected his own sister to permanently damaging physical, mental and emotional abuse: he gets called out several times for his part in causing the apocalypse. I think I may have just enjoyed seeing him get constantly beaten down, walked all over and blatantly ignored whenever he tried to roll out the usual spiel about being the Number One and the leader of the family. Is that mean? I love to hate him: that’s better than just hating him, right?

As for Diego, well, the truly unattractive new hairstyle isn’t the only problem with his character. One of my favorites from season one, he slowly but inevitably sank to the bottom of my list over the course of season two, thanks to being the only character still saddled with a self-inflicted hero complex. What makes Diego tolerable is that whenever he’s onscreen, he’s usually accompanied by his love interest, the enigmatic Lila (Ritu Arya), a fellow patient at the mental hospital where he’s been imprisoned. Lila’s role is crucial to the season and the series going forward, but again those pesky spoilers get in the way of us talking about any of that.

Amongst the rest of the supporting cast, the standouts are Marin Ireland as Sissy – a charming Texan farmwoman who has dreams of making a great escape from her married life – and Colm Feore, who reprises the role of Sir Reginald Hargreeves: but as a younger, even more nefarious version of the character. Viewers won’t learn everything about his history from this season, but they will get some tantalizing glimpses of who he really is, and what his plans for the Umbrella Academy were all along.

This season might seem to initially lack a strong presence from the villains, since the guy from the trailers with the fishbowl head is only in a couple of scenes and the trio of Swedes are mostly annoying obstacles rather than fully developed characters (though if you didn’t enjoy the Swedish rendition of Adele’s “Hello” on the soundtrack, I don’t know what to say to you), but that changes once another character comes on the scene. And the villains show up in full force for the finale, so don’t worry.

The Umbrella Academy season two leaves off with a definite hook for a third season – and since I imagine that this season will be eaten up by audiences, I think we’re going to get that third season as soon as possible. This started out as one of those series’ that I liked but felt a little embarrassed for liking so much: now, I don’t have any hesitation about saying that The Umbrella Academy is a masterpiece. It’s got the cool visuals and the thrilling action you want from a superhero story, but it’s got a lot more than that: it’s got heart, soul, and wit in equal measures, all tied up in one perfect package. That package also comes with a killer soundtrack, meme-worthy humor (Klaus’ parable of the scorpion and the frog being my favorite example), and a whole lot of weirdness – what’s not to love?

Series Rating: 9.5/10

July 29, 2020

“The Umbrella Academy” Season 2 First Scene!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcdqpPzlTkM

Can’t wait for Friday, and the release of the second season of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy? Well, you’re a little bit in luck: because, as part of a string of tantalizing tidbits and content delivered over the course of the week leading up to the premiere, Netflix has dropped the first scene of the first episode onto the internet – it’s just three minutes long, no longer than an average trailer (for the sake of simplicity, I’ve decided to rate it as I would a trailer), but there’s plenty here to enjoy. We see a violent new alternate timeline and a 1960’s apocalypse, all seven members of the Umbrella Academy team working together, and the return of fan-favorite Hazel as an old man – and we hear Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” used as the opening song on what is sure to be just as brilliant and varied a soundtrack as season one’s.

The scene opens mere moments after Number Five teleported the entire Umbrella Academy backwards through time at the end of season one, in order to save them from the apocalypse caused by rogue Academy member Vanya Hargreeves, whose supersonic powers accidentally caused the destruction of both the moon and the earth. Now, even though Vanya appears to no longer be a massive threat, the apocalypse is still just as imminent a danger. This scene follows Five as he drops out of a portal and navigates through the war-torn streets of Dallas, Texas, quickly coming to the realization that his time travel shenanigans have created an alternate timeline where the Soviet Union invades the United States after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

But even though that’s clearly a massive problem that needs to be addressed urgently, there’s still some good to come out of it. Five stumbles upon the other members of the dysfunctional Hargreeves family, fighting, for the first time, as a unit – each one utilizing their powers inventively and uniquely to try and prevent the Soviet incursion. The camera expertly spins from one family member to another at a brisk pace: first we see Vanya, who apparently can now levitate, using her supersonic abilities for good – literally tearing apart missiles. We move on to Klaus, who appears to be in complete control of his necromancy and is busy resurrecting dead soldiers. Luther, the team’s muscle, comes flying out of the sky like the Hulk and shields Klaus from a bazooka shot with his bare back. Meanwhile Ben, still a ghost but very clearly corporeal, is grabbing Soviet soldiers with his monstrous tentacles and strangling them. Down on the ground, Allison strides confidently through the battlefield in a stylish black cape: her powers of persuasion allow her to casually blow peoples’ brains out without ever having to fire a shot. And finally we watch as Diego and his throwing knives bring death from above, as the agile vigilante leaps from a crashed police car and twirls elegantly through midair.

