[This story contains major spoilers from Umbrella Academy season four.]
Faced with one last existential threat to the universe, Netflix‘s Umbrella Academy went out with a bang. Standing together for one last time, the beloved group of superheroes set aside their sibling rivalry and agreed on one thing: In order to save the world, they all needed to die. After five years of near-miss snafus with a high-stakes web of timelines, the characters converged together to disappear for good. The result was a series finale that, like the show itself, felt quite special.
Based on the Dark Horse comic series by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, and created by Steve Blackman and Jeremy Slater, Umbrella Academy first captured audiences with its superhero antics in 2019. The group of six adopted siblings made for a delightfully fresh depiction of found family, and the series embraced a “work hard, play hard” mentality that made saving the world both fun and frightening. Upon the first season’s release, it became one of Netflix’s most streamed shows.
Now five years later, The Hollywood Reporter spoke with the central cast — Elliot Page (Viktor), Justin Min (Ben), Tom Hopper (Luther), Emmy Raver-Lampman (Allison), Robert Sheehan (Klaus), David Castañeda (Diego), Aidan Gallagher (Number Five) and Ritu Arya (Lila Pitts) — about how they prepared to say goodbye to the final (no, really — they mean it this time!) timeline.
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What was your reaction when you first learned about the siblings’ fate?
EMMY RAVER-LAMPMAN We did’t know the end the end, with the actual scene and the lines we were going to say, until the a couple of days before. [Steve Blackman] withheld the last couple of pages so that it felt in the moment and real. I was sad but also, it felt was very appropriate that they’d all be together. It was like one final sacrifice, and one final attempt at healing a lot of the wounds within the family, among siblings.
TOM HOPPER I kind of had a feeling it was going to be something along those lines, that we would probably all go together in some way.
AIDAN GALLAGHER We had an idea emotionally of where the characters were, but you don’t get the complex level of emotions [until you’re shooting it]. It was a little strange to approach scenes where we didn’t know what led up to that or what certain things meant, but you just have to trust the people around you who are making the show. It’s such a collaborative art form.
Did it feel different heading to set knowing it was the final season?
RAVER-LAMPMAN I think we were all really grateful to go into the season knowing it was the last. None of it was taken for granted. A lot of shows don’t get that.
RITU ARYA It was quite funny when we first came to set, because Aidan and I had to film one of the last scenes from episode six before anything else, so we hadn’t even read the first episodes. We were just given those sides, and it was an emotional scene. So, we hadn’t seen each other for a year and a half and it was like, “Hey, nice to see you. Now I’m just going to cry into your shoulder.”
Ritu, Lila and Five strike up an interesting relationship this season. Did you see that coming?
ARYA One of the writers accidentally told me it was going to be a thing at the premiere for season three, and I thought they were joking. I found it really funny. And then when [Steve Blackman] said that was what was happening, I was like, “Oh my God, they weren’t joking.” I never would have expected it. And then, in hindsight, it completely made sense. [Lila and Five] have this electric kind of battle going on in the seasons before this. Of course they would do this!
Your characters start the season without their powers after last season’s showdown at Hotel Oblivion. What was that like?
SHEEHAN I loved the new terror of death Klaus inherits having his powers taken away. I thought that was a stroke of genius from Steve and the writers. It gave us the opportunity to reinvent Klaus, give him a fresh new face, a new look, a new attitude, a new spirit. He’s a character of extremes, so [we got to see] what happens when you subvert all those extremes in the complete opposite direction and turn him into a Howard Hughes of a character who can’t function.
HOPPER I think the thing with Luther is, he misses his powers and he misses his purpose, but he doesn’t miss his ape body. We had that whole gap before shooting season four to speak to Steve about where he was going to find us at the beginning of season four. I was surprised but also enlightened to find out what Luther was doing.
This show has always been about siblings finding each other over and over again. How much has that played into the development of your characters’ relationships?
RAVER-LAMPMAN That was actually something I was a little nervous about. I grew up an only child — I have a half-sister who is 20 years younger than me, so I didn’t grow up with a sibling. So then immediately having six of them felt very daunting. But I think Steve Blackman and our producing director Peter Hoar, who directed the pilot in season one, did an incredible job casting the show. From the get go, we got along really well and the dynamics between us just fell into the right place and we all fit into the family. Every sibling has a purpose within the sibling bond.
HOPPER I think [the sibling dynamic] happened organically. We did these things together and the dynamic between us got established. We learned about each other’s characters as well as our own and how they all operate together. It creates this weird sort of synergy and we just build together, we create a flow state as a group because we grew off camera as a group of siblings.
JUSTIN H. MIN Even your closest friends, they come in at a certain point in your life. Siblings are the only relationship in your life that, they see you from start to finish. I’m glad our show got to represent that. I also think there’s this very unique thing about siblings, where you kind of hate each other but love each other at the same time. So that was a big part of the dynamics of our show.
SHEEHAN The nice thing is when you’re playing siblings in a show, it sort of entitled us to be more truthful, be more questioning than if we were just playing friends. I think that kind of bled in both directions.
ELLIOT PAGE The connective tissue, unfortunately, is that they all have this trauma. And those who love you the most are the ones who know how to cut you the deepest. But I think they all have this understanding, it’s like, “I don’t always make the best decisions because I was not given the tools to make those decisions properly.” And so I think there’s all these explosions and then they make up, and then another explosion and then they make up. They really hurt each other, and there’s a lot of scars, but then there’s a lot of scar tissue. It’s highs and lows, which is what makes great television.
DAVID CASTANEDA We brought the love, we definitely brought the love.