It’s extraordinary, to put it lightly, and it feels exactly like what Five wanted to happen at the end of season one: a unified team of superpowered individuals fighting evil and saving the world. But unfortunately, it’s at this moment that Hazel, the reformed Commission assassin from season one, suddenly reappears, stepping out of a portal and asking Five to join him. Five, understandably, is both reluctant and confused, until Hazel points to the sky – and to the Soviet bombers about to fly overhead and drop their load of nukes on Dallas. Even though Five clearly has no idea what’s going on, he knows enough not to stay around in this alternate timeline: he takes Hazel’s hand, and the two disappear. It’s worth noting that Hazel is, for some reason, an old man now: did he live out an entire lifetime with his girlfriend Agnes in another timeline before returning to the past to avert the end? Everything is moving too quickly to say for sure!

And then, because this show enjoys hurting us, we get to watch as the other members of the Umbrella Academy are obliterated within seconds by a wave of nuclear fire that sweeps through Dallas before forming a lovely, umbrella-shaped tower of smoky cloud. They’re not really dead, of course: because, technically, none of this has happened yet. I assume the entire season will deal with Five trying to round up the Umbrella Academy team and unite them to prevent this grim scenario: whether he’ll have any success is up for debate. What’s not in question is that the end is coming, and for some reason it all revolves around President Kennedy’s death.

This is a fantastic entry to the second season: the story is already compelling, the action looks incredible (the special effects, especially, are cinematic), and the music choice is excellent. I can’t wait to see where the series goes from here, and how everything will come together, and I hope that the rest of the season is just as good as this scene.

Rating: 9.5/10

July 27, 2020

“The Witcher” Is Getting A Prequel! Yes, Already!

Dust off your old suit of armor (I hope you still have yours, and it hasn’t been worn down by your muscles, like Henry Cavill’s), sharpen your ancient broadsword, and toss a coin to your Witcher, because it’s time to return to The Continent. Netflix has just announced today that, while they’ve been waiting for filming to resume on season two of The Witcher series, early work has begun on a prequel spinoff series, titled Blood Origin, which will explore the life and times of the very first Witcher, over a thousand years before Geralt of Rivia. You may think it’s a bit early for spinoffs (and particularly prequels) when the franchise is still so young, but technically this won’t be the first – an animated film was also announced several months ago, which will follow the Witcher Vesemir and be titled Nightmare Of The Wolf (who else is loving these ridiculously over-the-top names?).

Blood Origin will be six episodes long, a short amount of time to pack in so much worldbuilding and deep lore from the Witcher books. Thankfully, writers Lauren Hissrich and Declan de Barra will be joined by the author of the original Witcher books, Andrzej Sapkowski, who will serve as a creative consultant on the series. Together, they will tackle the story of how the Witchers came into being, and how humans and monsters first clashed during the aftermath of the Conjunction of the Spheres.

Let’s go over the basics real quick, because even I didn’t know much about this period of Witcher history before researching for this post. In Sapkowski’s universe, there are several dimensions, or Spheres – each inhabited by different types of people: the Continent, the world in which The Witcher takes place, was originally only home to Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes. During the event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres, dimensions collided violently, scattering people across the universe and in worlds where they were afterwards trapped when the gateways between dimensions closed. The first humans, and a number of gruesome monsters, were left behind on the Continent – and with them came the magical force known as “chaos”, which Witcher fans will recognize as the power that fuels mages like Yennefer.

Blood Origin is supposed to take place a few hundred years after this event: monsters have overrun the Continent and are busy ripping people to shreds on a daily basis; the Elves are caught up in the middle of all the bloodshed; and the Mages, those few gifted individuals able to channel the power of chaos, are working on a solution to the problem – a solution which will manifest itself in the very first Witchers: a unique breed of superhuman killing machines designed to hunt monsters into extinction and liberate humankind. We don’t actually know the identity of the first person to survive the grueling process one has to undergo in order to become a Witcher, so the show will be working with a blank slate. In fact, we know startlingly little about this entire chapter in the chronology: the names of the two Mages who designed the Witchers, Cosimo Malaspina and Alzur, are some of the only details available from the books and video games.

But in the long run, that might be for the best. With so much uncharted territory to explore, there will be plenty of room to build new storylines and invent new characters – some of this material could then be brought over into the main series (yes, they’re separated by a thousand years, but it’s fantasy: immortality and indestructibility are always valid excuses), tying the two together, perhaps even allowing us to draw parallels between the first Witcher and one of the last. Either that, or it will just be a really interesting and expensive bit of backstory for the world, and I love some backstory. I also really enjoyed The Witcher, so I’m excited that there’s even more content on its way. We don’t have a release date for Blood Origin yet, but it’s probably going to hit Netflix sometime around late 2022 or early 2023.

So what do you think? Are you excited for Blood Origin? Share your own thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!